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The whole duty of a writer is to please and satisfy himself, and the true writer always plays to an audience of one.

E. B. White

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E. B. White
Age: 86 †
Born: 1899
Born: July 11
Died: 1985
Died: October 1
Editor
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Screenwriter
Writer
Mount Vernon
New York
Elwyn Brooks White
E.B. White
Play
Whole
Satisfy
Always
Plays
Please
Duty
Writer
Audience
True

More quotes by E. B. White

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In order to read one must sit down, usually indoors. I am restless and would rather sail a boat than crack a book. I've never had a very lively literary curiosity, and it has sometimes seemed to me that I am not really a literary fellow at all. Except that I write for a living.
E. B. White
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A breezy style is often the work of an egocentric, the person who imagines that everything that pops into his head is of general interest and that uninhibited prose creates high spirits and carries the day.
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My prose style at this time was a stomach-twisting blend of the Bible, Carl Sandburg, H.L. Mencken, Jeffrey Farnol, Christopher Morley, Samuel Pepys, and Franklin Pierce Adams imitating Samuel Pepys. I was quite apt to throw in a bless the mark at any spot, and to begin a sentence with Lord comma.
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Humour plays close to the big, hot fire, which is the truth, and the reader feels the heat.
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Whatever else an American believes or disbelieves about himself, he is absolutely sure he has a sense of humor.
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By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that.
E. B. White
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We grow tyrannical fighting tyranny. . . . The most alarming spectacle today is not the spectacle of the atomic bomb in an unfederated world, it is the spectacle of the Americans beginning to accept the device of loyalty oaths and witch hunts, beginning to call anybody they don't like a Communist.
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Early summer days are a jubilee time for birds. In the fields, around the house, in the barn, in the woods, in the swamp - everywhere love and songs and nests and eggs.
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New York blends the gift of privacy with the excitement of participation and better than most dense communities it succeeds in insulating the individual (if he wants it, and almost everybody wants or needs it) against all enormous and violent and wonderful events that are taking place every minute.
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When my wife's Aunt Caroline was in her nineties, she lived with us, and she once remarked: 'Remembrance is sufficient of the beauty we have seen.' I cherish the remembrance of the beauty I have seen. I cherish the grave, compulsive word.
E. B. White
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I have always felt that the first duty of a writer was to ascend - to make flights, carrying others along if you can manage it. To do this takes courage, even a certain conceit.
E. B. White
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It is easier for a man to be loyal to his club than to his planet the bylaws are shorter, and he is personally acquainted with the other members.
E. B. White
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A right is a responsibility in reverse.
E. B. White
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Stuart rose from the ditch, climbed into his car, and started up the road that led toward the north...As he peeked ahead into the great land that stretched before him, the way seemed long. But the sky was bright, and he somehow felt he was headed in the right direction.
E. B. White
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There is nothing more likely to start disagreement among people or countries than an agreement.
E. B. White
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Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness, natives give it solidity and continuity, but the settlers give it passion.
E. B. White
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Diplomacy is the lowest form of politeness because it misquotes the greatest number of people. A nation, like an individual, if it has anything to say, should simply say it.
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Television should be our Lyceum, our Chautauqua, our Minsky's and our Camelot.
E. B. White
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From three to four, he planned to stand perfectly still and think of what it was like to be alive.
E. B. White
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Writing is both mask and unveiling.
E. B. White