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The essayist . . . can pull on any sort of shirt, be any sort of person, according to his mood or his subject matter - philosopher, scold, jester, raconteur, confidant, pundit, devil's advocate, enthusiast.

E. B. White

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E. B. White
Age: 86 †
Born: 1899
Born: July 11
Died: 1985
Died: October 1
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Mount Vernon
New York
Elwyn Brooks White
E.B. White
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More quotes by E. B. White

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Why did you do all this for me?' he asked. 'I don't deserve it. I've never done anything for you.' 'You have been my friend,' replied Charlotte. 'That in itself is a tremendous thing.
E. B. White
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All poets who, when reading from their own works,m experience a choked feeling, are major. For that matter, all poets who read from their own works are major, whether they choke or not.
E. B. White
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Good deeds never go unpunished.
E. B. White
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Most people think of peace as a state of Nothing Bad Happening, or Nothing Much Happening. Yet if peace is to overtake us and make us the gift of serenity and well-being, it will have to be the state of Something Good Happening.
E. B. White
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Home was quite a place when people stayed there.
E. B. White
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A writer should concern himself with whatever absorbs his fancy, stirs his heart, and unlimbers his typewriter. ... A writer has the duty to be good, not lousy: true, not false lively, not dull accurate, not full of error. He should tend to lift people up, not lower them down.
E. B. White
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Only a person who is congenially self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays
E. B. White
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The living language is like a cowpath: it is the creation of the cows themselves, who, having created it, follow it or depart from it according to their whims or their needs. From daily use, the path undergoes change. A cow is under no obligation to stay
E. B. White
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Don't write about Man write about a man.
E. B. White
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A candidate could easily commit political suicide if he were to come up with an unconventional thought during a presidential tour.
E. B. White
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When a man hangs from a tree it doesn't spell justice unless he helped write the law that hanged him.
E. B. White
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Wilbur burst into tears. I dont want to die, he moaned. I want to stay alive, right here in my comfortable manure pile with all my friends. I want to breathe the beautiful air and lie in the beautiful sun.
E. B. White
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Books are the door of escape from the forest.
E. B. White
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If I can fool a bug... I can surely fool a man. People are not as smart as bugs.
E. B. White
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Wilbur didn't want food, he wanted love.
E. B. White
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Television will enormously enlarge the eye's range, and, like radio, will advertise the Elsewhere. Together with the tabs, the mags, and the movies, it will insist that we forget the primary and the near in favor of the secondary and the remote.
E. B. White
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A schoolchild should be taught grammar - for the same reason that a medical student should study anatomy. Having learned about the exciting mysteries of an English sentence, the child can then go forth and speak and write any damn way he pleases.
E. B. White
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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.
E. B. White
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When an American family becomes separated from its toothbrushes and combs and pajamas for a few hours it considers that it has had quite an adventure.
E. B. White
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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