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The circus comes as close to being the world in microcosm as anything I know in a way, it puts all the rest of show business in the shade.

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
Rest
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Microcosm
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Circus
Anything
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The rat had no morals, no conscience, no scruples, no consideration, no decency, no milk of rodent kindness, no compunctions, no higher feeling, no friendliness, no anything
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If I can fool a bug... I can surely fool a man. People are not as smart as bugs.
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Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness, natives give it solidity and continuity, but the settlers give it passion.
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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.
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I seldom went to bed before two or three o'clock in the morning, on the theory that if anything of interest were to happen to a young man it would almost certainly happen late at night.
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Sometimes a writer, like an acrobat, must try a trick that is too much for him.
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In every queen there's a touch of floozy.
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A right is a responsibility in reverse.
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Einstein is loved because he is gentle, respected because he is wise. Relativity being not for most of us, we elevate its author to a position somewhere between Edison, who gave us a tangible gleam, and God, who gave us the difficult dark and the hope of penetrating it.
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But we have received a sign, Edith - a mysterious sign. A miracle has happened on this farm... in the middle of the web there were the words 'Some Pig'... we have no ordinary pig. Well, said Mrs. Zuckerman, it seems to me you're a little off. It seems to me we have no ordinary spider.
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... with men it's rush, rush, rush, every minute. I'm glad I'm a sedentary spider. What does sedentary mean? asked Wilbur. Means I sit still a good part of the time and don't go wandering all over creation. I know a good thing when I see it, and my web is a good thing. I stay put and wait for what comes. Gives me a chance to think.
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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.
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Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one.
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As a writing man, or secretary, I have always felt charged with the safekeeping of all unexpected items of worldly and unworldly enchantment, as though I might be held personally responsible if even a small one were to be lost.
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I believe television is going to be the test of the modern world, and that in this new opportunity to see beyond the range of our vision, we shall discover a new and unbearable disturbance of the modern peace, or a saving radiance in the sky. We shall stand or fall by television - of that I am quite sure.
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I believe in dreams. People should have faith in the songs poets sing.
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I have just been refining the room in which I sit, yet I sometimes doubt that a writer should refine or improve his workroom by so much as a dictionary: one thing leads to another and the first thing you know he has a stuffed chair and is fast asleep in it.
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A poem compresses much in a small space and adds music, thus heightening its meaning.
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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.
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A man who publishes his letters becomes a nudist - nothing shields him from the world's gaze except his bare skin. A writer, writing away, can always fix things up to make himself more presentable, but a man who has written a letter is stuck with it for all time.
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