Quote

Why is it, do you suppose, that an Englishman is unhappy until he has explained America?

E. B. White

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Englishmen
Explained
Suppose
Unhappy
America
Englishman

More quotes by E. B. White

Image
When a man hangs from a tree it doesn't spell justice unless he helped write the law that hanged him.
E. B. White
Image
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
Image
Only a person who is congenially self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays
E. B. White
Image
Safety is all well and good: I prefer freedom.
E. B. White
Image
In every queen there's a touch of floozy.
E. B. White
Image
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.
E. B. White
Image
Life's accumulation is more discouraging than life itself, when stirred up.
E. B. White
Image
Democracy is a request from a War Board, in the middle of a morning in the middle of a war, wanting to know what democracy is.
E. B. White
Image
Geese are friends to no one, they bad mouth everybody and everything. But they are companionable once you get used to their ingratitude and false accusations.
E. B. White
Image
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.
E. B. White
Image
A good many of the special words of business seem designed more to express the user's dreams than to express a precise meaning.
E. B. White
Image
Creation is in part merely the business of forgoing the great and small distractions.
E. B. White
Image
A library is a good place to go when you feel bewildered or undecided, for there in a book, you may have your question answered
E. B. White
Image
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.
E. B. White
Image
Writers do not merely reflect and interpret life, they inform and shape life.
E. B. White
Image
The critic leaves at curtain fall To find, in starting to review it, He scarcely saw the play at all For starting to review it.
E. B. White
Image
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.
E. B. White
Image
Humor is like a frog. You can dissect it to see how it works, but by then, it's dead.
E. B. White
Image
A poem compresses much in a small space and adds music, thus heightening its meaning.
E. B. White
Image
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.
E. B. White