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The world likes humor, but it treats it patronizingly. It decorates its serious artists with laurel, and its wags with Brussels sprouts.
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
World
Sprouts
Laurels
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Humor
Wags
Serious
Laurel
Artist
Brussels
More quotes by E. B. White
A poet dares to be just so clear and no clearer he approaches lucid ground warily, like a mariner who is determined not to scrape his bottom on anything solid. A poet's pleasure is to withhold a little of his meaning, to intensify by mystification. He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring.
E. B. White
From three to four, he planned to stand perfectly still and think of what it was like to be alive.
E. B. White
Why is it, do you suppose, that an Englishman is unhappy until he has explained America?
E. B. White
I admire anybody who has the guts to write anything at all.
E. B. White
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
There is a period near the beginning of every man's life when he has little to cling to except his unmanageable dream, little to support him except good health, and nowhere to go but all over the place.
E. B. White
A writer should tend to lift people up, not lower them down.
E. B. White
Just to live in the country is a full-time job. You don't have to do anything. The idle pursuit of making a living is pushed to one side, where it belongs, in favor of living itself, a task of such immediacy, variety, beauty, and excitement that one is powerless to resist its wild embrace.
E. B. White
From morning till night, sounds drift from the kitchen, most of them familiar and comforting. . . . On days when warmth is the most important need of the human heart, the kitchen is the place you can find it it dries the wet sock, it cools the hot little brain.
E. B. White
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
Well,” said Stuart, “a misspelled word is an abomination in the sight of everyone.
E. B. White
New York is to the nation what the white church spire is to the village - the visible symbol of aspiration and faith, the white plume saying the way is up!
E. B. White
Whatever else an American believes or disbelieves about himself, he is absolutely sure he has a sense of humor.
E. B. White
Not even a collapsing world looks dark to a man who is about to make his fortune.
E. B. White
You're terrific as far as I am concerned.
E. B. White
In a man's middle years there is scarcely a part of the body he would hesitate to turn over to the proper authorities.
E. B. White
Never hurry and never worry!
E. B. White
Humour plays close to the big, hot fire, which is the truth, and the reader feels the heat.
E. B. White
Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people-- people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book.
E. B. White
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.
E. B. White
