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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
Humor
Wags
Serious
Laurel
Artist
Brussels
World
Sprouts
Laurels
Treats
Likes
Artists
Decorates

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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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By comparison with other less hectic days, the city is unconfortable and inconvenient but New Yorkers tempramentally do not crave comfort and convenience - if they did they would live elsewhere.
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Only a person who is congenially self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays
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Even now with a thousand little voyages notched in my belt. I still feel a memorial chill on casting off.
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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
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There is another sort of day which needs celebrating in song -- the day of days when spring at last holds up her face to be kissed, deliberate and unabashed. On that day no wind blows either in the hills or in the mind.
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A writer should tend to lift people up, not lower them down.
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No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader's intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.
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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.
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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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Why is it, do you suppose, that an Englishman is unhappy until he has explained America?
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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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All that I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world.
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In middle life, the human back is spoiling for a technical knockout and will use the flimsiest excuse, even a sneeze, to fall apart.
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