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Humour plays close to the big, hot fire, which is the truth, and the reader feels the heat.

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
Close
Fire
Bigs
Truth
Humour
Play
Plays
Feels
Heat
Hot
Reader

More quotes by 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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Half a man's life is devoted to what he calls improvements, yet the original had some quality which is lost in the process.
E. B. White
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Never hurry and never worry!
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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I discovered, though, that once having given a pig an enema there is no turning back, no chance of resuming one of life's more stereotyped roles.
E. B. White
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I have one share in corporate Earth, and I am nervous about the management.
E. B. White
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Well,” said Stuart, “a misspelled word is an abomination in the sight of everyone.
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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Books are the door of escape from the forest.
E. B. White
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Don't write about Man write about a man.
E. B. White
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English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment and education - sometimes it's sheer luck, like getting across the street.
E. B. White
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I can still see my first dog. For six years he met me at the same place after school and convoyed me home - a service he thought up himself. A boy doesn't forget that sort of association.
E. B. White
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Sometimes a writer, like an acrobat, must try a trick that is too much for him.
E. B. White
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In order to read one must sit down, usually indoors. I am restless and would rather sail a boat than crack a book. I've never had a very lively literary curiosity, and it has sometimes seemed to me that I am not really a literary fellow at all. Except that I write for a living.
E. B. White
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The vision of milk and honey, it comes and goes. But the odor of cooking goes on forever.
E. B. White
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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
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Use the smallest word that does the job.
E. B. White
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A poem compresses much in a small space and adds music, thus heightening its meaning.
E. B. White
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Advice from this elderly practitioner is to forget publishers and just roll a sheet of copy paper into your machine and get lost in your subject.
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