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Safety is all well and good: I prefer freedom.

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
Prefer
Safety
Freedom
Wells
Well
Good

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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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It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.
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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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We should all do what, in the long run, gives us joy, even if it is only picking grapes or sorting the laundry.
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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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Never hurry and never worry!
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When a man hangs from a tree it doesn't spell justice unless he helped write the law that hanged him.
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Although there is no substitute for merit in writing, clarity comes closest to being one.
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In a free country it is the duty of writers to pay no attention to duty. Only under a dictatorship is literature expected to exhibit an harmonious design or an inspirational tone.
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Whatever else an American believes or disbelieves about himself, he is absolutely sure he has a sense of humor.
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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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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.
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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.
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Home was quite a place when people stayed there.
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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!
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Television should be our Lyceum, our Chautauqua, our Minsky's and our Camelot.
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In every queen there's a touch of floozy.
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Deathlessness should be arrived at in a... haphazard fashion. Loving fame as much as any man, we shall carve our initials in the shell of a tortoise and turn him loose in a peat bog.
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I am reminded of the advice of my neighbor. Never worry about your heart till it stops beating.
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When my wife's Aunt Caroline was in her nineties, she lived with us, and she once remarked: 'Remembrance is sufficient of the beauty we have seen.' I cherish the remembrance of the beauty I have seen. I cherish the grave, compulsive word.
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