Quote

Safety is all well and good: I prefer freedom.

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
Well
Good
Prefer
Safety
Freedom
Wells

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
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.
E. B. White
Image
We should all do what, in the long run, gives us joy, even if it is only picking grapes or sorting the laundry.
E. B. White
Image
The whole duty of a writer is to please and satisfy himself, and the true writer always plays to an audience of one.
E. B. White
Image
Children hold spring so tightly in their brown fists-just as grownups, who are less sure of it, hold it in their hearts.
E. B. White
Image
All poets who, when reading from their own works,m experience a choked feeling, are major. For that matter, all poets who read from their own works are major, whether they choke or not.
E. B. White
Image
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.
E. B. White
Image
New York is part of the natural world. I love the city, I love the country, and for the same reasons. The city is part of the country. When I had an apartment on East Forty-Eighth Street, my backyard during the migratory season yielded more birds than I ever saw in Maine.
E. B. White
Image
A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word to paper.
E. B. White
Image
I admire anybody who has the guts to write anything at all.
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
There is nothing more likely to start disagreement among people or countries than an agreement.
E. B. White
Image
Habitually creative people are prepared to be lucky.
E. B. White
Image
Luck is not something you can mention in the presence of self-made men.
E. B. White
Image
Not even a collapsing world looks dark to a man who is about to make his fortune.
E. B. White
Image
Television should be our Lyceum, our Chautauqua, our Minsky's and our Camelot.
E. B. White
Image
Why is it, do you suppose, that an Englishman is unhappy until he has explained America?
E. B. White
Image
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.
E. B. White
Image
The most puzzling thing about TV is the steady advance of the sponsor across the line that has always separated news from promotion, entertainment from merchandising. The advertiser has assumed the role of originator, and the performer has gradually been eased into the role of peddler.
E. B. White
Image
I don't understand it, and I don't like what I don't understand.
E. B. White