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Although there is no substitute for merit in writing, clarity comes closest to being one.

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
Clarity
Merit
Although
Comes
Writing
Substitute
Substitutes
Closest

More quotes by E. B. White

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Well,” said Stuart, “a misspelled word is an abomination in the sight of everyone.
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Why is it, do you suppose, that an Englishman is unhappy until he has explained America?
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Diplomacy is the lowest form of politeness because it misquotes the greatest number of people. A nation, like an individual, if it has anything to say, should simply say it.
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Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one.
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I have just been refining the room in which I sit, yet I sometimes doubt that a writer should refine or improve his workroom by so much as a dictionary: one thing leads to another and the first thing you know he has a stuffed chair and is fast asleep in it.
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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.
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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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Creation is in part merely the business of forgoing the great and small distractions.
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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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Television should be our Lyceum, our Chautauqua, our Minsky's and our Camelot.
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Semi-colons only prove that the author has been to college.
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Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.
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We grow tyrannical fighting tyranny. . . . The most alarming spectacle today is not the spectacle of the atomic bomb in an unfederated world, it is the spectacle of the Americans beginning to accept the device of loyalty oaths and witch hunts, beginning to call anybody they don't like a Communist.
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Life's accumulation is more discouraging than life itself, when stirred up.
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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 poem compresses much in a small space and adds music, thus heightening its meaning.
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In every queen there's a touch of floozy.
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Don't write about Man write about a man.
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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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The rat had no morals, no conscience, no scruples, no consideration, no decency, no milk of rodent kindness, no compunctions, no higher feeling, no friendliness, no anything
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