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I am still encouraged to go on. I wouldn't know where else to go.

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
Encouraged
Wouldn
Else
Stills
Still

More quotes by E. B. White

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Don't write about Man write about a man.
E. B. White
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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
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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The siren south is well enough, but New York, at the beginning of March, is a hoyden we would not care to miss--a drafty wench, her temperature up and down, full of bold promises and dust in the eye.
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
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The essayist . . . can pull on any sort of shirt, be any sort of person, according to his mood or his subject matter - philosopher, scold, jester, raconteur, confidant, pundit, devil's advocate, enthusiast.
E. B. White
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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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When a man hangs from a tree it doesn't spell justice unless he helped write the law that hanged him.
E. B. White
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Stuart rose from the ditch, climbed into his car, and started up the road that led toward the north...As he peeked ahead into the great land that stretched before him, the way seemed long. But the sky was bright, and he somehow felt he was headed in the right direction.
E. B. White
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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.
E. B. White
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When you say something, make sure you have said it. The chances of your having said it are only fair.
E. B. White
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I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.
E. B. White
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I seldom went to bed before two or three o'clock in the morning, on the theory that if anything of interest were to happen to a young man it would almost certainly happen late at night.
E. B. White
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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.
E. B. White
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A poet dares to be just so clear and no clearer he approaches lucid ground warily, like a mariner who is determined not to scrape his bottom on anything solid. A poet's pleasure is to withhold a little of his meaning, to intensify by mystification. He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring.
E. B. White
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If I can fool a bug... I can surely fool a man. People are not as smart as bugs.
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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Why is it, do you suppose, that an Englishman is unhappy until he has explained America?
E. B. White
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It is at a fair that man can be drunk forever on liquor, love, or fights at a fair that your front pocket can be picked by a trotting horse looking for sugar, and your hind pocket by a thief looking for his fortune.
E. B. White
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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