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If sometimes there seems to be a sort of sameness of sound in The New Yorker, it probably can be traced to the magazine's copydesk, which is a marvelous fortress of grammatical exactitude and stylish convention.

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
Magazines
Traced
Probably
Yorker
Sort
Stylish
Sound
Sameness
Seems
Convention
Grammatical
Sometimes
Magazine
Exactitude
Conventions
Fortress
Marvelous
Fortresses

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Life is always rich and steady time when you are waiting for something to happen or to hatch.
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A writer should tend to lift people up, not lower them down.
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From morning till night, sounds drift from the kitchen, most of them familiar and comforting. . . . On days when warmth is the most important need of the human heart, the kitchen is the place you can find it it dries the wet sock, it cools the hot little brain.
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Early summer days are a jubilee time for birds. In the fields, around the house, in the barn, in the woods, in the swamp - everywhere love and songs and nests and eggs.
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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.
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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.
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Only a person who is congenially self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays
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Habitually creative people are prepared to be lucky.
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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.
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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.
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It sometimes takes days, even weeks, before a dog's nerves tire. In the case of terriers it can run into months.
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As a writing man, or secretary, I have always felt charged with the safekeeping of all unexpected items of worldly and unworldly enchantment, as though I might be held personally responsible if even a small one were to be lost.
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Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness, natives give it solidity and continuity, but the settlers give it passion.
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Never hurry and never worry!
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There is nothing more likely to start disagreement among people or countries than an agreement.
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If I can fool a bug... I can surely fool a man. People are not as smart as bugs.
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It isn't silence you can cut with a knife any more, it's interchange of ideas. Intelligent discussion of practically everything is what is breaking up modern marriage.
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A really companionable and indispensable dog is an accident of nature. You can't get it by breeding for it, and you can't buy it with money. It just happens along.
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You're terrific as far as I am concerned.
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Books are the door of escape from the forest.
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