Book detail: In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers is presented as a focused source page for quotations connected with this book, collection, transcript, or source record.
This book compiles a selection of notable quotes from the esteemed American writer E.B. White, highlighting his engaging and thoughtful prose. The quotations span various themes, including nature, writing, and life, offering a glimpse into the mind of one of America's most beloved authors.
The quotes below use the same card format as the rest of the site, including topics, source notes, copy actions, image creation, and sharing controls.
Read more
“In a free country it is the duty of writers to pay no attention to duty.”
Source: In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers
“A writer should tend to lift people up, not lower them down.”
Source: In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers
“A schoolchild should be taught grammar - for the same reason that a medical student should study anatomy. Having learned about the exciting mysteries of an English sentence, the child can then go forth and speak and write any damn way he pleases.”
Source: In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers
“The beginner should approach style warily, realizing that it is himself he is approaching, no other; and he should begin by turning resolutely away from all devices that are popularly believed to indicate style - all mannerisms, tricks, adornments. The approach to style is by way of plainness, simplicity, orderliness, sincerity.”
Source: In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers
“Television should be our Lyceum, our Chautauqua, our Minsky's and our Camelot.”
Source: In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers
“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.”
Source: In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers
“Everything in life is somewhere else, and you get there in a car.”
Source: In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers
“A good farmer is nothing more nor less than a handy man with a sense of humus.”
Source: In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers
“Commas in The New Yorker fall with the precision of knives in a circus act, outlining the victim.”
Source: In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers
“One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy.”
Source: In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers
“The only sense that is common in the long run, is the sense of change and we all instinctively avoid it.”
Source: In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers
“The world organization debates disarmament in one room and, in the next room, moves the knights and pawns that make national arms imperative.”
Source: In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers
“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.”
Source: In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers
“After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die.”
Source: In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers
“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.”
Source: In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers
“Why did you do all this for me?' he asked. 'I don't deserve it. I've never done anything for you.' 'You have been my friend,' replied Charlotte. 'That in itself is a tremendous thing.”
Source: In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers
“This is what youth must figure out: Girls, love, and living. The having, the not having, The spending and giving, And the meloncholy time of not knowing. This is what age must learn about: The ABC of dying. The going, yet not going, The loving and leaving, And the unbearable knowing and knowing”
Source: In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers
“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”
Source: In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers
“A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word to paper.”
Source: In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers
“All that I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world.”
Source: In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers
“Too many things on my mind, said Wilbur. Well, said the goose, that's not my trouble. I have nothing at all on my mind, but I've too many things under my behind.”
Source: In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers
“I admire anybody who has the guts to write anything at all.”
Source: In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers
“A poet dares be just so clear and no clearer... He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring.”
Source: In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers
“Well,” said Stuart, “a misspelled word is an abomination in the sight of everyone.”
Source: In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers
“Be obscure clearly! Be wild of tongue in a way we can understand.”
Source: In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers
“It is deeply satisfying to win a prize in front of a lot of people.”
Source: In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers
“I am always humbled by the infite ingenuity of the Lord, who can make a red barn cast a blue shadow.”
Source: In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers
“But real life is only one kind of life—there is also the life of the imagination.”
Source: In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers
“Most people think of peace as a state of Nothing Bad Happening, or Nothing Much Happening. Yet if peace is to overtake us and make us the gift of serenity and well-being, it will have to be the state of Something Good Happening.”
Source: In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers
“There is a period near the beginning of every man's life when he has little to cling to except his unmanageable dream, little to support him except good health, and nowhere to go but all over the place.”
Source: In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers
“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.”
Source: In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers
“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.”
Source: In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers
“I can still see my first dog. For six years he met me at the same place after school and convoyed me home - a service he thought up himself. A boy doesn't forget that sort of association.”
Source: In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers
“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.”
Source: In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers
“People are, if anything, more touchy about being thought silly than they are about being thought unjust.”
Source: In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers
“A schoolchild should be taught grammar—for the same reason that a medical student should study anatomy.”
Source: In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers
“Writers do not merely reflect and interpret life, they inform and shape life.”
Source: In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers
“As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate. Hope is the thing that is left us in a bad time.”
Source: In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers
“A poem compresses much in a small space and adds music, thus heightening its meaning.”
Source: In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers
“Reading is the work of the alert mind, is demanding, and under ideal conditions produces finally a sort of ecstasy.”
Source: In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers
“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!”
Source: In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers
“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.”
Source: In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers
“Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.”
Source: In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers
“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.”
Source: In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers
“The circus comes as close to being the world in microcosm as anything I know; in a way, it puts all the rest of show business in the shade.”
Source: In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers
“The so-called science of poll-taking is not a science at all but mere necromancy. People are unpredictable by nature, and although you can take a nation's pulse, you can't be sure that the nation hasn't just run up a flight of stairs.”
Source: In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers