"If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But 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

"'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.'"
— E.B. White (Charlotte's Web)

"It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer."
— E.B. White (Charlotte's Web)

"I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority."
— E.B. White (Letters of E. B. White)

"It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both."
— E.B. White (Charlotte's Web)

"After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die."
— E.B. White (Charlotte's Web)

"I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning my day difficult."
— E.B. White

"Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one."
— E.B. White

"A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word to paper."
— E.B. White

"I am pessimistic about the human race because it is too ingenious for its own good. Our approach to nature is to beat it into submission. We would stand a better chance of survival if we accommodated ourselves to this planet and viewed it appreciatively instead of skeptically and dictatorially."
— E.B. White

"Every morning I awake torn between a desire to save the world and an inclination to savor it. This makes it hard to plan the day. But if we forget to savor the world, what possible reason do we have for saving it? In a way, the savoring must come first. "
— E.B. White

"One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy."
— E.B. White (Essays of E.B. White)

"Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder."
— E.B. White

"

You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die. A spider's life can't help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. 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.

"
— E.B. White

"Be obscure clearly."
— E.B. White

"The time not to become a father is eighteen years before a war."
— E.B. White

"There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter — the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something.
...Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion. "
— E.B. White (Here is New York)

"I see nothing in space as promising as the view from a Ferris wheel."
— E.B. White

"All that I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world."
— E.B. White

"I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it very hard to plan the day."
— E.B. White

"What do you mean less than nothing? I don't think there is any such thing as less than nothing. Nothing is absolutely the limit of nothingness. It's the lowest you can go. It's the end of the line. How can something be less than nothing? If there were something that was less than nothing, then nothing would not be nothing, it would be something - even though it's just a very little bit of something. But if nothing is nothing, then nothing has nothing that is less than it is. ~ Wilbur, Charlotte's Web"
— E.B. White

"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."
— E.B. White

"A writer's style reveals something of his spirit, his habits, his capacites, his bias...it is the Self escaping into the open."
— E.B. White

"In every queen there's a touch of floozy."
— E.B. White

"Wilbur never forgot Charlotte. Although he loved her children and grandchildren dearly, none of the new spiders ever quite took her place in his heart. She was in a class by herself. It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both."
— E.B. White

""I have yet to see a piece of writing, political or non-political, that does not have a slant. All writing slants the way a writer leans, and no man is born perpendicular.""
— E.B. White

"Writing is both mask and unveiling."
— E.B. White

"Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind."
— E.B. White

"You're terrific as far as I am concerned."
— E.B. White

"I arise in the morning torn between a desire to save the world and a desire to savor it, which makes it hard to plan the day."
— E.B. White

"Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time."
— E.B. White

"Be obscure clearly"
— E.B. White

"One solution ... for the house of the future is to have a place called a ‘dirty room.’ This would be equipped with appliances for all cleaning problems, and into it would be dumped everything dirty. But in most American homes the way to have a dirty room is to have a small boy; that’s the way we worked it for a number of happy years."
— E.B. White

"On any person who desires such queer prizes, New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy.... No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky."
— E.B. White

"You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing."
— E.B. White (Charlotte's Web)

"The subtlest change in New York is something people don't speak much about but that is in everyone's mind. The city, for the first time in its long history, is destructible. A single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground passages into lethal chambers, cremate the millions. The intimation of mortality is part of New York now: in the sound of jets overhead, in the black headlines of the latest edition. (Written in 1949, 22 years before the World Trade Center was completed.)"
— E.B. White (Essays of E. B. White)

"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"
— E.B. White

""Every morning I awaken torn between the desire to save the world and the inclination to savor it.""
— E.B. White

"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."
— E.B. White

"It isn't often that someone comes along who is both a true friend and a good writer."
— E.B. White

"I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day."
— E.B. White

"I have yet to see a piece of writing, political or non-political, that does not have a slant. All writing slants the way a writer leans, and no man is born perpendicular, although many men are born upright."
— E.B. White (Essays of E. B. White)

"Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society — things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed. "
— E.B. White

"Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it."
— E.B. White

"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."
— E.B. White

"I don’t know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens."
— E.B. White

"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

"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

"“When we slid the body into the grave, we both were shaken to the core. The loss we felt was not the loss of ham but the loss of pig.”"
— E.B. White

""It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both."
— E.B. White