E.B. White > Quotes

“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

“All that I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world.”
― E.B. White

“Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder.”
― E.B. White

“After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die.”
― 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

“Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one.”
― 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, Charlotte's Web

“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

“One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy.”
― E.B. White, Essays of 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.”
― 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

“Be obscure clearly.”
― 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, Charlotte's Web

“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

“Writing is both mask and unveiling.”
― 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

“I am reminded of the advice of my neighbor. "Never worry about your heart till it stops beating. ”
― 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

“Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.”
― E.B. White

“Semi-colons only prove that the author has been to college.”
― E.B. White

“I see nothing in space as promising as the view from a Ferris wheel.”
― E.B. White, The Points Of My Compass

“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

“You're terrific as far as I am concerned.”
― E.B. White

“The time not to become a father is eighteen years before a war.”
― E.B. White

“A library is a good place to go when you feel unhappy, for there, in a book, you may find encouragement and comfort. A library is a good place to go when you feel bewildered or undecided, for there, in a book, you may have your question answered. Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people - people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book.”
― 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

“In every queen there's a touch of floozy.”
― E.B. White

“Advice to young writers wo want to get ahead without any annoying delays: don't write about Man, write about a man.”
― E.B. White

“I admire anybody who has the guts to write anything at all.”
― E.B. White

“The world is full of people who have never, since childhood, met an open doorway with an open mind.”
― 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, 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

“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

“The young writer should learn to spot them: words that at first glance seem freighted with delicious meaning, but that soon burst in the air, leaving nothing but a memory of bright sound.”
― E.B. White

“Be obscure clearly! Be wild of tongue in a way we can understand.”
― 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

“There's no limit to how complicated things can get, on account of one thing always leading to another.”
― E.B. White

“Never hurry and never worry!”
― E.B. White, Charlotte's Web

“There is another sort of day which needs celebrating in song -- the day of days when spring at last holds up her face to be kissed, deliberate and unabashed. On that day no wind blows either in the hills or in the mind.”
― E.B. White, One Man's Meat

“Trust me, Wilbur. People are very gullible. They'll believe anything they see in print.”
― E.B. White, Charlotte's Web

“I don’t know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens.”
― E.B. White

“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, and although you can take a nation's blood pressure, you can't be sure that if you came back in twenty minutes you'd get the same reading. This is a damn fine thing.”
― E.B. White, Writings from the New Yorker 1927-1976

“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

“Don't write about Man; write about a man.”
― E.B. White, Charlotte's Web

“English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment and education - sometimes it's sheer luck, like getting across the street.”
― E.B. White

“Have you ever found anything that gives you relief?"... "Yes. A drink”
― E.B. White, The Second Tree from the Corner

“To achieve style, begin by affecting none.”
― E.B. White, The Elements of Style