E.B. White on Dogs Quotes

“There is a book out called Dog Training Made Easy, and it was sent to me the other day by the publisher, who rightly guessed that it would catch my eye. I like to read books on dog training. Being the owner of dachshunds, to me a book on dog discipline becomes a volume of inspired humor. Every sentence is a riot. Some day, if I ever get a chance, I shall write a book, or warning, on the character and temperament of the Dachshund and why he can’t be trained and shouldn’t be. I would rather train a striped zebra to balance an Indian club than induce a dachshund to heed my slightest command. For a number of years past I have been agreeably encumbered by a very large and dissolute dachshund named Fred. Of all the dogs whom I have served I’ve never known one who understood so much of what I say or held it in such deep contempt. When I address Fred I never have to raise either my voice or my hopes. He even disobeys me when I instruct him in something that he wants to do. And when I answer his peremptory scratch at the door and hold the door open for him to walk through, he stops in the middle and lights a cigarette, just to hold me up.”
― E.B. White, E.B. White on Dogs

“a husband and wife should tell each other about the things that are on their mind, otherwise you get nowhere,”
― E.B. White, E.B. White on Dogs

“Some of the published news was distorted, but distortion is inherent in partisan journalism, the same as it is in political rallies.”
― E.B. White, E.B. White on Dogs

“But I think the Court again heard clearly the simple theme that ennobles our Constitution: that no one shall be made to feel uncomfortable or unsafe because of nonconformity.”
― E.B. White, E.B. White on Dogs

“hope my country will never become an uncomfortable place for the unbeliever, as it could easily become if prayer was made one of the requirements of the accredited citizen.”
― E.B. White, E.B. White on Dogs

“child was left out in the cold, bearing the stigma of being different. It is this one child that our Constitution is concerned about—his tranquillity, his health, his safety, his conscience. What a kindly old document it is, and how brightly it shines, through interpretation after interpretation!”
― E.B. White, E.B. White on Dogs

“Maybe it’s all right,” she said. “But for the first time in my life I’m beginning to feel like an outsider in my own land.”
― E.B. White, E.B. White on Dogs

“I distrust the slightest hint of a standard for political rectitude, knowing that it will open the way for persons in authority to set arbitrary standards of human behavior.”
― E.B. White, E.B. White on Dogs

“The concern of a democracy is that no honest man shall feel uncomfortable, I don’t care who he is, or how nutty he is.”
― E.B. White, E.B. White on Dogs

“but I don’t think a President should advertise prayer. That is a different thing. Democracy, if I understand it at all, is a society in which the unbeliever feels undisturbed and at home. If there were only half a dozen unbelievers in America, their well-being would be a test of our democracy, their tranquility would be its proof.”
― E.B. White, E.B. White on Dogs

“This week, many will be reminded that no explosion of atoms generates so hopeful a light as the reflection of a star, seen appreciatively in a pasture pond.”
― E.B. White, E.B. White on Dogs

“The value of the liberal in the republic is not that he is logical but that he is inquisitive.”
― E.B. White, E.B. White on Dogs

“I’m not fooled any more by an ill wind and a light that fails.”
― E.B. White, E.B. White on Dogs

“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.”
― E.B. White, E.B. White on Dogs

“Everything gets taken over by big business, I don’t care what line you’re in.”
― E.B. White, E.B. White on Dogs

“something that he wants to do. And when I answer his peremptory scratch at the door and hold the door open for him to walk through, he stops in the middle and lights a cigarette, just to hold me up.”
― E.B. White, E.B. White on Dogs

“I have moments of hoping and dreaming that we will live to see another Golden Age, or at least Silver Age, when writers will be both gay and disciplined and when even newspapers will show an interest in the litry life.”
― E.B. White, E.B. White on Dogs

“Any husband who loses interest in the drama of family life, as it unfolds, isn’t worth his salt.”
― E.B. White, E.B. White on Dogs

“I was sorry for her, as I am for any who are evicted from their haunts by the younger and stronger—always a sad occasion for man or beast.”
― E.B. White, E.B. White on Dogs

“I hope that Belief never is made to appear mandatory.”
― E.B. White, E.B. White on Dogs

“The Herald Tribune headed the story, “PRESIDENT SAYS PRAYER IS PART OF DEMOCRACY.” The implication in such a pronouncement, emanating from the seat of government, is that religious faith is a condition, or even a precondition, of the democratic life.”
― E.B. White, E.B. White on Dogs

“This theme interests me because I believe, with the author, that security declines as security machinery expands.”
― E.B. White, E.B. White on Dogs

“The greatest dangers to liberty,” said Mr. Brandeis, “lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
― E.B. White, E.B. White on Dogs

“I wanted no interruption in the regularity of feeding, the steadiness of growth, the even succession of days. I wanted no interruption, wanted no oil, no deviation.”
― E.B. White, E.B. White on Dogs

“The trend toward the ownership of land by fewer and fewer individuals is, it seems to me, a disastrous thing. For when too large a proportion of the populace is supporting itself by the indirections of trade and business and commerce and art and the million schemes of men in cities, then the complexity of society is likely to become so great as to destroy its equilibrium, and it will always be out of balance in some way. But if a considerable portion of the people are occupied wholly or partially in labors that directly supply them with many things that they want, or think they want, whether it be a sweet pea or a sour pickle, then the public poise will be a good deal harder to upset.”
― E.B. White, E.B. White on Dogs

“during which time I have experienced the satisfactions of working the land, building the soil, and making brown into green, I am beginning to believe that our new world that will open up after the war should be constructed round a repopulated rural America, so that a reasonably large proportion of the population shall participate in the culture of the earth. The trend is often in the opposite direction, even in peace. As things are now in America, country living is possible only for those who have either the talents and instincts of a true farmer or the means to live wherever they choose.”
― E.B. White, E.B. White on Dogs

“Today, if a landowner feels the urge, he can put a backhoe into his hillside pasture and disembowel it. He can set his plow against the contours and let his wealth run down into the brook and into the sea. He can sell his topsoil off by the load and make a gravel pit of a hayfield. For all the interference he will get from the community, he can dig through to China, exploiting as he goes. With an ax in his hand he can annihilate the woods, leaving brush piles and stumps. He can build any sort of building he chooses on his land in the shape of a square or an octagon or a milk bottle. Except in zoned areas he can erect any sort of sign. Nobody can tell him where to head in—it is his land and this is a free country. Yet people are beginning to suspect that the greatest freedom is not achieved by sheer irresponsibility. The earth is common ground and we are all over-lords, whether we hold title or not; gradually the idea is taking form that the land must be held in safekeeping, that one generation is to some extent responsible to the next, and that it is contrary to the public good to allow an individual, merely because of his whims or his ambitions, to destroy almost beyond repair any part of the soil or the water or even the view.”
― E.B. White, E.B. White on Dogs

“A more immediate question is whether democracy has had its day….”
― E.B. White, E.B. White on Dogs

“As for business, we agree that it is a hard, cold-blooded game. Survival of the fittest. Dog eat dog. The fact that about eighty-five per cent of the dogs have recently been eaten by the other dogs perhaps explains what long ago we noticed about business: that it had a strong smell of boloney. If dog continues to eat dog, there will be only one dog left, and he will be sick to his stomach.”
― E.B. White, E.B. White on Dogs

“much of life is insupportable and that no individual play can have a happy ending.”
― E.B. White, E.B. White on Dogs