E. B. White Quotes - Page 3

Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one.

Television hangs on the questionable theory that whatever happens anywhere should be sensed everywhere. If everyone is going to be able to see everything, in the long run all sights may lose whatever rarity value they once possessed, and it may well turn out that people, being able to see and hear practically everything, will be specially interested in almost nothing.

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.

I admire anybody who has the guts to write anything at all.

Writing is hard work and bad for the health.

I am always humbled by the infite ingenuity of the Lord, who can make a red barn cast a blue shadow.

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

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.

Old age is a special problem for me because I've never been able to shed the mental image I have of myself - a lad of about 19.

Semi-colons only prove that the author has been to college.

There is nothing more likely to start disagreement among people or countries than an agreement.

Habitually creative people are prepared to be lucky.

You're terrific as far as I am concerned.

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

To achieve style, begin by affecting none.

There's no limit to how complicated things can get, on account of one thing always leading to another.

Safety is all well and good: I prefer freedom.

There is nothing harder to estimate than a writer's time, nothing harder to keep track of. There are moments—moments of sustained creation—when his time is fairly valuable; and there are hours and hours when a writer's time isn't worth the paper he is not writing anything on.

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.

Fern was up at daylight, trying to rid the world of injustice. As a result, she now has a pig. A small one to be sure, but nevertheless a pig. It just shows what can happen if a person gets out of bed promptly.

I get up every morning determined to both change the world and to have one hell of a good time. Sometimes, this makes planning the day difficult.

No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader's intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.

Creation is in part merely the business of forgoing the great and small distractions.

When an American family becomes separated from its toothbrushes and combs and pajamas for a few hours it considers that it has had quite an adventure.

Liberals are like dogs: The liberal holds that he is true to the republic when he is true to himself. (It may not be as cozy an attitude as it sounds.) He greets with enthusiasm the fact of the journey, as a dog greets a man's invitation to take a walk. And he acts in the dog's way too, swinging wide, racing ahead, doubling back, covering many miles of territory that the man never traverses, all in the spirit of inquiry and the zest for truth. He leaves a crazy trail, but he ranges far beyond the genteel old party he walks with and he is usually in a better position to discover a skunk.