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E. B. White

United States writer noted for his humorous essays (1899-1985)

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It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.

– E. B. White

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Everything in life is somewhere else, and you get there in a car.

– E. B. White

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Loneliness is a strange gift.

– E. B. White

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The total collapse of the public opinion polls shows that this country is in good health. A country that developed an airtight system of finding out in advance what was in people's minds would be uninhabitable.

– E. B. White

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A poet's pleasure is to withhold a little of his meaning, to intensify by mystification. He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it.

– E. B. White

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Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.

– E. B. White

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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

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

– E. B. White

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Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion.

– E. B. White

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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.

– E. B. White

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Heredity is a strong factor, even in architecture. Necessity first mothered invention. Now invention has little ones of her own, and they look just like grandma.

– E. B. White

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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

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I am often mad, but I would hate to be nothing but mad and I think I would lose what little value I may have as a writer if I were to refuse, as a matter of principle, to accept the warming rays of the sun, and to report them, whenever, and if ever, they happen to strike me.

– E. B. White

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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

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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

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In middle life, the human back is spoiling for a technical knockout and will use the flimsiest excuse, even a sneeze, to fall apart.

– E. B. White

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Liberty is never out of bounds or off limits; it spreads wherever it can capture the imagination of men.

– E. B. White

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Shocking writing is like murder: the questions the jury must decide are the questions of motive and intent.

– E. B. White

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Somehow not only for ChristmasBut all the long year through,The joy that you give to othersIs the joy that comes back to you.

– E. B. White

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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.

– E. B. White

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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.

– E. B. White

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The time not to become a father is eighteen years before a war.

– E. B. White

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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

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Writing is hard work and bad for the health.

– E. B. White

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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

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You have been my friends, replied Charlotte, that in itself is a tremendous thing...

– E. B. White

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