E.B. White

“I remember what it is like to be in love before any of love’s complexities or realities or disturbances has entered in, to dilute its splendor and challenge its perfection.”

“When I address Fred I never have to raise either my voice or my hopes.”

“Only a person who is congenitally self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays.”

“Do you understand how there could be any writing in a spider's web?""Oh, no," said Dr. Dorian. "I don't understand it. But for that matter I don't understand how a spider learned to spin a web in the first place. When the words appeared, everyone said they were a miracle. But nobody pointed out that the web itself is a miracle.""What's miraculous about a spider's web?" said Mrs. Arable. "I don't see why you say a web is a miracle-it's just a web.""Ever try to spin one?" asked Dr. Dorian.”

“Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it better but the frog dies in the process.”

“You have been my friend," replied Charlotte. "That in itself is a tremendous thing...after all, what's a life anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die...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.”

“Once in everyone's life there is apt to be a period when he is fully awake, instead of half-asleep.”

“A despot doesn't fear eloquent writers preaching freedom-he fears a drunken poet may crack a joke that will take hold.”

“A single overstatement, wherever or however it occurs, diminishes the whole, and a carefree superlative has the power to destroy, for the reader, the object of the writer's enthusiasm.”

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

“And then, just as Wilbur was settling down for his morning nap, he heard again the thin voice that had addressed him the night before."Salutations!" said the voice.Wilbur jumped to his feet. "Salu-what?" he cried."Salutations!" repeated the voice."What are they, and where are you?" screamed Wilbur. "Please, please, tell me where you are. And what are salutations?""Salutations are greetings," said the voice. "When I say 'salutations,' it's just my fancy way of saying hello or good morning.”

“The living language is like a cow-path: it is the creation of the cows themselves, who, having created it, follow it or depart from it according to their whims or their needs. From daily use, the path undergoes change. A cow is under no obligation to stay.”

“Have you ever found anything that gives you relief?"... "Yes. A drink”

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

“(Not every doctor can look into a mouse's ear without laughing)”

“Clubs, fraternities, nations—these are the beloved barriers in the way of a workable world, these will have to surrender some of their rights and some of their ribs. A ‘fraternity’ is the antithesis of fraternity. The first (that is, the order or organization) is predicated on the idea of exclusion; the second (that is, the abstract thing) is based on a feeling of total equality. Anyone who remembers back to his fraternity days at college recalls the enthusiasts in his group, the rabid members, both young and old, who were obsessed with the mystical charm of membership in their particular order. They were usually men who were incapable of genuine brotherhood, or at least unaware of its implications. Fraternity begins when the exclusion formula is found to be distasteful. The effect of any organization of a social and brotherly nature is to strengthen rather than diminish the lines which divide people into classes; the effects of states and nations is the same, and eventually these lines will have to be softened, these powers will have to be generalized.”

“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.”

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

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

“Templeton was down there now, rummaging around. When he returned to the barn, he carried in his mouth an advertisement he had torn from a crumpled magazine. How's this?" he asked, showing the ad to Charlotte.It says 'Crunchy.' 'Crunchy' would be a good word to write in your web."Just the wrong idea," replied Charlotte. "Couldn't be worse. We don't want Zuckerman to think Wilbur is crunchy. He might start thinking about crisp, crunchy bacon and tasty ham. That would put ideas into his head. We must advertise Wilbur's noble qualities, not his tastiness.”

“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.”

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

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

“A poet dares be just so clear and no clearer... He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring.”

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

“Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.”

“The critic leaves at curtain fall To find, in starting to review it, He scarcely saw the play at all For starting to review it.”

“I'm staying right here," grumbled the rat. "I haven't the slightest interest in fairs.""That's because you've never been to one," remarked the old sheep . "A fair is a rat's paradise. Everybody spills food at a fair. A rat can creep out late at night and have a feast. In the horse barn you will find oats that the trotters and pacers have spilled. In the trampled grass of the infield you will find old discarded lunch boxes containing the foul remains of peanut butter sandwiches, hard-boiled eggs, cracker crumbs, bits of doughnuts, and particles of cheese. In the hard-packed dirt of the midway, after the glaring lights are out and the people have gone home to bed, you will find a veritable treasure of popcorn fragments, frozen custard dribblings, candied apples abandoned by tired children, sugar fluff crystals, salted almonds, popsicles,partially gnawed ice cream cones,and the wooden sticks of lollypops. Everywhere is loot for a rat--in tents, in booths, in hay lofts--why, a fair has enough disgusting leftover food to satisfy a whole army of rats." Templeton's eyes were blazing. " Is this true?" he asked. "Is this appetizing yarn of yours true? I like high living, and what you say tempts me.""It is true," said the old sheep. "Go to the Fair Templeton. You will find that the conditions at a fair will surpass your wildest dreams. Buckets with sour mash sticking to them, tin cans containing particles of tuna fish, greasy bags stuffed with rotten...""That's enough!" cried Templeton. "Don't tell me anymore I'm going!”

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

“I can only assume that your editorial writer tripped over the First Amendment and thought it was the office cat.”

“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.)”

“A schoolchild should be taught grammar--for the same reason that a medical student should study anatomy. Having learned about the exciting mysteries of an English sentence, the child can then go forth and speak and write any damn way he pleases.”

“I have known many graduates of Bryn Mawr. They are all of the same mold. They have all accepted the same bright challenge: something is lost that has not been found, something's at stake that has not been won, something is started that has not been finished, something is dimly felt that has not been fully realized. They carry the distinguishing mark – the mark that separates them from other educated and superior women: the incredible vigor, the subtlety of mind, the warmth of spirit, the aspiration, the fidelity to past and to present. As they grow in years, they grow in light. As their minds and hearts expand, their deeds become more formidable, their connections more significant, their husbands more startled and delighted. I once held a live hummingbird in my hand. I once married a Bryn Mawr girl. To a large extent they are twin experiences. Sometimes I feel as though I were a diver who had ventured a little beyond the limits of safe travel under the sea and had entered the strange zone where one is said to enjoy the rapture of the deep.”

“Well,” said Stuart, “a misspelled word is an abomination in the sight of everyone.”

“Very fine law,” said Stuart. “When I am Chairman, anybody who is mean to anybody else is going to catch it.”

“A shaft of sunlight at the end of a dark afternoon, a note of music, and the way the back of a baby’s neck smells if it’s mother keeps it tidy,” answered Henry.“Correct,” said Stuart. “Those are the important things. You forgot one thing, though. Mary Bendix, what did Henry Rackmeyer forget?”“He forgot ice cream with chocolate sauce on it,” said Mary quickly.”

“He wiped his face with his handkerchief, for he was quite warm from the exertion of being Chairman of the World. It had taken more running and leaping and sliding than he had imagined.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Sometimes a writer, like an acrobat, must try a trick that is too much for him.”

“So I told [the doctor] about my hay fever, which used to rage just in summertime but now simmers the year round, and he listened listlessly as though it were a cock and bull story; and we sat there for a few minutes and neither of us was interested in the other's nose, but after a while he poked a little swab up mine and made a smear on a glass slide and his assistant put it under the microscope and found two cells which delighted him and electrified the whole office, the cells being characteristic of a highly allergic system. The doctor's manner changed instantly and he was full of the enthusiasm of discovery and was as proud of the two little cells as though they were his own.”

“When you say something, make sure you have said it. The chances of your having said it are only fair. -E.B. White”

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

“You're terrific as far as I am concerned.”

“Life's accumulation is more discouraging than life itself, when stirred up.”

“A mistake is simply another way of doing things.”

“To achieve style, begin by affecting none.”

“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.”

“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.”

“To perceive Christmas through its wrapping becomes more difficult with every year. "The Distant Music of the Hounds," 1954”