E. B. White Quotes

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 



Prejudice is a great time saver. You can form opinions without having to get the facts.
E. B. White 



Be obscure clearly.
E. B. White  


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


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


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


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  


The world is full of people who have never, since childhood, met an open doorway with an open mind.
E. B. White 


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


We should all do what, in the long run, gives us joy, even if it is only picking grapes or sorting the laundry.
E. B. White  


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.
E. B. White 


Commas in The New Yorker fall with the precision of knives in a circus act, outlining the victim.
E. B. White  


A good farmer is nothing more nor less than a handy man with a sense of humus.
E. B. White  


To perceive Christmas through its wrappings becomes more difficult with every year.
E. B. White 


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


I see nothing in space as promising as the view from a Ferris wheel.
E. B. White 


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


One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy.
E. B. White  


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


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


Luck is not something you can mention in the presence of self-made men.
E. B. White 


The trouble with the profit system has always been that it was highly unprofitable to most people.
E. B. White  


I don't know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens.
E. B. White  



Writing is hard work and bad for the health.
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