410 Quotes by E.B. White

A library is a good place to go when you feel bewildered or undecided, for there in a book, you may have your question answered.

Thus I, gone forth, as spiders do, In spider’s web a truth discerning, Attach one silken strand to you For my returning.

A breezy style is often the work of an egocentric, the person who imagines that everything that pops into his head is of general interest and that uninhibited prose creates high spirits and carries the day.

All we need is a meteorologist who has once been soaked to the skin without ill effect. No one can write knowingly of the weather who walks bent over on wet days.

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.

Television should be our Lyceum, our Chautauqua, our Minsky’s and our Camelot.

I believe in dreams. People should have faith in the songs poets sing.

Democrats do a lot of bellyaching about the press being preponderantly Republican, which it is. But they don’t do the one thing that could correct the situation: they don’t go into the publishing business. Democrats say they haven’t got that kind of money, but I’m afraid they haven’t got that kind of temperament or, perhaps, nerve.

Tonight I heard Louis’s horn. My father heard it, too. The wind was right, and I could hear the notes of taps, just as darkness fell. There is nothing in all the world I like better than the trumpet of the swan.