410 Quotes by E.B. White

Although there is no substitute for merit in writing, clarity comes closest to being one.

I was sorry for her, as I am for any who are evicted from their haunts by the younger and stronger – always a sad occasion for man or beast.

Security, for me, took a tumble not when I read that there were Communists in Hollywood but when I read your editorial in praise of loyalty testing and thought control. If a man is in health, he doesn’t need to take anybody else’s temperature to know where he is going.

It is quite possible that an animal has spoken to me and that I didn’t catch the remark because I wasn’t paying attention.

The H-bomb rather favors small nations that doesn’t as yet possess it; they feel slightly more free to jostle other nations, having discovered that a country can stick its tongue out quite far these days without provoking war, so horrible are war’s consequences.

I located America thirty-one years ago in a Model T Ford and planted my flag. I’ve tried a couple of times since to find it again, riding in faster cars and on better roads, but America is the sort of place that is discovered only once by any one man.

It was the best place to be, thought Wilbur, this warm delicious cellar, with the garrulous geese, the changing seasons, the heat of the sun, the passage of swallows, the nearness of rats, the sameness of sheep, the love of spiders, the smell of manure, and the glory of everything.

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.

In a man’s middle years there is scarcely a part of the body he would hesitate to turn over to the proper authorities.