410 Quotes by 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.

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

But what a gamble friendship is.

I wanted no interruption in the regularity of feeding, the steadiness of growth, the even succession of days. I wanted no interruption, wanted no oil, no deviation.

I distrust the slightest hint of a standard for political rectitude, knowing that it will open the way for persons in authority to set arbitrary standards of human behavior.

I hope that Belief never is made to appear mandatory.

When a man hangs from a tree it doesn’t spell justice unless he helped write the law that hanged him.

The rat had no morals, no conscience, no scruples, no consideration, no decency, no milk of rodent kindness, no compunctions, no higher feeling, no friendliness, no anything.

The value of the liberal in the republic is not that he is logical but that he is inquisitive.