410 Quotes by E.B. White

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.

In a sense the world dies every time a writer dies, because, if he is any good, he has been a wet nurse to humanity during his entire existence and has held earth close around him, like the little obstetrical toad that goes about with a cluster of eggs attached to his legs.

You can dissect a joke just as you can a frog. But it tends to die on you.

Life’s meaning has always eluded me and I guess always will. But I love it just the same.

Almost all spiders are rather nice-looking.

All writing is communication; creative writing is communication through revelation-it is the Self-escaping into the open.

A man is not expected to love his country, lest he make an ass of himself. Yet our country, seen through the mists of smog, is curiously lovable, in somewhat the way an individual who has got himself into an unconscionable scrape seems lovable – or at least deserving of support.

Make the work interesting and the discipline will take care of itself.

The world organization debates disarmament in one room and, in the next room, moves the knights and pawns that make national arms imperative.