410 Quotes by E.B. White

The thing we find hard to understand about supremacy is why, if it is right for America, it isn't right for every other nation.

Martinis . . . have a muting effect on the constant ringing in my ears, and as five o'clock approaches, my thoughts turn toward the elixir of quietude. Gin stops the bell from tolling.

A school child 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.

Familiarity is the thing -- the sense of belonging. It grants exemption from all evil, all shabbiness

In photography, the goal seems to be to prove beyond a doubt that the cameraman, in his great moment of creation, was either hanging by his heels from the rafters or was wedged under the floor with his lens at a knothole.

Nuclear energy and foreign policy cannot coexist on the planet. The more deep the secret, the greater the determination of every nation to discover and exploit it. Nuclear energy insists on global government, on law, on order, and on the willingness of the community to take the responsibility for the acts of the individual.

The sound of the sea is the most time-effacing sound there is. The centuries reroll in a cloud and the earth becomes green again when you listen, with eyes shut, to the sea.

On Monday, man may be hysterical with doom, and on Tuesday you will find him opening the Doomsday Bar & Grill and settling down for another thousand years of terrifying queerness.

When we slid the body into the grave, we both were shaken to the core. The loss we felt was not the loss of ham but the loss of pig.