Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by E. B. White (American Essayist, Humorist)

E. B. White (1985–99,) fully Elwyn Brooks White, was an American essayist, author, and literary stylist, whose eloquent prose and the clarity of his rhetoric appealed to readers of all ages.

Born in Mount Vernon, New York, White graduated from Cornell 1821 and worked as a reporter and freelance writer. He joined The New Yorker in 1926 and he remained with the weekly magazine for the rest of his career. For three decades, under White’s direction, The New Yorker became a paragon of elegant and simple style in non-fiction. He also wrote a monthly column of essays about rural life for Harper’s magazine 1938–43.

White’s notable books of essays include Quo Vadimus? (1939,) One Man’s Meat (1942,) and The Points of My Compass (1962.) White is the author of the children’s classics Stuart Little (1945,) Charlotte’s Web (1952; animated film, 1973; feature film, 2006,) and The Trumpet of the Swan (1970; film, 1999; sequel, 2002.)

White is also known for his best-selling revision of William Strunk Jr’s Elements of Style, popularly known as Strunk and White (1959.)

White’s Letters were published in 1976, and a collection of his Poems and Sketches in 1981.

More: Wikipedia READ: Works by E. B. White

Heredity is a strong factor, even in architecture. Necessity first mothered invention. Now invention has little ones of her own, and they look just like grandma.
E. B. White
Topics: Architecture

Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.
E. B. White
Topics: Humor

It is at a fair that man can be drunk forever on liquor, love, or fights; at a fair that your front pocket can be picked by a trotting horse looking for sugar, and your hind pocket by a thief looking for his fortune.
E. B. White
Topics: Parties

If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.
E. B. White
Topics: Planning, Life

A candidate could easily commit political suicide if he were to come up with an unconventional thought during a presidential tour.
E. B. White
Topics: Politics, Politicians

It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.
E. B. White
Topics: Writing

A poet’s pleasure is to withhold a little of his meaning, to intensify by mystification. He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it.
E. B. White
Topics: Poets, Poetry

A man’s liberal and conservative phases seem to follow each other in a succession of waves from the time he is born. Children are radicals. Youths are conservatives, with a dash of criminal negligence. Men in their prime are liberals (as long as their digestion keeps pace with their intellect). The middle aged run to shelter: they insure their life, draft a will, accumulate mementos and occasional tables, and hope for security. And then comes old age, which repeats childhood—a time full of humors and sadness, but often full of courage and even prophecy.
E. B. White
Topics: Generations

An intelligence service is, in fact, a stupidity service
E. B. White
Topics: Intelligence

Shocking writing is like murder: the questions the jury must decide are the questions of motive and intent.
E. B. White
Topics: Vulgarity, Profanity, Swearing

I am often mad, but I would hate to be nothing but mad: and I think I would lose what little value I may have as a writer if I were to refuse, as a matter of principle, to accept the warming rays of the sun, and to report them, whenever, and if ever, they
E. B. White
Topics: Anger

Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.
E. B. White
Topics: Writing, Writers, Authors & Writing

Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion.
E. B. White
Topics: City Life, Cities

Whatever else an American believes or disbelieves about himself, he is absolutely sure he has a sense of humor
E. B. White
Topics: Americans

English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment and education—sometimes it’s sheer luck, like getting across the street.
E. B. White
Topics: Language

A man who publishes his letters becomes a nudist—nothing shields him from the world’s gaze except his bare skin. A writer, writing away, can always fix himself up to make himself more presentable, but a man who has written a letter is stuck with it for all time.
E. B. White
Topics: Letters

The most puzzling thing about TV is the steady advance of the sponsor across the line that has always separated news from promotion, entertainment from merchandising. The advertiser has assumed the role of originator, and the performer has gradually been eased into the role of peddler.
E. B. White
Topics: Television

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.
E. B. White
Topics: America

The total collapse of the public opinion polls shows that this country is in good health. A country that developed an airtight system of finding out in advance what was in people’s minds would be uninhabitable.
E. B. White
Topics: Politics

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.
E. B. White
Topics: Writers, Authors & Writing, Writing

The whole problem is to establish communication with one’s self.
E. B. White
Topics: Problems, Communication

I’m not against machines, as are some people who feel that the computer is leading us back into the jungle…I’m against machines only when the convenience they afford to some people is regarded as more important than the inconvenience they cause to all.
In short, I don’t think computers should wear the pants or make the decisions. They are deficient in humor, they are not intuitive, and they are not aware of the imponderables. The men who feed them seem to believe that everything is made out of ponderables, which isn’t the case. I read a poem once that a computer had written, but didn’t care much for it. It seemed to me I could write a better one myself, if I were to put my mind to it.
E. B. White
Topics: Computers

The so-called science of poll-taking is not a science at all but mere necromancy. People are unpredictable by nature, and although you can take a nation’s pulse, you can’t be sure that the nation hasn’t just run up a flight of stairs.
E. B. White
Topics: Politics

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.
E. B. White
Topics: Nature

There is no limit to how complicated things can get, on account of one thing always leading to another.
E. B. White
Topics: Consequences

A really companionable and indispensable dog is an accident of nature. You can’t get it by breeding for it, and you can’t buy it with money. It just happens along.
E. B. White
Topics: Dogs

Luck is not something you can mention in the presence of self-made men.
E. B. White
Topics: Luck

In middle life, the human back is spoiling for a technical knockout and will use the flimsiest excuse, even a sneeze, to fall apart.
E. B. White
Topics: Age, Aging

The complaint about modern steel furniture, modern glass houses, modern red bars and modern streamlined trains and cars is that all these objets modernize, while adequate and amusing in themselves, tend to make the people who use them look dated. It is an honest criticism. The human race has done nothing much about changing its own appearance to conform to the form and texture of its appurtenances.
E. B. White
Topics: Design

Prejudice is a great time saver. You can form opinions without having to get the facts.
E. B. White
Topics: Prejudice, Opinions

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