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
The essayist is a self-liberated man, sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him, is of general interest. He is a fellow who thoroughly enjoys his work, just as people who take bird walks enjoy theirs. Each excursion of the essayist, each new attempt, differs from the last and takes him into new country. This delights him. Only a person who is congenitally self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays. There are as many kinds of essays as there are human attitudes or poses, as many essay flavors as there are Howard Johnson ice creams. The essayist arises in the morning and, if he has work to do, selects his garb from an unusually extensive wardrobe: he can pull on any sort of shirt, be any sort of person
—E. B. White
Topics: Opinion
A “fraternity” is the antithesis of fraternity. The first… is predicated on the idea of exclusion; the second (that is, the abstract thing) is based on a feeling of total equality.
—E. B. White
Topics: Perspective
I get up every morning determined both to change the world and to have one hell of a good time. Sometimes, this makes planning the day difficult.
—E. B. White
Topics: Good, Change, Action, Time Management
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.
—E. B. White
Topics: Humor
Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion.
—E. B. White
Topics: Cities, City Life
The living language is like a cowpath: it is the creation of the cows themselves, who, having created it, follow it or depart from it according to their whims or their needs. From daily use, the path undergoes change. A cow is under no obligation to stay
—E. B. White
Topics: Language
The whole problem is to establish communication with one’s self.
—E. B. White
Topics: Problems, Communication
Commuter—one who spends his life in riding to and from his wife; And man who shaves and takes a train, and then rides back to shave again.
—E. B. White
Topics: Cities, City Life
There is no limit to how complicated things can get, on account of one thing always leading to another.
—E. B. White
Topics: Consequences
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
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
It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.
—E. B. White
Topics: Writing
There is nothing more likely to start disagreement among people or countries than an agreement.
—E. B. White
Topics: Agreement
Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.
—E. B. White
Topics: Writing, Writers, Authors & Writing
Deathlessness should be arrived at in a… haphazard fashion. Loving fame as much as any man, we shall carve our initials in the shell of a tortoise and turn him loose in a peat bog.
—E. B. White
Topics: Immortality
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
Life is always a rich and steady time when you are waiting for something to happen or to hatch
—E. B. White
Topics: Pregnancy
All we need is a meteorologist who has once been soaked to the skin without ill effect. No one can write knowingly of the weather who walks bent over on wet days.
—E. B. White
Topics: Weather
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: Politicians, Politics
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: Poetry, Poets
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
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
Television hangs on the questionable theory that whatever happens anywhere should be sensed everywhere. If everyone is going to be able to see everything, in the long run all sights may lose whatever rarity value they once possessed, and it may well turn out that people, being able to see and hear practically everything, will be specially interested in almost nothing.
—E. B. White
Topics: Television
Everything in life is somewhere else, and you get there in a car.
—E. B. White
Topics: Driving
A right is a responsibility in reverse.
—E. B. White
Prejudice is a great time saver. You can form opinions without having to get the facts.
—E. B. White
Topics: Prejudice, Opinions
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
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
Writing is hard work and bad for the health.
—E. B. White
Topics: Writing
The terror of the atom age is not the violence of the new power but the speed of man’s adjustment to it—the speed of his acceptance.
—E. B. White
Topics: Acceptance, War
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