The voices / 94 fragments

E.B. White

Dates not recorded

Name supplied in the contributor-provided quotation collection. Basic attribution label; identity, lifetime and quotation authenticity have not been independently verified.

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Archive entries

01Undated

The main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can. I rewrite a good deal to make it clear.

E.B. White / quote

02Undated

I see nothing in space as promising as the view from a Ferris wheel.

E.B. White / quote

03Undated

By comparison with other less hectic days, the city is uncomfortable and inconvenient; but New Yorkers temperamentally do not crave comfort and convenience- if they did they would live elsewhere.

E.B. White / quote

04Undated

The sea answers all questions, and always in the same way; for when you read in the papers the interminable discussions and the bickering and the prognostications and the turmoil, the disagreements and the fateful decisions and agreements and the plans and the programs and the threats and the counter threats, then you close your eyes and the sea dispatches one more big roller in the unbroken line since the beginning of the world and it combs and breaks and returns foaming and saying: "So soon?" E. B. White "On A Florida Key

E.B. White / quote

05Undated

It can destroy an individual, or it can fulfill him, depending a good deal on luck. No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky.

E.B. White / quote

06Undated

At this season of the year, darkness is a more insistent thing than cold. The days are short as any dream.

E.B. White / quote

07Undated

Walden is the report of a man torn by two powerful and opposing drives – the desire to enjoy the world and the urge to set the world straight.

E.B. White / quote

08Undated

It is deeply satisfying to win a prize in front of a lot of people.

E.B. White / quote

09Undated

Early summer days are a jubilee time for birds. In the fields, around the house, in the barn, in the woods, in the swamp - everywhere love and songs and nests and eggs.

E.B. White / quote

10Undated

new york provides not only a continuing excitation but also a spectacle that is continuing.

E.B. White / quote

11Undated

The city is like poetry; it compresses all life, all races and breeds, into a small island and adds music and the accompaniment of internal engines.

E.B. White / quote

12Undated

New York is to the nation what the white church spire is to the village - the visible symbol of aspiration and faith, the white plume saying the way is up

E.B. White / quote

13Undated

New York is the concentrate of art and commerce and sport and religion and entertainment and finance, bringing to a single compact arena the gladiator, the evangelist, the promoter, the actor, the trader and the merchant. No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky.

E.B. White / quote

14Undated

I'm really too young to go out into the world alone," he thought as he lay down

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15Undated

One of the most interesting accomplishments of the film community, it seems to me, is that it has made real for America the exquisite beauty of incompatibility. Divorce among the gods possesses the sweet, holy sadness that has long been associated with marriage among the mortals. There is something infinitely tender about the inability of an actor to get along with an actress. When it is all over, and the decree is final, the two are even more attentive to each other, are seen oftener together, than ever before.

E.B. White / quote

16Undated

Besides, my life is a catastrophe. It's a catastrophe to be without a voice.

E.B. White / quote

17Undated

Reading is the work of the alert mind is demanding and under ideal conditions produces finally a sort of ecstasy. This gives the experience of reading a sublimity and power unequalled by any other form of communication.

E.B. White / quote

18Undated

His words leap across rivers and mountains but his thoughts are still only six inches long.

E.B. White / quote

19Undated

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

E.B. White / quote

20Undated

Humour plays close to the big hot fire which is the truth and the reader feels the heat.

E.B. White / quote

21Undated

Humour can be dissected as a frog can but the thing dies in the process.

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22Undated

Commuter - One who spends his life in riding to and from his wife a man who shaves and takes a train and then rides back to shave again.

E.B. White / quote

23Undated

A poet dares to be just so clear and no clearer he approaches lucid ground warily like a mariner who is determined not to scrape his bottom on anything solid. 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. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring.

E.B. White / quote

24Undated

If the world were merely seductive that would be easy. If it were merely challenging that would be no problem. But I rise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savour) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.

E.B. White / quote