E. B. White: Trending quotes

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E. B. White: 108 quotes0 likes

“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

"Some Remarks on Humor," preface to A Subtreasury of American Humor (1941)
A very similar remark is often attributed to White, but may actually be a paraphrased version of the above statement: "Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it."

“I discovered, though, that once having given a pig an enema there is no turning back, no chance of resuming one of life's more stereotyped roles.”

E. B. White

"Death of a Pig," The Atlantic Monthly (January 1948)

“Everything (he kept saying) is something it isn't. And everybody is always somewhere else.”

E. B. White

The Door http://fiction.eserver.org/short/the_door.html (1939)

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

E. B. White

Letter to Mary Virginia Parrish (29 August 1969)

“Children are game for anything. I throw them hard words, and they backhand them over the net. They love words that give them a hard time, provided they are in a context that absorbs their attention.”

E. B. White

Paris Review interview (1969)

“Charlotte's message in Charlotte's Web (1952)”

E. B. White

“The essayist … can pull on any sort of shirt, be any sort of person, according to his mood or his subject matter — philosopher, scold, jester, raconteur, confidant, pundit, devil's advocate, enthusiast…”

E. B. White

Foreword to Essays of E.B. White (1976)

“Advertisers are the interpreters of our dreams — Joseph interpreting for Pharaoh. Like the movies, they infect the routine futility of our days with purposeful adventure. Their weapons are our weaknesses: fear, ambition, illness, pride, selfishness, desire, ignorance. And these weapons must be kept as bright as a sword.”

E. B. White

"Truth in Advertising," The New Yorker (11 July 1936)

“No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky.”

E. B. White

Here is New York (1949)

“Everything in life is somewhere else, and you get there in a car.”

E. B. White

"Fro-Joy" (January 1940)
One Man's Meat (1942)

“A despot doesn't fear eloquent writers preaching freedom — he fears a drunken poet who may crack a joke that will take hold.”

E. B. White

Salt Water Farm http://books.google.com/books?id=njRHAAAAYAAJ&q=%22A+despot+doesn't+fear+eloquent+writers+preaching+freedom+he+fears+a+drunken+poet+who+may+crack+a+joke+that+will+take+hold%22&pg=PA52#v=onepage <br class="br">One Man's Meat (1942)

“New York is part of the natural world. I love the city, I love the country, and for the same reasons. The city is part of the country. When I had an apartment on East Forty-Eighth Street, my backyard during the migratory season yielded more birds than I ever saw in Maine.”

E. B. White

Paris Review interview (1969)

“Children are demanding. They are the most attentive, curious, eager, observant, sensitive, quick, and generally congenial readers on earth. They accept, almost without question, anything you present them with, as long as it is presented honestly, fearlessly, and clearly.”

E. B. White

Paris Review interview (1969)

“I believe television is going to be the test of the modern world, and that in this new opportunity to see beyond the range of our vision we shall discover either a new and unbearable disturbance of the general peace or a saving radiance in the sky. We shall stand or fall by television — of that I am quite sure.”

E. B. White

"Removal" (July 1938)
One Man's Meat (1942)

“There is a decivilizing bug somewhere at work; unconsciously persons of stern worth, by not resenting and resisting the small indignities of the times, are preparing themselves for the eventual acceptance of what they themselves know they don’t want.”

E. B. White

Harper's Magazine (October 1938); quoted in Scott Elledge, E.B. White: A Biography (New York: Norton, 1984), ch. X: Mr Tilley's Departure (p. 209)

“The future, wave or no wave, seems to me no unified dream but a mince pie, long in the baking, never quite done.”

E. B. White

A review of The Wave of the Future by Anne Morrow Lindbergh in Harpers Magazine (December 1940)
One Man's Meat (1942)

“One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy.”

E. B. White

"A Report in January" (30 January 1958), The Points of My Compass: Letters from the East, the West, the North, the South (1962); reprinted in Essays of E.B. White (1977)

“Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society — things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed.”

E. B. White

Letter to M. Nadeau (30 March 1973)

“When I get sick of what men do, I have only to walk a few steps in another direction to see what spiders do. Or what the weather does. This sustains me very well indeed.”

E. B. White

Letter to Carrie A. Wilson (1 May 1951)

“A good farmer is nothing more nor less than a handy man with a sense of humus.”

E. B. White

"The Practical Farmer" http://books.google.com/books?id=njRHAAAAYAAJ&q=%22A+good+farmer+is+nothing+more+nor+less+than+a+handy+man+with+a+sense+of+humus%22&pg=PA218#v=onepage ( October 1940 http://books.google.com/books?id=SvAvAAAAMAAJ&q=%22A+good+farmer+is+nothing+more+nor+less+than+a+handy+man+with+a+sense+of%22&pg=PA555#v=onepage) <br class="br">One Man's Meat (1942)