Can I have a pig, too, Pop?’ asked Avery. ‘No, I only distribute pigs to early risers,’ said Mr Arable. ‘Fern was up at daylight, trying to rid the world of injustice. As a result, she now has a pig. A small one, to be sure, but nevertheless a pig. It just shows what can happen if a person gets out of bed promptly.

— E.B. White

E.B. White Quotes

This theme interests me because I believe, with the author, that security declines as security machinery expands.

— E.B. White

I distrust the slightest hint of a standard for political rectitude, knowing that it will open the way for persons in authority to set arbitrary standards of human behavior.

— E.B. White

I got a letter from a lightning rod company this morning trying to out the fear of God in me, but with small success. Lightning seems to have lost its menace. Compared to what is going on on earth today, heaven’s firebrands are penny fireworks with wet fuses.

— E.B. White

The doctor said the wound was superficial. The old cob didn’t know what “superficial” meant, but it sounded serious.

— E.B. White

Where I would like to discover facts, I find fancy. Where I would like to learn what I did, I learn only what I was thinking. They are loaded with opinion, moral thoughts, quick evaluations, youthful hopes and cares and sorrows. Occasionally they manage to report something in exquisite honesty and accuracy. That is why I have refrained from burning them.

— E.B. White

Perhaps success in the future will depend partly on our ability to generate cheap power, but I think it will depend to a greater extent on our ability to resist a technological formula that is sterile: peas without pageantry, corn without coon, knowledge without wisdom, kitchens without a warm stove. There is more to these rocks than uranium; there is the lichen on the rock, the smell of the fern whose feet are upon the rock, the view from the rock. Last.

— E.B. White

I hope that Belief never is made to appear mandatory.

— E.B. White

I was sorry for her, as I am for any who are evicted from their haunts by the younger and stronger – always a sad occasion for man or beast.

— E.B. White

And when your stomach is empty and your mind is full, it’s always hard to sleep.

— E.B. White

But what a gamble friendship is.

— E.B. White

Any husband who loses interest in the drama of family life, as it unfolds, isn’t worth his salt.

— E.B. White

Your whole duty as a writer is to please and satisfy yourself, and the true writer always plays to an audience of one. Start sniffing the air, or glancing at the Trend Machine, and you are as good as dead, although you may make a nice living.

— E.B. White

Everything gets taken over by big business, I don’t care what line you’re in.

— E.B. White

The value of the liberal in the republic is not that he is logical but that he is inquisitive.

— E.B. White

As for business, we agree that it is a hard, cold-blooded game. Survival of the fittest. Dog eat dog. The fact that about eighty-five per cent of the dogs have recently been eaten by the other dogs perhaps explains what long ago we noticed about business: that it had a strong smell of boloney. If dog continues to eat dog, there will be only one dog left, and he will be sick to his stomach.

— E.B. White

All writing slants the way a writer leans, and no man is born perpendicular, although many men are born upright.

— E.B. White

I can still feel my old Ford nuzzling me at the curb, as though looking for an apple in my pocket.

— E.B. White

Every day was a happy day, and every night was peaceful.

— E.B. White

When I am composed I feel no need of affiliating myself with anybody. There is a lot of the cat in me, and cats are not joiners.

— E.B. White

All writing is communication; creative writing is communication through revelation – it is the Self escaping into the open.

— E.B.White
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