E. B. White

Whatever else an American believes or disbelieves about himself, he is absolutely sure he has a sense of humor.

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.

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

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

The world organization debates disarmament in one room and, in the next room, moves the knights and pawns that make national arms imperative.

Old age is a special problem for me because I’ve never been able to shed the mental image I have of myself – a lad of about 19.

English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment and education – sometimes it’s sheer luck, like getting across the street.

Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.

The critic leaves at curtain fall To find, in starting to review it, He scarcely saw the play at all For starting to review it.

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.

To perceive Christmas through its wrappings becomes more difficult with every year.

When I was a child people simply looked about them and were moderately happy; today they peer beyond the seven seas, bury themselves waist deep in tidings, and by and large what they see and hear makes them unutterably sad.

Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one.

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.

We should all do what, in the long run, gives us joy, even if it is only picking grapes or sorting the laundry.

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

Writing is hard work and bad for the health.

I can only assume that your editorial writer tripped over the First Amendment and thought it was the office cat.

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

The only sense that is common in the long run, is the sense of change and we all instinctively avoid it.

I don’t know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens.

Be obscure clearly.

Commas in The New Yorker fall with the precision of knives in a circus act, outlining the victim.

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

Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.

There is nothing more likely to start disagreement among people or countries than an agreement.

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.

The trouble with the profit system has always been that it was highly unprofitable to most people.

Prejudice is a great time saver. You can form opinions without having to get the facts.

It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.

There’s no limit to how complicated things can get, on account of one thing always leading to another.

A writer is like a bean plant – he has his little day, and then gets stringy.

The world is full of people who have never, since childhood, met an open doorway with an open mind.

The time not to become a father is eighteen years before a war.

Luck is not something you can mention in the presence of self-made men.

It is easier for a man to be loyal to his club than to his planet; the bylaws are shorter, and he is personally acquainted with the other members.