Quotes by E. B. White

You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die. A spider's life can't help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that.

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.

if the world were merely seductive, that would be easy.
if the world were merely challenging, that would be no problem.
but i arise in the morning torn between a desire to change the world and a desire to enjoy the world.
this makes it very hard to plan the day.

Be obscure clearly.

I get up every morning determined to both change the world and to have one hell of a good time. Sometimes, this makes planning the day difficult.

A writer is like a bean plant - he has his day and then becomes stringy.

As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate. Hope is the thing that is left us in a bad time.

We grow tyrannical fighting tyranny. . . . The most alarming spectacle today is not the spectacle of the atomic bomb in an unfederated world, it is the spectacle of the Americans beginning to accept the device of loyalty oaths and witch hunts, beginning to call anybody they don't like a Communist.

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

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.