Geese are friends to no one, they bad mouth everybody and everything. But they are companionable once you get used to their ingratitude and false accusations. E. B. White More Quotes by E. B. White More Quotes From E. B. White Habitually creative people are prepared to be lucky. E. B. White luckycreativepeople Children hold spring so tightly in their brown fists-just as grownups, who are less sure of it, hold it in their hearts. E. B. White heartspringchildren Liberty is never out of bounds or off limits; it spreads wherever it can capture the imagination of men. E. B. White libertyimaginationmen Much of our adult morality, in books and out of them, has a stuffiness unworthy of childhood. Our grown-up conclusions often rest on perilously soft bottom. E. B. White childhoodadultsbook The H-bomb rather favors small nations that doesn't as yet possess it; they feel slightly more free to jostle other nations, having discovered that a country can stick its tongue out quite far these days without provoking war, so horrible are war's consequences. E. B. White bombswarcountry The world likes humor, but it treats it patronizingly. It decorates its serious artists with laurel, and its wags with Brussels sprouts. E. B. White humorartistworld In middle life, the human back is spoiling for a technical knockout and will use the flimsiest excuse, even a sneeze, to fall apart. E. B. White useagefall Familiarity is the thing-the sense of belonging. It grants exemption from all evil, all shabbiness. E. B. White exemptiongrantsevil A man's liberal and conservative phases seem to follow each other in a succession of waves from the time he is born. Children are radicals. Youths are conservatives, with a dash of criminal negligence. Men in their prime are liberals (as long as their digestion keeps pace with their intellect). The middle aged run to shelter: they insure their life, draft a will, accumulate mementos and occasional tables, and hope for security. And then comes old age, which repeats childhood - a time full of humors and sadness, but often full of courage and even prophecy. E. B. White sadnessrunningchildren A man must have something to cling to. Without that he is as a pea vine sprawling in search of a trellis.... I was all asprawl, clinging to Beauty, which is a very restless trellis. E. B. White vineswisemen Television hangs on the questionable theory that whatever happens anywhere should be sensed everywhere. If everyone is going to be able to see everything, in the long run all sights may lose whatever rarity value they once possessed, and it may well turn out that people, being able to see and hear practically everything, will be specially interested in almost nothing. E. B. White sightrunninglong I believe... that security declines as security machinery expands. E. B. White declinesocietybelieve A “fraternity†is the antithesis offraternity. The first (that is, the order or organization) is predicated on the idea of exclusion; the second (that is, the abstract thing) is based on a feeling of total equality. E. B. White perspectivefeelingsideas I seldom went to bed before two or three o'clock in the morning, on the theory that if anything of interest were to happen to a young man it would almost certainly happen late at night. E. B. White morningmennight Humor is like a frog. You can dissect it to see how it works, but by then, it's dead. E. B. White frogs I guess I remembered clearest of all the early mornings, when the lake was cool and motionless, remembered how the bedroom smelled of the lumber it was made of and of the wet woods whose scent entered through the screen. E. B. White scentlakesmorning My prose style at this time was a stomach-twisting blend of the Bible, Carl Sandburg, H.L. Mencken, Jeffrey Farnol, Christopher Morley, Samuel Pepys, and Franklin Pierce Adams imitating Samuel Pepys. I was quite apt to throw in a "bless the mark" at any spot, and to begin a sentence with "Lord" comma. E. B. White franklinstylewriting Don Marquis came down after a month on the wagon, ambled over to the bar, and announced, 'I've conquered that goddamn willpower of mine. Gimme a double Scotch. E. B. White barsscotchalcohol Why is it, do you suppose, that an Englishman is unhappy until he has explained America? E. B. White englishmenunhappyamerica Dentistry is more impressive in town-what the rural man calls cleaning the teeth is called "prophylaxis" in New York. E. B. White teethnew-yorkmen
