Top 300 E.B. White Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “From three to four, he planned to stand perfectly still and think of what it was like to be alive.”

— E.B. White

102. “Too many things on my mind, said Wilbur. Well, said the goose, that’s not my trouble. I have nothing at all on my mind, but I’ve too many things under my behind.”

— E.B. White

103. “Nobody, of the hundreds of people that had visited the Fair, knew that a grey spider had played the most important part of all. No one was with her when she died.”

— E.B. White

104. “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

105. “If a man is to be obsessed by something, I suppose a boat is as good as anything, perhaps a bit better than most.”

— E.B. White

106. “We take to the breeze, we go as we please.”

— E.B. White

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

— E.B. White

108. “Liberty is never out of bounds or off limits; it spreads wherever it can capture the imagination of men.”

— E.B. White

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

— E.B. White

110. “When my wife’s Aunt Caroline was in her nineties, she lived with us, and she once remarked: ‘Remembrance is sufficient of the beauty we have seen.’ I cherish the remembrance of the beauty I have seen. I cherish the grave, compulsive word.”

— E.B. White

111. “The crickets sang in the grasses. They sang the song of summer’s ending, a sad monotonous song. “Summer is over and gone, over and gone, over and gone. Summer is dying, dying.” A little maple tree heard the cricket song and turned bright red with anxiety.”

— E.B. White

112. “The circus comes as close to being the world in microcosm as anything I know; in a way, it puts all the rest of show business in the shade.”

— E.B. White

113. “Before the seed there comes the thought of bloom.”

— E.B. White

114. “When you say something, make sure you have said it. The chances of your having said it are only fair.”

— E.B. White

115. “A SPIDER’S web is stronger than it looks. Although it is made of thin, delicate strands, the web is not easily broken. However, a web gets torn every day by the insects that kick around in it, and a spider must rebuild it when it gets full of holes.”

— E.B. White

116. “Is there anything in the universe more beautiful and protective than the simple complexity of a spider’s web?”

— E.B. White

117. “Thus I, gone forth, as spiders do, In spider’s web a truth discerning, Attach one silken strand to you For my returning.”

— E.B. White

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

— E.B. White

119. “Democracy is a request from a War Board, in the middle of a morning in the middle of a war, wanting to know what democracy is.”

— E.B. White

120. “In good time he was to discover that he was mistaken about Charlotte. Underneath her rather bold and cruel exterior, she had a kind heart, and she was to prove loyal and true to the very end.”

— E.B. White

121. “Don’t write about Man; write about a man.”

— E.B. White

122. “Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness, natives give it solidity and continuity, but the settlers give it passion.”

— E.B. White

123. “An unhatched egg is to me the greatest challenge in life.”

— E.B. White

124. “It is a miracle that New York works at all. The whole thing is implausible.”

— E.B. White

125. “A little maple tree in the swamp heard the cricket song and turned bright red with anxiety.”

— E.B. White

126. “Tonight I heard Louis’s horn. My father heard it, too. The wind was right, and I could hear the notes of taps, just as darkness fell. There is nothing in all the world I like better than the trumpet of the swan.”

— E.B. White

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

— E.B. White

128. “No matter what changes take place in the world, or in me, nothing ever seems to disturb the face of spring.”

— E.B. White

129. “Salutations; it’s just my fancy way of saying hello or good morning.”

— E.B. White

130. “Just to live in the country is a full-time job. You don’t have to do anything. The idle pursuit of making a living is pushed to one side, where it belongs, in favor of living itself, a task of such immediacy, variety, beauty, and excitement that one is powerless to resist its wild embrace.”

— E.B. White

131. “Once you begin watching spiders, you haven’t time for much else.”

— E.B. White

132. “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

133. “Wilbur didn’t want food, he wanted love.”

— E.B. White

134. “I’m really too young to go out into the world alone,” he thought as he lay down.”

— E.B. White

135. “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

136. “What do you mean, less than nothing?” replied Wilbur. “I don’t think there is any such thing as less than nothing. Nothing is absolutely the limit of nothingness. It’s the lowest you can go. It’s the end of the line. How can something be less than nothing? If there were something that was less than nothing, then nothing would not be nothing, it would be something – even though it’s just a very little bit of something. But if nothing is nothing, then nothing has nothing that is less than it is.”

— E.B. White

137. “The main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can. I rewrite a good deal to make it clear.”

— E.B. White

138. “It is quite possible that an animal has spoken to me and that I didn’t catch the remark because I wasn’t paying attention.”

— E.B. White

139. “Why did you do this for me? I never did anything for you.”

— E.B. White

140. “If a man must be obsessed by something, I suppose a boat is as good as anything, perhaps a bit better than most. A small sailing craft is not only beautiful, it is seductive and full of strange promise and the hint of trouble.”

— E.B. White

141. “Half a man’s life is devoted to what he calls improvements, yet the original had some quality which is lost in the process.”

— E.B. White

142. “The city is like poetry; it compresses all life, all races and breeds, into a small island and adds music and the accompaniment of internal engines.”

— E.B. White

143. “But real life is only one kind of life – there is also the life of the imagination.”

— E.B. White

144. “Familiarity is the thing-the sense of belonging. It grants exemption from all evil, all shabbiness.”

— E.B. White

145. “I don’t understand it, and I don’t like what I don’t understand.”

— E.B. White

146. “The whole problem is to establish communication with ones self.”

— E.B. White

147. “The quickest way to spoil a friendship is to wake somebody up in the morning before he is ready.”

— E.B. White

148. “I am often mad, but I would hate to be nothing but mad: and I think I would lose what little value I may have as a writer if I were to refuse, as a matter of principle, to accept the warming rays of the sun, and to report them, whenever, and if ever, they.”

— E.B. White

149. “Advice to young writers wo want to get ahead without any annoying delays: don’t write about Man, write about a man.”

— E.B. White

150. “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