Elwyn Brooks White quotes

 quotes - 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.

“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.”

— Elwyn Brooks White

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

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

— Elwyn Brooks White

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

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

— Elwyn Brooks White

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

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

— Elwyn Brooks White

“Be obscure clearly.”

— Elwyn Brooks White

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

— Elwyn Brooks White

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

— Elwyn Brooks White

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

— Elwyn Brooks White

“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.”

— Elwyn Brooks White

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

— Elwyn Brooks White

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

— Elwyn Brooks White

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

— Elwyn Brooks White

“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.”

— Elwyn Brooks White

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

— Elwyn Brooks White

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

— Elwyn Brooks White

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

— Elwyn Brooks White

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

— Elwyn Brooks White

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

— Elwyn Brooks White

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

— Elwyn Brooks White

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

— Elwyn Brooks White

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

— Elwyn Brooks White

“I don't know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens.”

— Elwyn Brooks White

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

— Elwyn Brooks White

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

— Elwyn Brooks White

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

— Elwyn Brooks White

“Writing is hard work and bad for the health.”

— Elwyn Brooks White

“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.”

— Elwyn Brooks White

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

— Elwyn Brooks White

“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.”

— Elwyn Brooks White

“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.”

— Elwyn Brooks White