Quote: Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time. [E(lwyn) B(rooks) White]
Quote: The whole problem is to establish communication with ones self. [E(lwyn) B(rooks) White]
Quote: Commuter -- one who spends his life in riding to and from his wife; And man who shaves and takes a train, and then rides back to shave again. [E(lwyn) B(rooks) White]
Quote: Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion. [E(lwyn) B(rooks) White]
Quote: The complaint about modern steel furniture, modern glass houses, modern red bars and modern streamlined trains and cars is that all these objets modernize, while adequate and amusing in themselves, tend to make the people who use them look dated. It is an honest criticism. The human race has done nothing much about changing its own appearance to conform to the form and texture of its appurtenances. [E(lwyn) B(rooks) White]
Quote: A good farmer is nothing more nor less than a handy man with a sense of humus. [E(lwyn) B(rooks) White]
Quote: You have been my friends, replied Charlotte, that in itself is a tremendous thing... [E(lwyn) B(rooks) White]
Quote: Commas in The New Yorker fall with the precision of knives in a circus act, outlining the victim. [E(lwyn) B(rooks) White]
Quote: It is at a fair that man can be drunk forever on liquor, love, or fights; at a fair that your front pocket can be picked by a trotting horse looking for sugar, and your hind pocket by a thief looking for his fortune. [E(lwyn) B(rooks) White]
Quote: Deathlessness should be arrived at in a... haphazard fashion. Loving fame as much as any man, we shall carve our initials in the shell of a tortoise and turn him loose in a peat bog. [E(lwyn) B(rooks) White]
Quote: The living language is like a cowpath: it is the creation of the cows themselves, who, having created it, follow it or depart from it according to their whims or their needs. From daily use, the path undergoes change. A cow is under no obligation to stay [E(lwyn) B(rooks) White]
Quote: Americans are willing to go to enormous trouble and expense defending their principles with arms, very little trouble and expense advocating them with words. Temperamentally we are ready to die for certain principles (or, in the case of overripe adults, send youngsters to die), but we show little inclination to advertise the reasons for dying. [E(lwyn) B(rooks) White]
Quote: A candidate could easily commit political suicide if he were to come up with an unconventional thought during a presidential tour. [E(lwyn) B(rooks) White]
Quote: Shocking writing is like murder: the questions the jury must decide are the questions of motive and intent. [E(lwyn) B(rooks) White]
Quote: The most puzzling thing about TV is the steady advance of the sponsor across the line that has always separated news from promotion, entertainment from merchandising. The advertiser has assumed the role of originator, and the performer has gradually been eased into the role of peddler. [E(lwyn) B(rooks) White]
Quote: 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(lwyn) B(rooks) White]
Quote: Heredity is a strong factor, even in architecture. Necessity first mothered invention. Now invention has little ones of her own, and they look just like grandma. [E(lwyn) B(rooks) White]
Quote: Everything in life is somewhere else, and you get there in a car. [E(lwyn) B(rooks) White]
Quote: There is nothing more likely to start disagreement among people or countries than an agreement. [E(lwyn) B(rooks) White]
Quote: Advertisers are the interpreters of our dreams -- Joseph interpreting for Pharaoh. Like the movies, they infect the routine futility of our days with purposeful adventure. Their weapons are our weaknesses: fear, ambition, illness, pride, selfishness, desire, ignorance. And these weapons must be kept as bright as a sword. [E(lwyn) B(rooks) White]
Quote: 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(lwyn) B(rooks) White]
Quote: A man is not expected to love his country, lest he make an ass of himself. Yet our country, seen through the mists of smog, is curiously lovable, in somewhat the way an individual who has got himself into an unconscionable scrape seems lovable -- or at least deserving of support. [E(lwyn) B(rooks) White]
Quote: 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(lwyn) B(rooks) White]
Quote: Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar. [E(lwyn) B(rooks) White]
Quote: In a sense the world dies every time a writer dies, because, if he is any good, he has been a wet nurse to humanity during his entire existence and has held earth close around him, like the little obstetrical toad that goes about with a cluster of eggs attached to his legs. [E(lwyn) B(rooks) White]