No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky.
E. B. WHITE, "Here Is New York", Holiday
It is deeply satisfying to win a prize in front of a lot of people.
E. B. WHITE, Charlotte's Web
The subtlest change in New York is something people don't speak much about but that is in everyone's mind. The city, for the first time in its long history, is destructible. A single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground passages into lethal chambers, cremate the millions. The intimation of mortality is part of New York now: in the sounds of jets overhead, in the black headlines of the latest edition. All dwellers in cities must dwell with the stubborn fact of annihilation; in New York the fact is somewhat more concentrated because of the concentration of the city itself and because, of all targets, New York has a certain clear priority. In the mind of whatever perverted dreamer who might loose the lightning, New York must hold a steady, irresistible charm.
E. B. WHITE, "Here Is New York", Holiday
Never hurry and never worry!
E. B. WHITE, Charlotte's Web
Nuclear energy and foreign policy cannot coexist on the planet. The more deep the secret, the greater the determination of every nation to discover and exploit it. Nuclear energy insists on global government, on law, on order, and on the willingness of the community to take the responsibility for the acts of the individual.
E. B. WHITE, The Wild Flag, August 19, 1945
If a man is in health, he doesn't need to take anybody else's temperature to know where he is going.
E. B. WHITE, letter to the New York Herald Tribune, November 29, 1947
New York is the concentrate of art and commerce and sport and religion and entertainment and finance, bringing to a single compact arena the gladiator, the evangelist, the promoter, the actor, the trader and the merchant. It carries on its lapel the unexpungeable odor of the long past, so that no matter where you sit in New York you feel the vibrations of great times and tall deeds, of queer people and events and undertakings.
E. B. WHITE, Here is New York
A good farmer is nothing more nor less than a handy man with a sense of humus.
E. B. WHITE, "The Practical Farmer", One Man's Meat, August 1940
Humor can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the purely scientific mind.
E. B. WHITE, "The Preaching Humorist", The Saturday Review of Literature, October 18, 1941
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half the time.
