Elwyn Brooks White quotes

“English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment and education - sometimes it's sheer luck, like getting across the street.”

— Elwyn Brooks White

“The world organization debates disarmament in one room and, in the next room, moves the knights and pawns that make national arms imperative.”

— Elwyn Brooks White

“The time not to become a father is eighteen years before a war.”

— Elwyn Brooks White

“All we need is a meteorologist who has once been soaked to the skin without ill effect. No one can write knowingly of the weather who walks bent over on wet days.”

— Elwyn Brooks White

“A writer is like a bean plant - he has his little day, and then gets stringy.”

— Elwyn Brooks White

“I have yet to see a piece of writing, political or non-political, that doesn't have a slant. All writing slants the way a writer leans, and no man is born perpendicular, although many men are born upright.”

— Elwyn Brooks White

“When I was a child people simply looked about them and were moderately happy; today they peer beyond the seven seas, bury themselves waist deep in tidings, and by and large what they see and hear makes them unutterably sad.”

— Elwyn Brooks White