E. B. White

Novelist, Author

1899 – 1985

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Who was E. B. White?

Elwyn Brooks "E. B." White, was an American writer. He was a contributor to The New Yorker magazine and a co-author of the English language style guide, The Elements of Style, which is commonly known as "Strunk & White". He also wrote books for children, including Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little and The Trumpet of the Swan. Charlotte's Web was voted the top children's novel in a 2012 survey of School Library Journal readers, not for the first time.

Famous Quotes:

  • Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion.
  • Everything in life is somewhere else, and you get there in a car.
  • In middle life, the human back is spoiling for a technical knockout and will use the flimsiest excuse, even a sneeze, to fall apart.
  • 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.
  • A poet's pleasure is to withhold a little of his meaning, to intensify by mystification. He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it.
  • The total collapse of the public opinion polls shows that this country is in good health. A country that developed an airtight system of finding out in advance what was in people's minds would be uninhabitable.
  • The liberal holds that he is true to the republic when he is true to himself. (It may not be as cozy an attitude as it sounds.) He greets with enthusiasm the fact of the journey, as a dog greets a man's invitation to take a walk. And he acts in the dog's way too, swinging wide, racing ahead, doubling back, covering many miles of territory that the man never traverses, all in the spirit of inquiry and the zest for truth. He leaves a crazy trail, but he ranges far beyond the genteel old party he walks with and he is usually in a better position to discover a skunk.
  • You have been my friends, replied Charlotte, that in itself is a tremendous thing...
  • 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.
  • Shocking writing is like murder: the questions the jury must decide are the questions of motive and intent.

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Born
Jul 11, 1899
Mount Vernon
Also known as
  • Elwyn Brooks White
  • E.B. White
  • Andy
  • Elwyn Brooks "E. B." White
Parents
Spouses
Children
Nationality
  • United States of America
Profession
Education
  • Cornell University
Lived in
  • Maine
Died
Oct 1, 1985
Brooklin
Resting place
Brooklin Cemetery

Submitted
on July 23, 2013

Citation

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