E. B. White

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

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