E. B. White

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

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

“Be obscure clearly.”

“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.”

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

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

“Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one.”

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

“Old age is a special problem for me because I've never been able to shed the mental image I have of myself - a lad of about 19.”

“The terror of the atom age is not the violence of the new power but the speed of man's adjustment to it, the speed of his acceptance.”

“The only sense that is common in the long run, is the sense of change and we all instinctively avoid it.”

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

“Prejudice is a great time saver. You can form opinions without having to get the facts.”

“Whatever else an American believes or disbelieves about himself, he is absolutely sure he has a sense of humor.”

“Luck is not something you can mention in the presence of self-made men.”

“Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.”

“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.”

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

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

“Everything in life is somewhere else, and you get there in a car.”