Elwyn Brooks White, 1899 - 1985
Sitting on the beach with his dog Minnie
Born: 11 July 1899, Mount Vernon, New York
Died: 1 October 1985, North Brooklin, Maine
The youngest son of Samuel White, a piano manufacturer, White served in the army, then graduated from Cornell (BA 1921). He was called Andy at the time, Cornell tradition demands that if a male student has the surname White, he is called "Andy White" after a cofounder of the college. He was an editor of The Cornell Daily Sun and joined the Quill and Dagger society. He went to Seattle and wrote for the now-closed Post Intelligencer and the Seattle Times until returning to New York City in 1924. He worked in advertising, wrote his first story for The New Yorker in 1925, its first year, and joined the staff in 1927. He contributed to that magazine for the rest of his life, he also had a column in Harper's Magazine from 1938 to 1943. In 1929 he and James Thurber wrote a satire in response to Freudianism, Is Sex Necessary?. He wrote two popular children's titles, Stuart Little (1945) and Charlotte's Web (1952) and revisited that genre in 1970 with The Trumpet of the Swan. In 1959 he edited and updated William Strunk, Jr's "Little Book" as The Elements of Style, Strunk had been one of his professors at Cornell and this guide to writers had been out of print since 1918. In 1939 he bought a farm in Maine and gave up daily responsibility at The New Yorker. Many of his shorter pieces made light of the difficulties of a city resident facing the challenges of wayward livestock and the seasonal problems of agriculture, he died on his farm from Alzheimer disease.
Biography from Wikipedia and Greenville Public Library (Rhode Island)
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E. B. White quotes:
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- Walden is the only book I own, although there are some others unclaimed on my shelves. Every man, I think, reads one book in his life, and this one is mine. It is not the best book I ever encountered, perhaps, but it is for me the handiest, and I keep it about me in much the same way one carries a handkerchief - for relief in moments of defluxion or despair. permalink
E. B. White - The New Yorker (23 May 1953) - Interesting. An unconvincing word; avoid it as a means of introduction. Instead of announcing that what you are about to tell is interesting, make it so... Also to be avoided in introduction is the word funny. Nothing becomes funny by being labeled so. permalink
E. B. White - The Elements of Style (1959 et seq.) - Nauseous. Nauseated. The first means "sickening to contemplate"; the second means "sick at the stomach." Do not, therefore, say "I feel nauseous," unless you are sure you have that effect on others. permalink
E. B. White - The Elements of Style (1959 et seq.) - A breezy style is often the work of an egocentric, the person who imagines that everything that pops into his head is of general interest and that uninhibited prose creates high spirits and carries the day. permalink
E. B. White - The Elements of Style (1959 et seq.) - A candidate could easily commit political suicide if he were to come up with an unconventional thought during a presidential tour. permalink
E. B. White - A good farmer is nothing more nor less than a handy man with a sense of humus. permalink
E. B. White - A man who publishes his letters becomes a nudist — nothing shields him from the world's gaze except his bare skin. A writer, writing away, can always fix things up to make himself more presentable, but a man who has written a letter is stuck with it for all time. permalink
E. B. White - Letter to Corona Machemer (11 June 1975) - A man's liberal and conservative phases seem to follow each other in a succession of waves from the time he is born. Children are radicals. Youths are conservatives, with a dash of criminal negligence. Men in their prime are liberals (as long as their digestion keeps pace with their intellect). The middle aged run to shelter: they insure their life, draft a will, accumulate mementos and occasional tables, and hope for security. And then comes old age, which repeats childhood — a time full of humors and sadness, but often full of courage and even prophecy. permalink
E. B. White - A schoolchild should be taught grammar—for the same reason that a medical student should study anatomy. Having learned about the exciting mysteries of an English sentence, the child can then go forth and speak and write any damn way he pleases. permalink
E. B. White - The New Yorker - A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary part. permalink
E. B. White - "Will Strunk" The New Yorker and later the preface to The Elements of Style - 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 millions... Of all targets New York has a certain clear priority. In the mind of whatever perverted dreamer might loose the lightning, New York must hold a steady, irresistible charm. permalink
E. B. White - Here is New York (1949) - A single overstatement, wherever or however it occurs, diminishes the whole, and a carefree superlative has the power to destroy, for the reader, the object of the writer's enthusiasm. permalink
E. B. White - The Elements of Style (1959 et seq.) - A writer is like a bean plant - he has his little day, and then he gets stringy. permalink
E. B. White - A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word to paper. permalink
E. B. White - A writer's style reveals something of his spirit, his habits, his capacites, his bias.... It is the Self escaping into the open. permalink
E. B. White
Quotes found : 120 — (15 per page, this is page 1 of 8) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Next
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