Elwyn Brooks White (1899 – 1985) was an American writer. He was the author of several highly popular books for children, including Stuart Little (1945), Charlotte’s Web (1952), and The Trumpet of the Swan (1970). In a 2012 survey of School Library Journal readers, Charlotte’s Web came in first in their poll of the top one hundred children’s novels. In addition, he was a writer and contributing editor to The New Yorker magazine, and also a co-author of the English language style guide The Elements of Style.

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These are among White’s most widely quoted observations.

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

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

o Be obscure clearly.

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

o I don’t know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens.

o There’s no limit to how complicated things can get, on account of one thing always leading to another.

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

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

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

o 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.

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

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

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

o 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.

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

o One of the most time-consuming situations is to have an enemy.

o 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.

o 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.

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

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