E. B. White

More from E. B. White

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

  “Some Remarks on Humor,” preface to A Subtreasury of American Humor (1941)

  • Humor

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

  The New Yorker (3 July 1943); reprinted as “Democracy” in The Wild Flag (1946)

  • Democracy

• Advice to young writers who want to get ahead without annoying delays: don’t write about Man, write about ‘a’ man.

  • Writing

All 21 quotes from E. B. White

Popular quotes

• No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent.

  John Donne1572–1631No Man Is an Island (1624), Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624), Meditation 17In context

• I came, I saw, I conquered.

  Julius Caesar100–44 BCInscription on the triumphal wagon reported in The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius, as translated by Robert Graves (1957).

  • Success

• The unexamined life is not worth living.

  Socrates470–399 BCThe Apology of Socrates (399 BC)

  • Philosophy