E. B. White on humor

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

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

I wake each morning torn between the desire to improve the world and the desire to enjoy it. It makes it hard to plan the day.

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

George Bernard Shaw1856–1950The Doctor’s Dilemma (1911), Act V

• Life & Death

Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our irritation and resentments slip away, and a sunny spirit takes their place.

Mark Twain1835–1910“What Paul Bourget Thinks of Us?” (1897)

You can turn painful situations around through laughter. If you can find humor in anything, even poverty, you can survive it.

Bill Cosbyborn 1937