Quote of the Day (E.B. White, on a Library, ‘A Good Place To Go When You Feel Unhappy’)

“A library is a good place to go when you feel unhappy, for there, in a book, you may find encouragement and comfort. A library is a good place to go when you feel bewildered or undecided, for there, in a book, you may have your question answered. Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people—people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book." — American essayist and children’s book author E.B. White (1899-1985), “Letter to the Children of Troy” (MI), Apr. 14, 1971, in Letters of Note blog

Quote of the Day (E.B. White, on Democracy, ‘An Idea Which Hasn't Been Disproved Yet’)

“Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right, more than half of the time. It is the feeling of privacy in the voting booths; the feeling of communion in the libraries; the feeling of vitality everywhere. Democracy is the letter to the editor. Democracy is the score at the beginning of the ninth. It is an idea which hasn't been disproved yet; a song, the words of which have not gone bad.”—American essayist and children’s book author E.B. White (1899-1985), On Democracy (2019)

Thirty-five years ago today, E.B. White, a writer and editor who heavily influenced the early New Yorker Magazine, passed away. You can sense his civilized, urbane voice from the quote above. That same tone was sadly missing at Tuesday night’s Presidential debate.

In another month, we are going to see whether America’s progress towards democracy will be disrupted, or even destroyed. The warning of Benjamin Franklin as he left the Constitutional Convention is as prophetic as White’s is hopeful. Asked about the form of the new government by a group of citizens, he supposedly replied, “a republic—if you can keep it.”

Quote of the Day (E.B. White, on Gearing Up to Write)

“When I start to write, my mind is apt to race, like a clock from which the pendulum has been removed.” —Essayist and children's book author E.B. White (1899-1985), “The Art of the Essay No. 1” (interview by George Plimpton and Frank H. Crowther), The Paris Review, Fall 1969

Quote of the Day (E. B. White, on Dissecting Humor)

“Humor can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.”— Essayist E. B. White, Preface to A Subtreasury of American Humor, edited by E. B. White and Katherine S. White (1941)

Quote of the Day (E.B. White, on Self-Made Men)

“Luck is not something you can mention in the presence of self-made men.” —E.B. White, One Man’s Meat (1942)

Quote of the Day (E.B. White, on ‘The Miracle of Christmas’)

“The miracle of Christmas is that, like the distant and very musical voice of the hound, it penetrates finally and becomes heard in the heart—over so many years, through so many cheap curtain-raisers. It is not destroyed even by all the arts and craftiness of the destroyers, having an essential simplicity that is everlasting and triumphant, at the end of confusion.”—E.B. White, “Comment,” The New Yorker, December 24, 1949 issue, in Christmas at The New Yorker: Stories, Poems, Humor, and Art (2004)

Quote of the Day (E.B. White, on the ‘Trouble With the Profit System’)

“The trouble with the profit system has always been that it was highly unprofitable to most people.” —E.B. White, One Man’s Meat (1942)

Quote of the Day (E.B. White on the Writer’s Duty)

"A writer should concern himself with whatever absorbs his fancy, stirs his heart, and unlimbers his typewriter. I feel no obligation to deal with politics. I do feel a responsibility to society because of going into print: a writer has the duty to be good, not lousy; true, not false; lively, not dull; accurate, not full of error. He should tend to lift people up, not lower them down. Writers do not merely reflect and interpret life, they inform and shape life.”—E.B. White quoted in The Writer’s Chapbook: A Compendium of Fact, Opinion, Wit, and Advice From the Twentieth Century’s Preeminent Writers, edited by George Plimpton (1999)

(Thanks to my friend Holly for the inspiration.)