{"author":"E.B. White","author_id":"E.B.+White","total_quotes":63,"quotes":[{"text":"It is quite obvious that the human race has made a queer mess of life on this planet. But as a people we probably harbor seeds of goodness that have lain for a long time waiting to sprout when conditions are right. Man's curiosity, his relentlessness, his inventiveness, his ingenuity have led him into deep trouble. We can only hope that these same traits will enable him to claw his way out.","author":"E.B. White","tags":["hope-for-the-future","mankind"],"id":11883,"author_id":"E.B.+White"},{"text":"The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last for ever. Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year - the days when summer is changing into autumn - the crickets spread the rumour of sadness and change.","author":"E.B. White","tags":["sadness","seasons","summer"],"id":15843,"author_id":"E.B.+White"},{"text":"The best writing is rewriting.","author":"E.B. White","tags":["writing"],"id":21872,"author_id":"E.B.+White"},{"text":"Walden is the report of a man torn by two powerful and opposing drives – the desire to enjoy the world and the urge to set the world straight.","author":"E.B. White","tags":["contentment","ministry"],"id":30211,"author_id":"E.B.+White"},{"text":"There is nothing so expensive, really, as a big, well-developed, full-bodied preconception.","author":"E.B. White","tags":["assumptions","life","living","preconceptions"],"id":53606,"author_id":"E.B.+White"},{"text":"Tonight I heard Louis's horn. My father heard it, too. The wind was right, and I could hear the notes of taps, just as darkness fell. There is nothing in all the world I like better than the trumpet of the swan.","author":"E.B. White","tags":["music","sleep","swans","trumpets","twilight"],"id":70528,"author_id":"E.B.+White"},{"text":"...Surely the Board knows what democracy is. It is the line that forms on the right. It is the don’t in don’t shove. It is the hole in the stuffed shirt through which the sawdust slowly trickles; it is the dent in the high hat. Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half the peopleare right more than half 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 a 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. It’s the mustard on the hot dog and the cream in the rationed coffee.","author":"E.B. White","tags":["1943","democracy","essays","new-yorker","war-board"],"id":73155,"author_id":"E.B.+White"},{"text":"The critic leaves at curtain fall To find, in starting to review it, He scarcely saw the play at all For starting to review it.","author":"E.B. White","tags":["critic","play"],"id":76117,"author_id":"E.B.+White"},{"text":"The city is like poetry; it compresses all life, all races and breeds, into a small island and adds music and the accompaniment of internal engines.","author":"E.B. White","tags":["new-york-city"],"id":83256,"author_id":"E.B.+White"},{"text":"At this season of the year, darkness is a more insistent thing than cold. The days are short as any dream.","author":"E.B. White","tags":["cozy","dreamy","winter"],"id":87835,"author_id":"E.B.+White"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":63,"pages":7,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}