Benjamin > Benjamin's Quotes

“If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But 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.”
― E.B. White

“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."

[Letters of Note; Troy (MI, USA) Public Library, 1971]”
― E.B. White

“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.”
― E. B. White, Letters of E. B. White

“Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.”
― E.B. White

“I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts, and beer.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“There are a thousand small honest breweries in this country that because they have been too poor and localized to compete with the big boys have been forced to close, or else operate under famous names while they turn out yeast, or hops, or some other important but unnamed ingredient of the main company's beer. Now, with the trains full of soldiers and supplies rather than pale ale, perhaps people far from the great breweries will turn again to their local beer factories and discover, as their fathers did thirty years ago, that a beer carried quietly three miles is better than one shot across three thousand on a fast freight.”
― M.F.K. Fisher

“I shouldn't think even millionaires could eat anything nicer than new bread and real butter and honey for tea.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“I only want to write. And there's no college for that except life.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine to the mind.”
― Luther Burbank

“For those who have dwelt in depression's dark wood, and known its inexplicable agony, their return from the abyss is not unlike the ascent of the poet, trudging upward and upward out of hell's black depths and at last emerging into what he saw as "the shining world." There, whoever has been restored to health has almost always been restored to the capacity for serenity and joy, and this may be indemnity enough for having endured the despair beyond despair.

E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle.
And so we came forth, and once again beheld the stars.”
― William Styron, Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness

“Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.”
― Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

“Yet however much he read, there were whole categories of books the mature Emerson would not read. He would not read theology or academic controversy. He wanted original accounts, first-hand experience, personal witness. He would read your poem or your novel, but not your opinion of someone else’s poem or novel, let alone your opinion of someone else’s opinion…”
― Robert D. Richardson Jr., First We Read, Then We Write: Emerson on the Creative Process

“I am a former child, and I haven't forgotten a thing.”
― Ursula Nordstrom, Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom

“Most books are written from the outside in, but "Where the Wild Things Are" comes from the inside out. I think Maurice's book is the first picture book to recognize the fact that children have powerful emotions: anger and love and hate. And only after all that passion, the wanting to be 'where someone loved him best of all.”
― Ursula Nordstrom

“The creative artist is the one wanting to make order out of chaos. The rest of us just accept disorder -if we even recognize it- and get a bang out of our five beautiful senses, if we’re lucky.”
― Ursula Nordstrom, Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom

“I never want to forget that if Lewis Carroll had asked me whether or not he should bother writing about a little girl named Alice who fell asleep and dreamed that she had a lot of adventures down a rabbit hole, it would not have sounded awfully tempting to any editor.”
― Ursula Nordstrom, Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom

“Properly cared for, a Savile Row suit can be handed down the generations—like gout.”
― Ben Schott, Jeeves and the King of Clubs

“I'm a firm believer in thinking inside the box. The first thing I do when approaching a new project is to give myself rigid guidelines and precise limits. That's how I begin to think. If I were told that I could create anything in any medium, using any amount of space and any amount of time, I'd stand in a field and scream.”
― Ben Schott