Status Updates From Essays of E.B. White

“All writing slants the way a writer leans, and no man is born perpendicular, although many men are born upright.”

“I know, too, that on some not too distant night, somewhere in a pond or ditch or low place, a frog will awake, raise his voice high in praise, and be joined by others. I will feel a whole lot better when I hear the frogs.”

“Perhaps success in the future will depend partly on our ability to generate cheap power, but I think it will depend to a greater extent on our ability to resist a technological formula that is sterile: peas without pageantry, corn without coon, knowledge without wisdom, kitchens without a warm stove.”

We went fishing the first morning. I felt the same damp moss covering the worms in the bait can, and saw the dragonfly alight on the tip of my rod as it hovered a few inches from the surface of the water, It was the arrival of this fly that convinced me beyond any doubt that everything was as it always has been, that the years were a mirage and that there had been no years.

In the kitchen cabinet is a bag of oranges for morning juice. Each orange is stamped 'Color Added.' The dyeing of an orange to make it orange is man's most impudent gesture to date. It is really an appalling piece of effrontery, carrying the clear implication that Nature doesn't know what she is up to.

The impression one gets from campaign oratory is that the sun revolves around the earth, the earth revolves around the United States, and the United States revolves around whichever city the speaker happens to be in at the moment. This is what a friend of mind used to call the Un-Copernican system.

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