Life & Wisdom Quote by E. B. White

Having an enemy is a kind of unpaid second job, and E. B. White knows exactly how petty the workload gets. The line is funny because it refuses the melodrama we usually attach to enemies. No grand struggle, no noble crusade: just time. White compresses a whole psychology into that deflation. An enemy isn’t only someone you oppose; it’s someone you keep scheduling into your life, mentally and emotionally, long after they’ve left the room.

The intent is quietly admonishing, but not preachy. White, a writer with a journalist’s eye for everyday absurdity, frames hostility as bureaucracy: vigilance, rehearsed arguments, strategic remembering, the little dopamine hits of indignation. The subtext is that enmity survives on attention, and attention is the resource modern life already bleeds. To “have” an enemy also suggests ownership - a possession you maintain. That verb choice indicts the ego’s need for a foil, the way an adversary can organize your identity and give your frustrations a convenient address.

Context matters: White lived through two world wars and the rise of mass media’s opinion economy, when public life increasingly ran on antagonism and caricature. Yet his sensibility was domestic, skeptical of bombast, tuned to the moral costs of everyday habits. Read now, the line feels almost diagnostic of the internet, where enemies are curated, refreshed, and algorithmically delivered. White’s wit lands because it treats rancor as inefficient - and that’s a modern insult with teeth.