Parenting & Family Quote by E. B. White

E. B. White’s line lands like a polite insult delivered with a smile: the problem isn’t that doors are closed, it’s that people are. The “open doorway” is a deliberately simple image - domestic, ordinary, almost storybook - which makes the indictment sharper. Opportunity, curiosity, new arguments, new neighbors: they’re right there, unlatched. Yet the adult reflex is to tighten up, to treat the unfamiliar as a draft to be blocked rather than a room to enter.

The sly sting sits in “since childhood.” White isn’t romanticizing kids as saints; he’s pointing to a common human arc. Children move toward openings because they haven’t built elaborate narratives about what’s “for them,” what’s “safe,” what’s “proper.” Adults, by contrast, stockpile reasons: status, ideology, routines, the fear of looking naïve. The line implies a cultural failure, not just a personal quirk - a society that trains people to equate maturity with closure.

White, a writer who prized plain style and moral clarity, often used gentle language to smuggle in a hard verdict on American complacency. Here, the humor is dry but real: “met” makes it sound like the doorway introduced itself politely and still got snubbed. The subtext is a warning to readers who like to think of themselves as open-minded: if you have to announce it, you probably walked past the door.