The time has come, the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—
Of cabbages—and kings—
And why the sea is boiling hot—
And whether pigs have wings.”
—Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)
And thus they give the time, that Nature meant for peaceful sleep and meditative snores, to ceaseless din and mindless merriment and waste of shoes and floors.
—Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)
Topics: Nature
When I use a word, Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, it means just what I choose it to meanneither more nor less. The question is, said Alice, whether you can make words mean so many different things. The question is, said Humpty Dumpty, which is to be masterthats all.
—Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)
Topics: Words
Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here? “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat. “I don’t much care where,” said Alice. “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
—Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)
Topics: Goals
There are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents … and only one for birthday presents, you know.
—Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)
If you limit your actions in life to things that nobody can possibly find fault with, you will not do much.
—Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)
Topics: Risk, Success
It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.
—Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)
Topics: Memories, Imagination
Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, and what is the use of a book thought Alice, without pictures or conversations?
—Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)
Topics: Books
Alice laughed: “There’s no use trying,” she said; “one can’t believe impossible things.” “I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
—Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)
Topics: Belief
It is a very inconvenient habit of kittens (Alice had once made the remark) that whatever you say to them, they always purr.
—Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)
Topics: Cats
I’d give all wealth that years have piled,
The slow result of Life’s decay,
To be once more a little child
For one bright summer day.
—Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)
Topics: Childhood
A loaf of bread, the Walrus said, Is what we chiefly need: Pepper and vinegar besides Are very good indeed—Now if you’re ready, Oysters, dear,
We can begin to feed!
—Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)
Topics: Eating
It was getting dark so suddenly that Alice thought there must be a thunderstorm coming on. What a thick black cloud that is! she said.
And how fast it comes! Why I do believe it’s got wings!
—Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)
Yet what are all such gaieties to me whose thoughts are full of indices and surds?
—Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)
Topics: Mathematics
There is no use trying, said Alice, “one can’t believe impossible things”. “I dare say you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
—Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)
Topics: Action, Imagination, General, Belief
Now here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!
—Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)
Be what you would seem to be—or, if you’d like it put more simply—never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.
—Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)
Topics: Hypocrisy
Write that down, the King said to the jury, and the jury eagerly wrote down all three dates on their slates, and then added them up, and reduced the answer to shillings and pence.
—Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)
Topics: Justice
“Begin at the beginning,” the King said gravely, “and go till you come to the end; then stop.”
—Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)
If everybody minded their own business, the Duchess said in a hoarse growl, “the world would go round a deal faster than it does.”
—Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)
We are but older children, dear, Who fret to find our bedtime near.
—Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)
Topics: Aging
Reeling and writhing, of course to begin with, Mock Turtle replied, “and the different branches of arithmetic—ambition, distraction, uglification and derision.”
—Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)
Topics: Education
The Unicorn looked dreamily at Alice, and said.
—Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)
Topics: Belief
Everything’s got a moral, if only you can find it.
—Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)
Who in the world am I?. Ah, that’s the great puzzle.
—Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)
Topics: Discovery, Self-Discovery
“The horror of that moment,” the King went on, “I shall never, never forget!” “You will, though,” the Queen said, “if you don’t make a memorandum of it.
—Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)
Topics: Regret, Repentance, Remorse, Adversity
Would you tell me please, which way I ought to go from here? “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat. “I don’t much care where…” said Alice. “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
—Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)
Topics: Good
Speak roughly to your little boy, and beat him when he sneezes: he only does it to annoy, because he knows it teases.
—Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)
Topics: Children
I’m very brave generally, he went on in a low voice: only today I happen to have a headache.
—Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)
Topics: Courage, Bravery
The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday—but never jam today.
—Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)
Topics: Promises
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Benjamin Whichcote British Religious Figure
- Laurence Sterne Irish Anglican Novelist
- John Wilkins British Clergyman, Scholar
- Rudyard Kipling British Children’s Books Writer
- Bertrand A. Russell British Philosopher, Mathematician
- William Ralph Inge English Anglican Clergyman
- Frances Ridley Havergal English Anglican Poet
- William Cowper English Anglican Poet
- George Herbert Welsh Anglican Poet
- Arthur C. Clarke English Science-fiction Writer
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