LCLewis Carroll

126 collected words

Lewis Carroll

Dates not recorded

Name supplied in the contributor-provided quotation collection. Basic attribution label; identity, lifetime and quotation authenticity have not been independently verified.

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Quotations and sayings

01Undated

It'll be no use their putting their heads down and saying, 'Come up again, dear!' I shall only look up and say, 'Who am I, then? Tell me that first, and then, if I like being that person, I'll come up -- if not, I'll stay down here till I'm somebody else' -- but, oh, dear!

Lewis Carroll / quote

02Undated

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.'- so long as I get SOMEWHERE,' Alice added as an explanation.'Oh, you're sure to do that,' said the Cat, 'if you only walk long enough.

Lewis Carroll / quote

03Undated

Surely your gladness need not be the less for the thought that you will one day see a brighter dawn than this.

Lewis Carroll / quote

04Undated

As children', wrote Alice Raikes (Mrs. Wilson Fox) in The Times, January 22, 1932, 'we lived in Onslow Square and used to play in the garden behind the houses. Charles Dodgson used to stay with an old uncle there, and walk up and down, his hands behind him, on the strip of lawn. One day, hearing my name, he called me to him saying, "So you are another Alice. I'm very found of Alices. Would you like to come and see something which is rather puzzling?" We followed him into his house which opened, as ours did, upon the garden, into a room full of furniture with a tall mirror standing across one corner.' "Now", he said giving me an orange, "first tell me which hand you have got that in." "The right" I said. "Now", he said, "go and stand before that glass, and tell me which hand the little girl you see there has got it in." After some perplexed contemplation, I said, "The left hand." "Exactly," he said, "and how do you explain that?" I couldn't explain it, but seeing that some solution was expected, I ventured, "If I was on the other side of the glass, wouldn't the orange still be in my right hand?" I can remember his laugh. "Well done, little Alice," he said. "The best answer I've heard yet." "I heard no more then, but in after years was told that he said that had given him his first idea for Through the Looking-Glass, a copy of which, together with each of his other books, he regularly sent me.

Lewis Carroll / quote

05Undated

You're enough to try the patience of an oyster!

Lewis Carroll / quote

06Undated

How is it you can talk so nicely?' Alice said, hoping to get it into a better temper by a compliment. 'I've been in many gardens before, but none of the flowers could talk.''Put your hand down, and feel the ground,' said the Tiger-lily. 'Then you'll know why.'Alice did so. 'It's very hard,' she said, 'but I don't see what that has to do with it.''In most gardens,' the Tiger-lily said, 'they make the beds too soft - so that the flowers are always asleep.

Lewis Carroll / quote

07Undated

Aren't you sometimes frightened at being planted out here, with nobody to take care of you?''There's the tree in the middle,' said the Rose:'what else is it good for?''But what could it do, if any danger came?' Alice asked.'It could bark,' said the Rose.

Lewis Carroll / quote

08Undated

At any rate I'd better be getting out of the wood, for really its coming on very dark. Do you think it's going to rain?'Tweedledum spread a large umbrella over himself and his brother, and looked up into it.'No, I don't think it is,' he said: 'at least - not under here. Nohow.''But it may rain outside?''It may - if it chooses,' said Tweedledee: 'we've got no objection. Contrariwise.

Lewis Carroll / quote

09Undated

If you don't know where you want to go, then it doesn't matter which path you take.

Lewis Carroll / quote

10Undated

Hold your tongue!’ said the Queen, turning purple. ‘I won’t!’ said Alice. ‘Off with her head!’ the Queen shouted at the top of her voice. Nobody moved. ‘Who cares for you?’ said Alice (she had grown to her full size by this time). ‘You’re nothing but a pack of cards!’ At this the whole pack rose up into the air, and came flying down upon her; she gave a little scream, half of fright and half of anger, and tired to beat them off, and found herself lying on the bank, with her head in the lap of her sister, who was gently brushing away some dead leaves that had fluttered down from the trees upon her face. ‘Wake up, Alice dear!’ said her sister. ‘Why, what a long sleep you’ve had!’ So Alice got up and ran off, thinking while she ran, as well she might, what a wonderful dream it had been. Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland, 1865

Lewis Carroll / quote

11Undated

It is the one of the great secrets of life that those things are most worth doing,we do for others.

Lewis Carroll / quote

12Undated

Perhaps the hardest thing in all literature— at least I have found it so: by no voluntary effort can I accomplish it: I have to take it as it comes— is to write anything original. And perhaps the easiest is, when once an original line has been struck out, to follow it up, and to write any amount more to the same tune.

Lewis Carroll / quote

13Undated

I wish I hadn't cried so much!" said Alice, as she swam about, trying to find her way out. "I shall be punished for it now, I suppose, by being drowned in my own tears! That will be a queer thing, to be sure! However, everything is queer today.

Lewis Carroll / quote

14Undated

you're entirly bonkers but I'll tell you a secret all the best people are

Lewis Carroll / quote

15Undated

The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some time in silence: at last the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth,

Lewis Carroll / quote

16Undated

and vinegar that makes them sour—and camomile that makes them bitter—and—and barley-sugar and such things that make children sweet-tempered. I only wish people knew that: then they wouldn’t be so stingy about it, you know—

Lewis Carroll / quote

17Undated

Mad Hatter: “Why is a raven like a writing-desk?”“Have you guessed the riddle yet?” the Hatter said, turning to Alice again.“No, I give it up,” Alice replied: “What’s the answer?”“I haven’t the slightest idea,” said the Hatter

Lewis Carroll / quote

18Undated

And how do you know that you're mad? "To begin with," said the Cat, "a dog's not mad. You grant that?" I suppose so, said Alice. "Well then," the Cat went on, "you see a dog growls when it's angry, and wags it's tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad.

Lewis Carroll / quote

19Undated

Alice asked the Cheshire Cat who was sitting in a tree "What road do I take?"The cat asked, "Where do you want to go?""I don't know " answered Alice. "Then, said the cat, it really doesn't matter, does it?

Lewis Carroll / quote

20Undated

I wish creatures wouldn't be so easily offended!", "You'll get used to it in time," said the Caterpillar; and it put the hookah into its mouth and began smoking again.

Lewis Carroll / quote

21Undated

Cheshire Puss,' she began, rather timidly, as she did not at all know whether it would like the name: however, it only grinned a little wider. 'Come, it's pleased so far,' thought Alice, and she went on. '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.'—so long as I get SOMEWHERE,' Alice added as an explanation.'Oh, you're sure to do that,' said the Cat, 'if you only walk long enough.

Lewis Carroll / quote

22Undated

A likely story indeed!" said the Pigeon, in a tone of the deepest contempt. "I've seen a good many little girls in my time, but never one with such a neck as that! No, no! You're a serpent; and there's no use denying it. I suppose you'll be telling me next that you never tasted an egg!""I have tasted eggs, certainly," said Alice, who was a very truthful child; "but little girls eat eggs quite as much as serpents do, you know.""I don't believe it," said the Pigeon; "but if they do, then they're a kind of serpent: that's all I can say.

Lewis Carroll / quote

23Undated

Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, 'if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.

Lewis Carroll / quote

24Undated

To be sure, this is what generally happens when one eats cake; but Alice had got so much into the way of expecting nothing but out-of-the-way things to happen, that it seemed quite dull and stupid for life to go on in the common way.

Lewis Carroll / quote