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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.

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.

Approximate author period: c. 1865 AD · industrial

Meaning not yet available

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Attribution & collection notes
Author or tradition
Lewis Carroll
Attribution: attributed
Country attributed
Not established
A country attribution does not establish the earliest origin.
Historical period
Approximate author period: c. 1865 AD · industrial
Approximate author-period anchor from life dates 1832 to 1898; Wikidata Q38082, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q38082 (accessed 2026-10-08). Not a quotation composition date.
An author lifetime, approximate period or collection date is not necessarily the date when these words were first written or spoken.
Recorded source
Contributor-provided quotation collection

Supplied reference C; CSV row 58897; supplied attribution, independently unverified

A collection's publication date can be later than the words it records.