From Lewis Caroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. These are the quotes I found most… how shall I put it… eye-opening. Paradigm-shifting.
“..the patriotic archbishop of Canterbury found it advisable-”
“Found WHAT?” said the Duck.
“Found IT,” the Mouse replied rather crossly. “Of course you know what ‘it’ means.”
“I know what ‘it’ means well enough, when I find a thing,” said the Duck: “it’s generally a frog or a worm. The question is, what did the archbishop find?”
“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.”
“To begin with,” said the Cat, “a dog’s not mad. Do 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.”
“I can’t believe THAT!” said Alice.
“Can’t you?” said the Queen in a pitying tone. “Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.”
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 your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why sometimes I believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!”
“I can’t remember things before they happen.”
“It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,” the Queen remarked.
“Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else – if you ran fast for a long time as we’ve been doing.”
“A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, HERE, you see, it takes all the running YOU can do, to keep you in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means what I choose it to mean, neither 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 master – that’s all.”
“Fan her head!” the Red Queen anxiously interrupted. “She’ll be feverish after so much thinking.”
“Five nights are warmer than one night, then?” Alice ventured to ask.
“Five times as warm, of course.”
“But they should also be five times as cold, by the same rule – “
“Just so!” cried the Red Queen. “Five times as warm, AND five times as cold – just as I’m five times as rich as you are, AND five times as clever!”
the time has come, my little friends, to talk of other things. of shoes and ships and sealing wax, cabbages and kings. and why the sea is boiling hot, and whether pigs have wings, calloo-callay, come, run away. with cabages and kings!
could you put the part from Alice in Wonderland where TwiddleDee and TwiddleDum are telling the story about the oysters when the walrus says somehthing like, The time has the walrus said to speak of other things… thanks
i adore every quote from this story. my favorite is the Cat. i just had to say how much i get out of reading your quotes. much oblige!
Insanity, pure and simple. Isn’t it beautiful?
Twinkle twinkle little bat, how I wonder what your at. Up above the world you fly, like a tea tray in the sky.
But I don’t want to go amongst mad people.
Oh you cant help that, we’re all mad here.
Off with his head!
I almost love beheadings as much as I love caviar
“Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else – if you ran fast for a long time as we’ve been doing.”
“A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, HERE, you see, it takes all the running YOU can do, to keep you in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”
>> Such is life and inflation!