Lewis Carroll Quotes

355 Sourced Quotes

A minute goes by so fearfully quick. You might as well try to stop a Bandersnatch!

Lewis Carroll
I'm very much afraid I didn't mean anything but nonsense. Still, you know, words mean more than we mean to express when we use them; so a whole book ought to mean a great deal more than the writer means. So, whatever good meanings are in the book, I'm glad to accept as the meaning of the book.

Lewis Carroll
Would you be a poet Before you've been to school? Ah, well! I hardly thought you So absolute a fool.

Lewis Carroll
In fact, now I come to think of it, do we decide questions, at all? We decide answers, no doubt: but surely the questions decide us? It is the dog, you know, that wags the tail--not the tail that wags the dog.

Lewis Carroll
The method employed I would gladly explain, While I have it so clear in my head, If I had but the time and you had but the brain — But much yet remains to be said.

Lewis Carroll
It's too late to correct it: when you've once said a thing, that fixes it, and you must take the consequences.

Lewis Carroll
Most other Sciences [but not mathematics] are in a state of constant flux - the precious truths of one generation being smiled at as paradoxes by the second generation, and contemptuously swept away as childish nonsense by the third.

Lewis Carroll
"O Oyster," said the Carpenter, "You've had a pleasant run! Shall we be trotting home again?" But answer came there none - And this was scarcely odd, because They'd eaten everyone.

Lewis Carroll
No discussion between two persons can be of any use, until each knows clearly what it is that the other asserts.

Lewis Carroll
When you have made a thorough and reasonably long effort, to understand a thing, and still feel puzzled by it, stop, you will only hurt yourself by going on.

Lewis Carroll
PLAIN SUPERFICIALITY is the character of a speech, in which any two points being taken, the speaker is found to lie wholly with regard to those two points.

Lewis Carroll
I can explain all the poems that were ever invented - and a good many that haven't been invented just yet.

Lewis Carroll
Perhaps Looking-glass milk isn't good to drink.

Lewis Carroll
Take my friends and my home - as an outcast I'll roam: Take the money I have in the bank: It is just what I wish, but deprive me of fish, And my life would indeed be blank.

Lewis Carroll
"Very true," said the Duchess: "flamingos and mustard both bite. And the moral of that "Birds of a feather flock together." "Only mustard isn't a bird." Alice remarked. "Right as usual," said the Duchess: "what a clear way you have of putting things!"

Lewis Carroll
Where one is hopelessly undecided as to what to say, there (as Confucius would have said, if they had given him the opportunity) silence is golden.

Lewis Carroll
In one moment I've seen what has hitherto been Enveloped in absolute mystery, And without extra charge I will give you at large A Lesson in Natural History.

Lewis Carroll
All this time the Guard was looking at her, first through a telescope, then through a microscope, and then through an opera-glass.

Lewis Carroll
The Theory hardly rose to the dignity of a Working Hypothesis. Clearly more Facts were needed.

Lewis Carroll
My view of life is, that it's next to impossible to convince anybody of anything.

Lewis Carroll
It is always allowable to ask for artichoke jelly with your boiled venison; however there are houses where this is not supplied.

Lewis Carroll
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!

Lewis Carroll
There's no use in comparing one's feelings between one day and the next; you must allow a reasonable interval, for the direction of change to show itself.

Lewis Carroll
He had bought a large map representing the sea Without the least vestige of land: And the crew were much pleased when they found it to be A map they could all understand.

Lewis Carroll
"A knot!" said Alice, always ready to make herself useful, and looking anxiously about her. "Oh, do let me help undo it!"

Lewis Carroll
"She can't do sums a bit!" the Queens said together, with great emphasis. "Can you do sums?" Alice said, turning suddenly on the White Queen, for she didn't like being found fault with so much. The Queen gasped and shut her eyes. "I can do Addition, if you give me time-but I can do Subtraction, under any circumstances!"

Lewis Carroll
First accumulate a mass of Facts: and then construct a Theory.

Lewis Carroll
"My name is Alice.." "It's a stupid name enough!" Humpty Dumpty interrupted impatiently. "What does it mean?" "Must a name mean something?" Alice asked doubtfully. "Of course it must," Humpty Dumpty said with a short laugh; "my name means the shape I am... With a name like yours, you might be any shape, almost."

Lewis Carroll
Alice laughed. "There's no use trying," she said "one can't believe impossible things." "I daresay you havn'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..."

Lewis Carroll
Alice sighed wearily. "I think you might do something better with the time," she said, "than wasting it in asking riddles with no answers." "If you knew Time as well as I do," said the Hatter, "you wouldn't talk about wasting it."

Lewis Carroll