Lewis Carroll Quotes

355 Sourced Quotes

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

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

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

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
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
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
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
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
I should like the whole race of nurses to be abolished: children should be with their mother as much as possible, in my opinion.

Lewis Carroll
I maintain that any writer of a book is fully authorised in attaching any meaning he likes to a word or phrase he intends to use. If I find an author saying, at the beginning of his book, "Let it be understood that by the word 'black' I shall always mean 'white,' and by the word 'white' I shall always mean 'black,'" I meekly accept his ruling, however injudicious I think it.

Lewis Carroll
If I was not assured by the best authority on earth that the world is to be destroyed by fire, I should conclude that the day of destruction is at hand, but brought on by means of an agent very opposite to that of heat.

Lewis Carroll
"Look on the branch above your head," said the Gnat, "and there you'll find a Snap-dragon-fly. Its body is made of plum-pudding, its wings of holly-leaves, and its head is a raisin burning in brandy." "And what does it live on?" Alice asked, as before. "Frumenty and mince-pie," the Gnat replied; "and it makes its nest in a Christmas-box."

Lewis Carroll
"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.

Lewis Carroll
"She can't do Subtraction." said the White Queen. "Can you do Division? Divide a loaf by a knife-what's the answer to that?" "I suppose-" Alice was beginning, but the Red Queen answered for her. "Bread-and-butter, of course."

Lewis Carroll
"How is bread made?" "I know that!" Alice cried eagerly. "You take some flour "Where do you pick the flower?" the White Queen asked. "In a garden or in the hedges?" "Well, it isn't picked at all," Alice explained: "it's ground — " "How many acres of ground?" said the White Queen. "You mustn't leave out so many things."

Lewis Carroll
My hand moves because certain forces — electric, magnetic, or whatever "nerve-force" may prove to be — are impressed on it by my brain. This nerve-force, stored in the brain, would probably be traceable, if Science were complete, to chemical forces supplied to the brain by the blood, and ultimately derived from the food I eat and the air I breathe.

Lewis Carroll
There is so much written Science that no living person has ever read: and there is so much thought-out Science that hasn't yet been written.

Lewis Carroll
One of the hardest things in the world is to convey a meaning accurately from one mind to another.

Lewis Carroll
It may be right to go ahead, I guess: It may be right to stop, I do confess; Also, it may be right to retrogress.

Lewis Carroll
'If everybody minded their own business,' said the Duchess in a hoarse growl, 'the world would go round a good deal faster than it does.'

Lewis Carroll
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?"

Lewis Carroll
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.

Lewis Carroll