Lewis Carroll Quotes

355 Sourced Quotes

You evidently do not suffer from quotation-hunger as I do! I get all the dictionaries of quotations I can meet with, as I always want to know where a quotation comes from.

Lewis Carroll
I dare say you never even spoke to Time!" "Perhaps not," Alice cautiously replied; "but I know I have to beat time when I listen to music." "Ah! That accounts for it," said the Hatter. "He won't stand a beating. Now, if only you kept on good terms with him, he'd do almost anything you like with the clock.

Lewis Carroll
'I'll be judge, I'll be jury,' said cunning old Fury;
'I'll try the whole cause, and condemn you to death.'

Lewis Carroll
He's an Anglo-Saxon Messenger—and those are Anglo-Saxon attitudes.

Lewis Carroll
There are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents, and only one for birthday presents, you know.

Lewis Carroll
So many out-of-the-way things had happened lately, that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible.

Lewis Carroll
'O gin I find another lady,'
He said wi' sighs and tears,
'I wot my coortin' sall not be
Another thirty years: 'For gin I find a lady gay,
Exactly to my taste,
I'll pop the question, aye or nay,
In twenty years at maist.'

Lewis Carroll
Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance?

Lewis Carroll
For first you write a sentence, And then you chop it small; Then mix the bits and sort them out Just as they chance to fall: The order of the phrases makes no difference at all.

Lewis Carroll
"If you think we're waxworks," he said, "you ought to pay, you know. Waxworks weren't made to be looked at for nothing. Nohow!"

Lewis Carroll
When I used to read fairy-tales, I fancied that kind of thing never happened, and now here I am in the middle of one!

Lewis Carroll
I charm in vain; for never again,
All keenly as my glance I bend,
Will Memory, goddess coy,
Embody for my joy
Departed days, nor let me gaze
On thee, my fairy friend!

Lewis Carroll
Is all our Life, then, but a dream
Seen faintly in the golden gleam
Athwart Time's dark resistless stream? Bowed to the earth with bitter woe
Or laughing at some raree-show
We flutter idly to and fro. Man's little Day in haste we spend,
And, from its merry noontide, send
No glance to meet the silent end.

Lewis Carroll
'You are old, Father William,' the young man said,
'And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head—
Do you think, at your age, it is right?'

Lewis Carroll
I have had prayers answered — most strangely so sometimes — but I think our heavenly Father's loving-kindness has been even more evident in what He has refused me.

Lewis Carroll
Curtsey while you're thinking what to say. It saves time.

Lewis Carroll
Here is a golden Rule to begin with. Write legibly. The average temper of the human race would be perceptibly sweetened, if everybody obeyed this Rule! A great deal of the bad writing in the world comes simply from writing too quickly.

Lewis Carroll
It's a miserable story! said Bruno. It begins miserably, and it ends miserablier. I think I shall cry. Sylvie, please lend me your handkerchief. I haven't got it with me, Sylvie whispered. Then I won't cry, said Bruno manfully.

Lewis Carroll
If you drink much from a bottle marked 'poison' it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later.

Lewis Carroll
'I have answered three questions, and that is enough,'
Said his father; 'don't give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
Be off, or I'll kick you downstairs!'

Lewis Carroll
And she arose, and in that darkening room
Stood lonely as a spirit of the night —
Stood calm and fearless in the gathered night —
And raised her eyes to heaven. There were tears
Upon her face, but in her heart was peace.
Peace that the world nor gives nor takes away!

Lewis Carroll
The day was wet, the rain fell souse
Like jars of strawberry jam, a
sound was heard in the old henhouse,
A beating of a hammer.

Lewis Carroll
There is an insect that people avoid
(Whence is derived the verb 'to flee').
Where have you been by it most annoyed?
In lodgings by the Sea.

Lewis Carroll
She was a little startled by seeing the Cheshire Cat sitting on a bough of a tree a few yards off. The Cat only grinned when it saw Alice.

Lewis Carroll
In an English dinner-party... I have never known small-talk run short!

Lewis Carroll
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
God has given to Man an absolute right to take the lives of other animals, for any reasonable cause, such as the supply of food; but He has not given to Man the right to inflict pain, unless where necessary.

Lewis Carroll
I'm getting rather hoarse, I fear,
After so much reciting:
So, if you don't object, my dear,
We'll try a glass of bitter beer -
I think it looks inviting.

Lewis Carroll
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