Lewis Carroll Quotes - Page 9

All in the golden afternoon Full leisurely we glide; For both our oars, with little skill, By little arms are plied, While little hands make vain pretence Our wanderings to guide.

Anon, to sudden silence won, In fancy they pursue The dream-child moving through the land Of wonders wild and new, In friendly chat with bird or beast - And half believe it true.

What do you suppose is the use of a child without any meaning? Even a joke should have some meaning-- and a child's more imporant than a joke, I hope. You couldn't deny that, even if you tried with both hands.

In autumn, when the leaves are brown, Take pen and ink, and write it down.

When, as a child, I first opened my eyes on a Sunday-morning, a feeling of dismal anicipation, which began at least on the Friday,culminated. I knew what was before me, and my wish, if not my word, was "Would God it were evening!" It was no day of rest, but a day of texts, of catechisms (Watts'), of tracts about converted swearers, godly charwomen, and edifying deaths of sinners saved.... There was but one rosy spot, in the distance, all that day: and that was "bed-time," which never could come too early!

He said he would come in,' the White Queen went on, `because he was looking for a hippopotamus. Now, as it happened, there wasn't such a thing in the house, that morning.' Is there generally?' Alice asked in an astonished tone. Well, only on Thursdays,' said the Queen.

"Write that down," the King said to the jury, and the jury eagerly wrote down all three dates on their slates, and then added them up, and reduced the answer to shillings and pence.

Thy loving smile will surely hail The love-gift of a fairy tale.

Still she haunts me, phantomwise, Alice moving under skies Never seen by waking eyes.

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson's life in space-time colored his liberated life of the imagination.

I said it in Hebrew—I said it in Dutch— I said it in German and Greek; But I wholly forgot (and it vexes me much) That English is what you speak!

It is a very inconvenient habit of kittens (Alice had once made the remark) that whatever you say to them, they always purr.

Be sure the safest rule is that we should not dare to live in any scene in which we dare not die.

I never thought of that before! It's my opinion that you never think at all.

"The horror of that moment," the King went on, "I shall never, never forget!" "You will, though," the Queen said, "if you don't make a memorandum of it."

Where do you come from? And where are you going? Look up, speak nicely, and don't twiddle your fingers all the time.

The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some time in silence: at last the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth.

To the Looking-Glass world it was Alice that said 'I've a sceptre in hand, I've a crown on my head. Let the Looking-Glass creatures, whatever they be, Come and dine with the Red Queen, the White Queen, and me.

I believe this thought, of the possibility of death - if calmly realised, and steadily faced would be one of the best possible tests as to our going to any scene of amusement being right or wrong. If the thought of sudden death acquires, for you, a special horror when imagined as happening in a theatre, then be very sure the theatre is harmful for you, however harmless it may be for others; and that you are incurring a deadly peril in going.

When all has been considered, it seems to me to be the irresistible intuition that infinite punishment for finite sin would be unjust, and therefore wrong. We feel that even weak and erring Man would shrink from such an act. And we cannot conceive of God as acting on a lower standard of right and wrong.

This piece of rudeness was more than Alice could bear: she got up in great disgust, and walked off; the Dormouse fell asleep instantly, and neither of the others took the least notice of her going, though she looked back once or twice, half hoping that they would call after her: the last time she saw them, they were trying to put the Dormouse into the teapot. At any rate I'll never go THERE again!' said Alice as she picked her way through the wood. "It's the stupidest tea-party I ever was at in all my life!

The Good and Great must ever shun That reckless and abandoned one Who stoops to perpetrate a pun.

We are but older children, dear, Who fret to find our bedtime near.

I do not know if Alice in Wonderland was an original story-I was, at least, no conscious imitator in writing it-but I do know that, since it came out, something like a dozen story-books have appeared, on identically the same pattern. The path I timidly explored believing myself to be 'the first that ever burst into that silent sea'-is now a beaten high-road: all the way-side flowers have long ago been trampled into the dust: and it would be courting disaster for me to attempt that style again.

I believe this thought, of the possibility of death - if calmly realised, and steadily faced would be one of the best possible tests as to our going to any scene of amusement being right or wrong.