Lewis Carroll · 357 pages
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“She generally gave herself very good advice, (though she very seldom followed it).”
― Lewis Carroll, quote from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?”
― Lewis Carroll, quote from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
“I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, "Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.”
― Lewis Carroll, quote from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
“I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then”
― Lewis Carroll, quote from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
“Why it's simply impassible!
Alice: Why, don't you mean impossible?
Door: No, I do mean impassible. (chuckles) Nothing's impossible!”
― Lewis Carroll, quote from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
“No, no! The adventures first, explanations take such a dreadful time.”
― Lewis Carroll, quote from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
“Do you know, I always thought unicorns were fabulous monsters, too? I never saw one alive before!"
Well, now that we have seen each other," said the unicorn, "if you'll believe in me, I'll believe in you.”
― Lewis Carroll, quote from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
“Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, 'if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.”
― Lewis Carroll, quote from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
“I can't explain myself, I'm afraid, sir,' said Alice, 'Because I'm not myself you see.”
― Lewis Carroll, quote from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
“The time has come," the walrus said, "to talk of many things: Of shoes and ships - and sealing wax - of cabbages and kings”
― Lewis Carroll, quote from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
“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, quote from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
“I knew who I was this morning, but I've changed a few times since then.”
― Lewis Carroll, quote from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
“Where should I go?" -Alice. "That depends on where you want to end up." - The Cheshire Cat.”
― Lewis Carroll, quote from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
“Tut, tut, child!" said the Duchess. "Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it.”
― Lewis Carroll, quote from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
“It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,' says the White Queen to Alice.”
― Lewis Carroll, quote from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
“Alice had got so much into the way of expecting nothing but out-of-the-way things to happen, that it seemed quite dull and stupid for life to go on in the common way.”
― Lewis Carroll, quote from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
“I give myself very good advice, but I very seldom follow it.”
― Lewis Carroll, quote from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
“I could tell you my adventures—beginning from this morning,” said Alice a little timidly; “but it’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”
― Lewis Carroll, quote from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
“You're not the same as you were before," he said. You were much more... muchier... you've lost your muchness.”
― Lewis Carroll, quote from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
“Take care of the sense and the sounds will take care of themselves.”
― Lewis Carroll, quote from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
“And how many hours a day did you do lessons?' said Alice, in a hurry to change the subject.
Ten hours the first day,' said the Mock Turtle: 'nine the next, and so on.'
What a curious plan!' exclaimed Alice.
That's the reason they're called lessons,' the Gryphon remarked: 'because they lessen from day to day.”
― Lewis Carroll, quote from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
“Cheshire Puss,' she began, rather timidly, as she did not at all know whether it would like the name: however, it only grinned a little wider. 'Come, it's pleased so far,' thought Alice, and she went on. '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.”
― Lewis Carroll, quote from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
“She who saves a single soul, saves the universe.”
― Lewis Carroll, quote from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
“Curiouser and curiouser!” Cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English).”
― Lewis Carroll, quote from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
“For, you see, 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, quote from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
“Do you suppose she's a wildflower?”
― Lewis Carroll, quote from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
“Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it”
― Lewis Carroll, quote from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
“Come back!" the Caterpillar called after her. "I've something important to say."
This sounded promising, certainly. Alice turned and came back again.
"Keep your temper," said the Caterpillar.”
― Lewis Carroll, quote from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
“She tried to fancy what the flame of a candle is like after the candle is blown out, for she could not remember ever having seen such a thing.”
― Lewis Carroll, quote from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
“It was a good speech, but the reaction was due to the fact that politics are madness, and even if one does not know it, a country in electoral season experiences flares of lunacy like the great storms that sometimes march across the golden surface of the sun.”
― Mark Helprin, quote from Freddy and Fredericka
“The Bostonians is special because it never was ‘titivated’ for the New York edition, for its humour and its physicality, for its direct engagement with social and political issues and the way it dramatized them, and finally for the extent to which its setting and action involved the author and his sense of himself. But the passage above suggests one other source of its unique quality. It has been called a comedy and a satire – which it is. But it is also a tragedy, and a moving one at that. If its freshness, humour, physicality and political relevance all combine to make it a peculiarly accessible and enjoyable novel, it is also an upsetting and disturbing one, not simply in its treatment of Olive, but also of what she tries to stand for. (Miss Birdseye is an important figure in this respect: built up and knocked down as she is almost by fits and starts.) The book’s jaundiced view of what Verena calls ‘the Heart of humanity’ (chapter 28) – reform, progress and the liberal collectivism which seems so essential an ingredient in modern democracy – makes it contentious to this day. An aura of scepticism about the entire political process hangs about it: salutary some may say; destructive according to others. And so, more than any other novel of James’s, it reminds us of the literature of our own time. The Bostonians is one of the most brilliant novels in the English language, as F. R. Leavis remarked;27 but it is also one of the bleakest. In no other novel did James reveal more of himself, his society and his era, and of the human condition, caught as it is between the blind necessity of progress and the urge to retain the old. It is a remarkably experimental modern novel, written by a man of conservative values. It is judgemental about people with whom its author identified, and lenient towards attitudes hostile to large areas of James’s own intellectual and personal inheritance. The strength of the contradictions embodied in the novel are a guarantee of the pleasure it has to give.”
― Henry James, quote from The Bostonians
“The sin of smiling whilst Louise was weeping, the sin of shedding my own tears and not hers. The sin of being another being.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, quote from The Blood of Others
“You could eat the air in the place, so thick with bread and warmth that it stang our cheeks.”
― Kate Manning, quote from My Notorious Life
“The hyperconnectivity made possible by the Internet has acted as a massive accelerator for the “small sparks” that fuel the refinement of ideas.”
― quote from Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality
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