“For the snark was a boojum, you see.”
“If I had but the time and you had but the brain”
“For instance, take the two words "fuming" and "furious." Make up your mind that you will say both words, but leave it unsettled which you will say first. Now open your mouth and speak. If your thoughts incline ever so little towards " fuming," you will say "fuming-furious;" if they turn, by even a hair's breadth, towards "furious," you will say "furious-fuming;" but if you have the rarest of gifts, a perfectly balanced mind, you will say "frumious.”
“This was charming, no doubt; but they shortly found out That the Captain they trusted so well Had only one notion for crossing the ocean, And that was to tingle his bell.”
“What I tell you three times is true.”
“Again, the first "o" in "borogoves" is pronounced like the "o" in "borrow." I have heard people try to give it the sound of the "o" in "worry". Such is Human Perversity.”
“They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care;
They pursued it with forks and hope;
They threatened its life with a railway-share;
They charmed it with smiles and soap.”
“What's the good of Mercator's North Poles and Equators, Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?" So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply "They are merely conventional signs!”
“Then the bowsprit got mixed with the rudder sometimes:
A thing, as the Bellman remarked,
That frequently happens in tropical climes,
When a vessel is, so to speak, "snarked.”
“The first "o" in "borogoves" is pronounced like the "o" in "borrow." I have heard people try to give it the sound of the "o" in "worry". Such is Human Perversity.”
“I said his name softly to myself. Lucky. Lucian Radcliffe. His name must come from the Latin lucianus, meaning light, and that's what he was, golden and bright.
I didn't care what Jack's name meant. Probably Jackass.”
“He already made up the largest part of my universe; why not make him the center?”
“La meva mare m'havia ensenyat de ben petit a acceptar que els sentiments que altres persones tenien per nosaltres, encara que no els corresponguéssim, eren importants.
— Has d'entendre que aquest amor no desitjat, aquest desig no correspost, és un gran regal que et fan —em va dir [...]—. No el menyspreïs simplement perquè no t'és útil.”
“For the first time in my life, every day when I woke up I had clean clothes, and something to eat two, three times a day, as much as I wanted. Once I had that, I realized my revolution was over.”
“What a gift to know a man well enough to reduce him to desperation so quickly! And what a gift to have him know you just as well.”
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