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Lewis Carroll Quotes: Top 13

Lewis Carroll quotes shine a spotlight on the insanity of humanity, and are full of whimsy and delightful nonsense. Here is a countdown of the 13 most memorable quotes from the author’s most famous fantasy works, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass.

13. In the opening to the first book, Alice is sitting with her older sister feeling bored when a rabbit in a waistcoat runs by. She thinks nothing of it until he takes a watch out of his pocket, at which point she realizes what an unusual occurrence this is and takes off after him. The Rabbit seems to be in a terrible hurry and is complaining aloud of how late he is.

Rabbit: “Oh my ears and whiskers, how late it's getting!”

12. The Duchess is moody and unpredictable. When Alice first meets her, she’s hostile and aggressive, but later, at the queen's croquet party, she is agreeable and affectionate. This unstable character insists on finding a moral in every story.

The Duchess: “Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it.”

11. Filmmakers have reinvented many of the Wonderland characters, and their portrayals don’t necessarily reflect those of Lewis Carroll’s creation. The Queen of Hearts, for example, has to some extent morphed with the Red Queen in popular culture, and many people consider the two to be one and the same.

The Queen of Hearts is in fact the antagonist in the first book and is represented as a playing card. The Red Queen is the antagonist in the second book and is represented as a chess piece. She and Alice participate in a race, in which they run very fast but remain in the same place.

The Red Queen: “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”

10. Some of the most wonderful quotes by Lewis Carroll are spoken not through the mouth of one of his characters but the author himself. This is an excerpt of his narration from the iconic scene in which Alice tumbles down a rabbit hole.

Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she had plenty of time as she went down to look about her and to wonder what was going to happen next.

9. Not to be confused with her royal counterparts, the White Queen appears only in Through the Looking Glass and is quite simply bonkers. While The Hatter in the first book had lived as though time had stopped, the White Queen lives as though time is going backwards. So she remembers things before they happen, causing her to remark:

The White Queen: “It's a poor sort of memory that only works backward.”

8. The Queen of Hearts is the most widely known of the three queens that Alice encounters in Wonderland, infamous for her fondness for decapitations. Here she threatens to chop off the Duchess’s head for no apparent reason.

The Queen of Hearts: “Now, I give you fair warning, either you or your head must be off, and that in about half no time! Take your choice!”

7. Lewis Carroll famously called the Mock Turtle after a soup of the same name. When Alice tries to recite a poem in the Mock Turtle's presence, she muddles it up, prompting him to respond in a disapproving way.

The Mock Turtle: “Well, I never heard it before, but it sounds uncommon nonsense.”

6. The Wonderland characters often ask annoying, ridiculous, and pointless questions. The White Queen and the Red Queen pose a series of questions to Alice that include the following:

The White Queen: “Can you do addition? What's one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one?”

5. Lewis Carroll reinvents and recreates reality. He takes common phrases and filters them through the madness of Wonderland to give us something new and delightful. At the Mad Tea Party, the Hatter sings a line from a song that is both familiar and strange.

The Hatter: “Twinkle, twinkle, little bat! How I wonder what you're at.”

4. This has got to be the most marvelously mind-boggling Lewis Carroll quote! Alice remarks that she might understand it better if it were written down. But even in print, it proves quite the challenge.

The Duchess: “Be what you would seem to be -- or, if you'd like it put more simply -- Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.”

3. In the scene involving Alice, the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon, Lewis Carroll plays on the two meanings of the word school, one to mean an educational institution, as understood by Alice, and the other a large group of fish or sea mammals, as understood by the Mock Turtle, who was once a real turtle. The two are having a conversation about school, when the Gryphon tries to shed light on why the Mock Turtle's lessons grew an hour shorter each day.

The Gryphon: "That's the reason they're called lessons, because they lessen from day to day."

2. The home of the Duchess has to be one of the most disturbing places that Alice has the misfortune to visit. At one point utter chaos erupts, with the cook throwing pots, pans, and plates at the Duchess and her baby, who is howling uncontrollably. Alice tries to intervene on behalf of the child, to which the Duchess, who seems oblivious to the cook's assault, responds with the following statement:

The Duchess: “If everybody minded their own business, the world would go around a great deal faster than it does.”

1. When the White Queen tells Alice she’s over 101 years old, Alice says she doesn’t believe her because nobody lives to be 100 and she can’t possibly believe in impossible things. The White Queen recommends that she practice believing in the impossible, a skill that can be developed over time. This is perhaps the most famous of all the Through the Looking-Glass quotes, though it is often mistakenly attributed to Alice.

The White Queen: “Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

> Want more Lewis Carroll quotations? Read the Top 13 quotes from his most famous character, Alice.

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