Alice in Wonderland is a literary treasure, of you know where to look. The nonsensical and absurd world of Wonderland hides many treasures underneath the Obvious. There's a whole surrealistic world if you just know where to look. Today I'll share with you my favorite passages, and quotes, from the two Alice novels. I hope you love just as much as I do, and maybe look at the Alices in another light.
1. “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." - "I don't much care where –" - "Then it doesn't matter which way you go.”
If there ever was a thing more true, you tell me...
2. “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?”
Carroll is kind of a magician with words, isn't he?
3. “Just look down the road and tell me if you can see either of them." - I see nobody on the road." said Alice. - I only wish I had such eyes,"the King remarked in a fretful tone. "To be able to see Nobody! And at such a distance too!”
It's quite absurd to think this way, but it isn't a weird thought if you think more about it..
4. “When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’ - 'The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’ - ’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”
Why do words mean what they mean? It's just because someone said it was so. Why can't we make words mean what we want them to mean? Who is stopping us?
5. “The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday—but never jam to-day.” - “It must come sometimes to ‘jam to-day,’” Alice objected. - “No, it can’t,” said the Queen. “It’s jam every other day: to-day isn’t any other day, you know”
This is such an interesting thing to think about. Now is never now, because when we're talking in the now it's already the now's future, and so it goes on. Now is never now.
6. “But, said Alice, if the world has absolutely no sense, who's stopping us from inventing one?”
Exactly. Who is stopping us?
7. “You're thinking about something, and it makes you forget to talk.”
If this isn't what everyone does nowadays I don't even know.
8. “When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes, I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
This is such a classic. I just love it.
9. “Sentence first; verdict afterwards." - Queen of Hearts”
This kind of happens nowadays. How absurd it may sound, we are facing it everyday.
10. “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.”
Where does the flame go after the candle goes out? It's quite interesting to think about.
