All Quotes

"Abuse of words, foundation of ideology."

"The punishment of those who have loved women too much is to love them forever."

"Everything we can measure seems small."

"Tenderness is the repose of passion."

"Whoever consults the light within himself (it is within everyone) excels at judging the object this light illumines."

"A work is perfectly finished only when nothing can be added to it and nothing taken away."

"The hordes of words that fill our books proclaim our ignorance, reveal the obscurities that flood our knowledge. If we were perfectly enlightened, our moral books would contain only maxims and our books on physics and spirituality would contain only axioms and facts. Everything else is clutter and shows no more than our gropings, our efforts, and our difficulties."

"He must not cultivate his friends, but cultivate his friendships within himself. They must be kept, cared for, watered."

"We always lose the friendship of those who lose our esteem."

"Reason leads man back to his instincts."

"Without fixed ideas, no fixed feelings. (Whoever has no constant opinions has no constant emotions.)"

"There is an infinity of things one does well only through necessity."

"The talkative person is one who speaks more than he thinks. Someone who thinks a great deal and talks a great deal is never considered a talkative person. The talkative man speaks from his mouth, the eloquent man speaks from his heart."

"Let's go; and follow your mistake."

"Anger, which purges resentment."

"To let the reader complete the symmetry between words and do no more than suggest it."

"One loves to say what he knows, the other loves to say what he thinks."

"The imagination is the eye of the soul."

"Politeness is the art of bearing boredom without being bored."

"When you write easily, you always think you have more talent than you really do."

"I love to see two truths at the same time. Every good comparison gives the mind this advantage."

"One must be an illusionary rather than a visionary."

"Illusions comes from heaven and mistakes come from us."

"All religions = all women."

"Divorce. Its existence and use should be determined only by the interests of the children."

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

"To compensate absence with memory."

"To seek wisdom rather than truth. It is more within our grasp."

"Charles, trapped in the cave of his period, was the laughing philosopher who could show others the way out. He spoke the language and played the role of Ariel - the mantle of Prospero ill became him, though he fancied it."

"We worked together for seven years. Tenniel and other artists declared I would not work with Carroll for seven weeks! I accepted the challenge, but I, for that purpose, adopted quite a new method. No artist is more matter-of-fact or businesslike than myself: to Carroll I was not Hy. F., but someone else, as he was someone else. I was wilful and erratic, bordering on insanity. We therefore got on splendidly."

"To have known the man was even as great a treat as to read his books. Lewis Carroll was as unlike any other man as his books were unlike any other author's books. It was a relief to meet the pure simple, innocent dreamer of children, after the selfish commercial mind of most authors."

"He was preoccupied with left and right, as with right and wrong."

"The star that danced at Carroll's birth In high exuberance of mirth Is dancing yet."

"Mr. Dodgson had a mathematical, a logical and a philosophical mind; and when these qualities are united to a love of the grotesque, the resultant fancies are sure to have a quite peculiar charm, a charm so much the greater because its source is subtle and eludes all attempts to grasp it. Sometimes he seems to revel in ideas which are not merely illogical but anti-logical."

"My mother is English, and as she was the one who read to us, my early world was A. A. Milne, Beatrix Potter, Kenneth Grahame, Lewis Carroll and Roald Dahl. None of them thought it necessary to protect children from darkness. On the contrary, they guided their readers right toward it. This gives one an enormous sense of being respected as a child. Not just of being trusted to handle things as they are, but to be accepted as not entirely good. To be recognized as having darkness within oneself, too."

"Dodgson was overcome by the beauty of Cologne Cathedral. I found him leaning against the rails of the Choir and sobbing like a child. When the verger came to show us over the chapels behind the Choir, he got out of the way, he said that he could not bear the harsh voice of the man in the presence of so much beauty."

"It was a soufflé of a speech, light, pleasant, digestible, and nourishing also."

"As one who was a boy for much of his adult life, he was by our standards something of a fuddy-duddy in his youth."

"Except for the straw boater for the river outings, a top hat was always worn and gloves carried."

"I shall always remember his beautiful twinkling eyes, full of love and laughter, as he told us wonderful stories."

"Cramped by his own charts, on a stream itself restricted, his genius directed him to the bottomless ocean of his books, and impelled him to dive under the graciously sparkling surface into the dark swirl of the icy depths."

"And how Lewis Carroll loved the country, the woods, and the hay, and wove into his magic stories the flowers and animals we saw there! Sitting with his back to a big tree-trunk, with one of us on his knee – sometimes one on each knee – he would tell us for hours, stories of the Pixies. And every time he came, he had fresh adventures to relate."

"Sometimes our friend’s face looked, when in repose, very sad and worn, and very different from the fun-lit face, with its charming eyes, that we saw when he was telling us those magic tales – tales which seem to have been woven right into the fabric of my life, and to have coloured it always with a tinge of his dreams."

"He impressed me mainly as belonging to the type of 'the University Man': a certain externalism of polite propriety, verging towards the conventional. I do not think in my presence he said anything 'funny' or quaint."

"In a stroke, Carroll anticipated key elements of multiple alignment, minimum distance alignment and local alignment that are now central to biological sequence analysis."

"Dodgson’s stammer was a good deal under control and could be used defensively (to gain time), or rhetorically to enhance the effect of a story, when the point was near."

"It may be taken as axiomatic that whatever Dodgson was thinking and feeling at the time found its way into his 'nonsense'."

"My beloved friend - one of the most unique and charming personalities of our time."

"And the exquisite nonsense he talked! It was like pages out of the Alices, only more delightful, for there was his own voice and smile to give the true charm to it all."

"His imaginatively posed photographs of children are a delight, and his hundreds of photographs of friends and celebrities provide us with much insight into the Victorian world around him."