All Quotes

"He was the kind of man who kept a diagram showing where you sat when you dined with him and what you ate, lest he serve you the same dish when you came again."

"The Reverend C. L. Dodgson had no life. He passed through the world so lightly that he left no print. He melted so passively into Oxford that he is invisible."

"For some reason, we know not what, his childhood was sharply severed. It lodged in him whole and entire. He could not disperse it."

"Those of us who knew him best remember him as the kind and loving friend, who contributed so much to the happiness of our lives, and whom we shall truly mourn as one of the best of men."

"Never, surely, did any man make more friends among children than he did."

"It was impossible for Mr. Dodgson to pass by the smallest opportunity of speaking to a child, and his winning manner gained the hearts, and generally the tongues, of all whom he met."

"In his estimation, logic was a most important study for everyone. No pains were spared to make it clear and interesting to those who would but consent to learn of him."

"The arrangement of his papers, the classification of his photographs, the order of his books, the lists and registers that he kept about everything imaginable - all this betokened his well-ordered mind."

"Everything that he did must be done in the most perfect manner possible; and the same care and attention would be given to other people's affairs, if in any way he could assist or give them pleasure."

"Mr. Dodgson had a great horror of being "lionised," and ingeniously silenced his tormentors by representing to them, indirectly, that "lewis Carroll," the author of "Alice," and "Mr. Dodgson" were two separate persons."

"Never was there a more delightful host for a "dinner-party," or one who took such pains for your entertainment, fresh and interesting to the last."

"With all his humour he took a serious view of life, and had a very grave vein running through his mind. The simplicity of his faith, his deep reverence, and his child-like faith in the goodness of God were striking."

"Mr. Dodgson did not often preach, yet, when he did, he had the power to impress and captivate his hearers. There was no need for him to write out a sermon. Full of earnestness in his subject, the words came without difficulty. Neither was there any danger of his wandering from the direct point, for before the eye of his ordered and logical mind, his subject would arise in the form of a diagram to be worked out point by point."

"The benefaction which he bestowed upon the world is still with us - the benefaction of a wit that was never sarcastic, a humour that was always sympathetic; and the embodiment in himself of the three essentials of Life: Faith, the light by which to live; Hope, the goal for which to labour; Charity, the wide horizon, to which his soul looked out in love."

"How did it happen that the Reverend Charles Dodgson, thirty years of age, lecturer on geometry at Christ Church, Oxford, hitherto remarkable chiefly for his precision, on a single July afternoon, while rowing up the Isis with a brother don and three little girls, parthenogenetically gave birth to one of the most famous stories of all time?"

"Charles Dodgson, born a romantic and a rationalist, would have fitted more easily into the world of Voltaire and Goethe than into the one that received him."

"Anger makes us adroit."

"Rich deposits of perversity crop up in his humor - and his sudden attacks of virtue or sentimentality midway through his own or other persons' jests hint that his imp has suggested to him something particularly unfunny and unpardonable."

"Dodgson of course was a meticulous traveler. He packed each article separately, well wrapped in paper to twice its bulk."

"In some respects, the life of a censor is more exhilarating than that of an emperor. The best the emperor can do is snip off the heads of men and women, who are mere mortals. The censor can decapitate ideas which but for him might have lived forever."

"For a person in rugged health who is not particularly dressed up and does not want to write a letter or read the newspaper, we can imagine few diversions more enjoyable than to have a child turned loose upon him."

"The average editor cannot escape feeling that telling a writer to do something is almost the same thing as performing it himself."

"The body of the Unknown Soldier has come home, but his spirit will wander with that of his brothers. There will be no rest for his soul until the great democracy of death has been translated into the unity of life."

"The artist has never been a dictator, since he understands better than anybody else the variations in human personality."

"There is no proselyter half so energetic as the hard-shelled atheist."

"Nobody talks so constantly about God as those who insist that there is no God."

"Posterity is as likely to be wrong as anyone else."

"Appeasers believe that if you keep on throwing steaks to a tiger, the tiger will become a vegetarian."

"We comprehend the earth only when we have known heaven. Without the spiritual world the material world is a disheartening enigma."

"Some find activity only in repose, and others repose only in movement."

"We use up in the passions the stuff that was given us for happiness."

"God has commanded time to console the afflicted."

"When you go in search of honey you must expect to be stung by bees."

"The direction of the mind is more important than its progress."

"He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet."

"It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it."

"Ask the young. They know everything."

"It is easy to understand God as long as you don't try to explain him."

"Pleasures are always children, pains always have wrinkles."

"Eyes raised towards Heaven are always beautiful, whatever they be."

"Good impulses are naught, unless they become good actions."

"All luxury corrupts either the morals or the taste."

"When I see young people such as those of our day, I think that Heaven wishes to destroy the world."

"To be capable of respect is, in these days, almost as rare as to be worthy of it."

"Le génie commence les beaux ouvrages, mais le travail seul les achève."

"To teach is to learn twice over."

"He who has no poetry in himself will find poetry in nothing."

"Thought forms in the soul the same way clouds form in the air."

"The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress."

"It is not facts, but rumors that cause emotions among the people. What is believed creates everything."