Alice In Wonderland is one of my favorite books of all time. I grew up reading it, and of course, watching the famous Disney movie.
It wasn’t until a recent re-reading of the book that I realized how deep and truly inspiring this classic work of fiction really is.
Now for some people, the dialog in the book can be confusing. Though to me, it’s what I love most about it — the fact that it can be read on many different levels.
You have the storyline (most children love the wonder and “nonsense” world Alice gets caught up in), but if you pay attention, every single interaction she has in this “mad world” can make you really think, and see the world with a different perspective.
Let me give you some facts about Alice In Wonderland:
According to Wikipedia Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (commonly shortened to Alice in Wonderland) is an 1865 novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll, who was an English writer, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon, and photographer.
The story tells of a girl named Alice falling through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures. The tale plays with logic, giving the story lasting popularity with adults as well as with children. It is considered to be one of the best examples of the literary nonsense genre.
Just like a lot of people in the world, I’m a huge fan. And I’d love to share with you my 15 favorite quotes, or passages, from the book.
Some to me are inspiring, some motivational, and the rest, just plain fun if and quirky. If you allow yourself to go embrace the deeper side of it all, you might just see some philosophy.
1. “But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked. “Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.” “How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice. “You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”
2. “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,” said the Cat. “I don’t much care where–” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat. “–so long as I get SOMEWHERE,” Alice added as an explanation.
“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”
3. “I could tell you my adventures – beginning from this morning,” said Alice a little timidly: “but it’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.’”
4. The White Rabbit put on his spectacles. “Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?” he asked. “Begin at the beginning,” the King said gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”
5. Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said: “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “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.”
6. “Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else — if you ran very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.”
“A slow sort of country!” said the 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!”
7. “Curiouser and curiouser!”
8. Alice: “How long is forever?” White Rabbit: “Sometimes, just one second.”
9. “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?”
10. “The hurrier I go, the behinder I get.”
11. “There’s a large mustard-mine near here. And the moral of that is — the more there is of mine, the less there is of yours.”
12. “Yes, that’s it!” said the Hatter with a sigh, “it’s always tea time.”
13. “I can’t explain myself, I’m afraid, Sir, because I’m not myself you see.”
14. “If everybody minded their own business,” the Duchess said, in a hoarse growl, “the world would go around a great deal faster than it does.”
15. “I wonder if I’ve been changed in the night? Let me think. Was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I’m not the same, the next question is ‘Who in the world am I?’ Ah, that’s the great puzzle!”
