Best Lewis Carroll Quotes from Selected Works with Chapter Numbers

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known by his pen nam Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet, and mathematician. His most notable works are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass (1871). He was noted for his facility with word play, logic, and fantasy. His poems Jabberwocky (1871) and The Hunting of the Snark (1876) are classified in the genre of literary nonsense. 

Below, find the best quotes from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass with their corresponding chapter numbers! 

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865)

• Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, "and what is the use of a book," thought Alice, "without pictures or conversations?"
• Chapter 1

• For, you see, so many out-of-the-way things had happened lately, that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible. 
• Chapter 1

• She generally gave herself very good advice (though she very seldom followed it). 
• Chapter 1

• "But it's no use now," thought poor Alice, "to pretend to be two people! Why, there's hardly enough of me left to make one respectable person!"
• Chapter 1

• "Curiouser and curiouser!" 
• Chapter 2

• "Dear, dear! How queer everything is to-day! And yesterday things went on just as usual. I wonder if I've 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!"
• Chapter 2

• "Speak English!" said the Eaglet. "I don't know the meaning of half those long words, and, what's more, I don't believe you do either!"
• Chapter 3

• "Why," said the Dodo, "the best way to explain it is to do it." 
• Chapter 3

• "It is much pleasanter at home," thought poor Alice, "where one wasn't always growing larger and smaller, and being ordered about by mice and rabbits. I almost wish I hadn't gone down that rabbit-hole—and yet—and yet—it's rather curious, you know, this sort of life! I do wonder what can have happened to me! When I used to read fairy tales. I fancied that kind of thing never happened, and now here I am in the middle of one! There ought to be a book written about me, that there ought! And when I grow up, I'll write one—but I'm grown up now," she added in a sorrowful tone; "at least there's no room to grow any more here." 
• Chapter 4

• "Who are you?" said the Caterpillar. This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, "I—I hardly know, Sir, just at present—at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then." "What do you mean by that?" said the Caterpillar, sternly. "Explain yourself!" "I ca'n't explain myself, I'm afraid, Sir," said Alice, "because I'm not myself, you see."
• Chapter 5

• "If everybody minded their own business," the Duchess said, in a hoarse growl, "the world would go round a deal faster than it does."
• Chapter 6

• "Come, it's pleased so far," thought Alice, and she went on. "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."
• Chapter 6

• "Visit either you like; they're both mad." "But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked. "Oh, you ca'n'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."
• Chapter 6

• "Then you should say what you mean," the March Hare went on. "I do," Alice hastily replied; "at least—at least I mean what I say—that's the same thing, you know."
• Chapter 7

• Alice sighed wearily. "I think you might do something better with the time," she said, "than wasting it in asking riddles that have no answers." "If you knew Time as well as I do," said the Hatter, "you wouldn't talk about wasting it."
• Chapter 7

• "You know you say tings are 'much of a muchness'—did you ever see such a thing as a drawing of a muchness!" "Really, now you ask me," said Alice, very much confused, "I don't think—" "Then you shouldn't talk," said the Hatter.
• Chapter 7

• "Off with their heads!"
• Chapter 8

• "Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it."
• Chapter 9

• "I don't see how he can ever finish, if he doesn't begin."
• Chapter 9

• "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."
• Chapter 10

• "If you don't sign it," said the King, "that only makes the matter worse. You must have meant some mischief, or else you'd have signed your name like an honest man."
• Chapter 12

• "Begin at the beginning," the King said, very gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop."
• Chapter 12

Through the Looking-Glass (1871)

• "It seems very pretty," she said when she had finished it, "but it's rather hard to understand!" (You see she didn't like to confess, even to herself, that she couldn't make it out at all.) "Sometimes it seems to fill my head with ideas—only I don't exactly know what they are!"
• Chapter 1

• "It's no use talking about it," Alice said, looking up at the house and pretending it was arguing with her. "I'm not going in again yet. I know I should have to get through the Looking-glass again—back into the old room—and there'd be an end of all my adventures!"
• Chapter 2

• Alice attended to all these directions, and explained as well as she could, that she had lost her way. "I don't know what you mean by your way," said the Queen: "all the ways about here belong to me—but why did you come out here at all?" she added in a kinder tone. "Curtsey while you're thinking what to say. It saves time."
• Chapter 2

• "You may call it 'nonsense' if you like," she said, "but I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!" 
• Chapter 2

• "It's a great huge game of chess that's being played—all over the world—if this is the world at all, you know. Oh, what fun it is! How I wish I was one of them! I wouldn't mind being a Pawn, if only I might join—though of course I should like to be a Queen, best."
• Chapter 2

• "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!"
• Chapter 2

• "Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic."
• Chapter 4

• "You know very well you're not real." "I am real," said Alice, and began to cry. "You wo'n't make yourself a bit realler by crying," Tweedledee remarked: "there's nothing to cry about." "If I wasn't real," Alice said—half laughing through her tears, it all seemed so ridiculous—"I shouldn't be able to cry." "I hope you don't suppose those are real tears?" 
• Chapter 4

• "You couldn't have it if you did want it," the Queen said. "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 ca'n't," said the Queen. "It's jam every other day: to-day isn't any other day, you know."
• Chapter 5

• "It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards."
• Chapter 5

• "Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
• Chapter 5

• "Must a name mean something?' Alice asked doubtfully. "Of course it must," Humpty Dumpty said with a short laugh; "my name means the shape I am–and a good handsome shape it is, too. With a name like yours, you might be any shape, almost."
• Chapter 6

• "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." 
• Chapter 6

• "I only wish I had such eyes," the King remarked in a fretful tone. "To be able to see Nobody! And at that distance too! Why, it's as much as I can do to see real people, by this light!"
• Chapter 7

• "If you'll believe in me, I'll believe in you. Is that a bargain?"
• Chapter 7

• "So I wasn't dreaming after all," she said to herself, "unless—unless we're all part of the same dream."
• Chapter 8

• "What does it matter where my body happens to be?" he said. "My mind goes on working all the same."
• Chapter 8

• "Always speak the truth—think before you speak—and write it down afterwards."
• Chapter 9

• Which do you think it was?
• Chapter 11

• Children yet, the tale to hear, Eager eye and willing ear. Lovingly shall nestle near. In a Wonderland they lie, Dreaming as the days go by, Dreaming as the summers die: ever drifting down the stream—Lingering in the golden gleam—Life, what is it but a dream?
• Chapter 11