38 Alice In Wonderland Quotes To Help You Make Sense Of The Nonsense In Life
And you thought it was a story for children.
Getty Many of us grew up with Disney's "Alice In Wonderland" as the defining inspiration for our living room tea parties. But the best Alice in Wonderland quotes, those that have stuck with us through the years, are just as likely, if not more, to come from the enduring classic novels "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" or "Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There" written by Lewis Carroll (real name: Charles Lutwidge Dodgson).
And while we may remember that both Disney versions — the 1951 animated film and the 2010 live action version directed by Tim Burton — are based on Carroll's classic novels, we tend to do so with a wink-wink, nudge-nudge to the portion of Alice's history forever associated with a hookah smoking caterpillar and LSD reminiscent treats and drinks. But there are many elements of Carroll's work that go far beyond flippant reference to a while drug trip.
Notably, Alice is considered by many to be one of the best examples of the literary nonsense genre, "a type of fiction that often defies common sense and creates an entirely new world through the manipulation of language [which often] constructs then deconstructs the very meaning of words and, through this process, reveals how arbitrary the semantics (or meaning) of language can be."
So while the original Alice is jam-packed with meaning, not only is it impossible to fully interpret, it is an absolute gold-mine of life truths that ring true with remarkable clarity even today, more than 150 years later!
It's no wonder then that the many versions of Alice's tale include some of the most famous and inspirational quotes of all time. That girl Alice knows what's up, even when she has no idea which direction she's headed in.
I know can relate to that feeling. How about you? If you're not sure, just check out the Alice In Wonderland quotes below and I'm sure you'll soon be on board.
38 Best Alice In Wonderland Quotes on Life, Time and Madness
Alice In Wonderland Quotes from "Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll (1865)
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.'
2. “Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle!”
3. "I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.”
4. “'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.'
5. "If everybody minded their own business ... the world would go round a deal faster than it does.”
6. "'That’s very curious!' she thought. 'But everything’s curious today.'"
7. “'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."
8. "For, with all her knowledge of history, Alice had no very clear notion how long ago anything had happened."
9. “Curiouser and curiouser!” cried Alice.
10. "So she sat on, with closed eyes, and half believed herself in Wonderland, though she knew she had but to open them again, and all would change to dull reality."
11. "No, no! The adventures first ... explanations take such a dreadful time.”
12. "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."
13. “'It’s really dreadful,' she muttered to herself, 'the way all the creatures argue. It’s enough to drive one crazy!'”
14. "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!"
15. “Begin at the beginning ... and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”
16. "And the moral of that is — ‘Be what you would seem to be' — or if you’d like it put more simply —‘Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise."
17. "'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!'”
18. “'Tut, tut, child!' said the Duchess. 'Everything’s got a moral, if only you can find it.'"
19. "Alice sighed wearily. 'I think you might do something better with the time,' she said, 'than waste 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.'"
20. "It was all very well to say 'Drink me,' but the wise little Alice was not going to do that in a hurry. 'No, I’ll look first,' she said, 'and see whether it’s marked ‘poison’ or not'; for she had read several nice little histories about children who had got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts and other unpleasant things, all because they would not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them: such as, that a red-hot poker will burn you if you hold it too long; and that if you cut your finger very deeply with a knife, it usually bleeds; and she had never forgotten that, if you drink much from a bottle marked 'poison,' it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later."
21. “'Really, now you ask me,' said Alice, very much confused, 'I don’t think —' 'Then you shouldn’t talk,' said the Hatter."
Alice in Wonderland quotes from "Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There" by Lewis Carroll (1871)
22. “'Well, now that we have seen each other,' said the Unicorn, 'if you’ll believe in me, I’ll believe in you.'"
23. "Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
24. "'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.’"
25. "‘— but there’s one great advantage in it, that one’s memory works both ways.’ 'I’m sure mine only works one way,’ Alice remarked. ‘I can’t remember things before they happen.’ 'It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,’ the Queen remarked."
26. "‘If you think we’re wax-works,’ he said, ‘you ought to pay, you know. Wax-works weren’t made to be looked at for nothing, nohow!’ 'Contrariwise ... ‘if you think we’re alive, you ought to speak.’
27. "I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, “Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again."
28. "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!"
Alice in Wonderland quotes from Disney's "Alice In Wonderland" (1951)
29. "It would be so nice if something would make sense for a change!"
30. "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, wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?"
31. “But that’s just the trouble with me. I give myself very good advice, but I very seldom follow it.”
32. “Ah, but that’s the point! If you don’t think, you shouldn’t talk!”
33. “Curtsey while you’re thinking. It saves time.”
34. "Be patient is very good advice, but the waiting makes me curious."
Alice in Wonderland quotes from Tim Burton's "Alice In Wonderland" (2010)
35. "You need to be much more... muchier. You've lost your muchness."
36. "Mad Hatter: 'Have I gone mad?' Alice: 'I'm afraid so. You're entirely bonkers. But I'll tell you a secret: All the best people are.'"
37. "Mad Hatter: 'But you’d have to be half-mad to dream me up.' Alice: 'I must be then.'"
38. "Alice: 'But this is impossible.' The Mad Hatter: 'Only if you believe it is.'"
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Deputy Editor Arianna Jeret, MA/MSW, has been featured in Cosmopolitan, The Huffington Post, Yahoo Style, MSN, Fox News, Bustle, Parents and more. Find her on Twitter and Instagram for more.