The oddest Alice in Wonderland quotes are not random. Nearly every strange line in Lewis Carroll’s two books is a logic or language joke with a rule underneath it: a word taken literally, a grammar taken too seriously, or time and memory run backwards. Below are fourteen of the weirdest lines from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, copied from the Gutenberg texts, each with its chapter and the trick that makes it work.
Alice in Wonderland quotes about who you are
1. Curiouser and curiouser
“Curiouser and curiouser!” cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English)
Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, chapter II, “The Pool of Tears”
The famous phrase arrives with its own correction. Carroll cannot let Alice’s grammar slip without noting it, and the bracket is as funny as the line. She is growing so tall that she says goodbye to her own feet.
2. The great puzzle
But if I’m not the same, the next question is, Who in the world am I? Ah, that’s the great puzzle!
Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, chapter II
Alice tests her identity the way a child would, by checking whether she might have turned into one of her friends. She tries her multiplication tables and gets them wrong (four times five is twelve
), which proves nothing. The question is a philosopher’s one, and Carroll lets a child treat it as practical; in the sequel she tells the White Queen she is seven and a half exactly.
3. Not myself
“I can’t explain myself, I’m afraid, sir,” said Alice, “because I’m not myself, you see.” / “I don’t see,” said the Caterpillar.
Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, chapter V, “Advice from a Caterpillar”
Alice uses not myself as an idiom and you see as filler. The Caterpillar takes both literally. This is the basic Wonderland move: creatures who refuse to understand figures of speech, which leaves Alice looking like the irrational one.
4. We’re all mad here
“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”
Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, chapter VI, “Pig and Pepper”
Asked how he knows Alice is mad, the Cheshire Cat replies that she must be, or she would not have come. It is a perfectly circular argument, and Alice notices. The Cat then proves its own madness with a comparison to a dog, which is sound logic built on a silly premise.
The Mad Tea-Party
5. The raven and the writing-desk
The Hatter opened his eyes very wide on hearing this; but all he said was, “Why is a raven like a writing-desk?”
Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, chapter VII, “A Mad Tea-Party”
The most famous riddle in children’s literature has no answer in the book. A few pages later Alice gives up and asks, and the Hatter admits he has not the slightest idea. The joke is on the reader who goes looking for one.
6. Say what you mean
“Not the same thing a bit!” said the Hatter. “You might just as well say that ‘I see what I eat’ is the same thing as ‘I eat what I see’!”
Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, chapter VII
Alice has just claimed that meaning what you say and saying what you mean are the same thing. The Hatter and March Hare reply with a run of reversed sentences, and they are right: the converse of a statement is not the statement. It is a logic lesson delivered as rudeness.
7. Always six o’clock
“And ever since that,” the Hatter went on in a mournful tone, “he won’t do a thing I ask! It’s always six o’clock now.”
Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, chapter VII
Time, in this chapter, is a person, and the Hatter has offended him by being accused of murdering the time
while singing to the Queen. So it is always teatime, and the party moves round the table to clean cups instead of washing up. An idiom, taken literally, becomes a punishment.
Lessons, morals and trials
8. Ambition, Distraction, Uglification
“Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with,” the Mock Turtle replied; “and then the different branches of Arithmetic—Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.”
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Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, chapter IX, “The Mock Turtle’s Story”
Reading and writing, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, all bent by a letter or two. The Gryphon is astonished that Alice has never heard of uglifying. The puns are a schoolchild’s revenge on the curriculum.
9. Everything’s got a moral
“Tut, tut, child!” said the Duchess. “Everything’s got a moral, if only you can find it.”
Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, chapter IX
Victorian children’s books were full of morals, and Carroll gives the habit to a Duchess who cannot stop. A page later she produces Take care of the sense, and the sounds will take care of themselves.
It sounds like a proverb, which is the whole joke.
10. Sentence first
“No, no!” said the Queen. “Sentence first—verdict afterwards.”
Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, chapter XII, “Alice’s Evidence”
The trial of the Knave of Hearts ends with the procedure reversed, and Alice finally loses patience: Stuff and nonsense!
Moments later the whole pack rises into the air and comes flying down upon her, and she wakes on the bank with her head in her sister’s lap. Carroll’s dream ends the moment the dreamer stops accepting its rules.
Weird lines from Through the Looking-Glass
11. Running to stay in place
“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!”
Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, chapter II, “The Garden of Live Flowers”
The Red Queen and Alice have been sprinting, and the trees have not moved. Looking-Glass country is marked out just like a large chessboard
, and everything runs in reverse, so here it is simply the physics of a mirror: to stand still, run.
12. Contrariwise
“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.”
Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, chapter IV, “Tweedledum and Tweedledee”
A perfect parody of conditional reasoning, and it is technically valid. Tweedledee moves from the subjunctive to plain fact and declares victory. You can hear the author enjoying the grammar of it.
13. Jam to-morrow
“The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday—but never jam to-day.”
Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, chapter V, “Wool and Water”
The White Queen offers to take Alice on as her maid, which she offers as Twopence a week, and jam every other day
, and then explains that to-day is never any other day. In the same conversation she explains the effect of living backwards
, which lets her remember things before they happen, and claims to have believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast
.
14. Humpty Dumpty’s words
“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.”
Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, chapter VI, “Humpty Dumpty”
He has just used glory to mean a nice knock-down argument
. Alice asks whether you can make words mean so many different things, and he replies that the question is which is to be master. He treats words as employees, and pays them extra when they work hard.
Quick reference
| Quote fragment | Book | Chapter |
|---|---|---|
| “Curiouser and curiouser!” | Wonderland | II |
| “Who in the world am I?” | Wonderland | II |
| “because I’m not myself, you see” | Wonderland | V |
| “we’re all mad here” | Wonderland | VI |
| “Why is a raven like a writing-desk?” | Wonderland | VII |
| “I see what I eat” | Wonderland | VII |
| “It’s always six o’clock now” | Wonderland | VII |
| “Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision” | Wonderland | IX |
| “Everything’s got a moral” | Wonderland | IX |
| “Sentence first—verdict afterwards” | Wonderland | XII |
| “to keep in the same place” | Looking-Glass | II |
| “Contrariwise” | Looking-Glass | IV |
| “never jam to-day” | Looking-Glass | V |
| “just what I choose it to mean” | Looking-Glass | VI |
The rules under the nonsense
Sort the list by trick and three families appear. Some lines take idioms literally (not myself, murdering the time). Some reverse the order of things (sentence before verdict, memory that works backwards, running to stand still). And some are pure logic, played straight until it becomes absurd (the Hatter’s reversed sentences, Tweedledee’s Contrariwise). Alice is the only character who expects the world to make ordinary sense, which is why she so often looks like the odd one out.
For more strange sentences from serious books, see the strangest sentences in classic literature, and for a writer whose logic is just as strict and far less comforting, Kafka’s most unsettling lines. Readers who like a line with its scene attached may also enjoy our Dorian Gray quotes.
One detail to look for when you reread chapter VII of Through the Looking-Glass: when Alice says she sees nobody on the road, the White King envies her eyesight, because he would love to be able to see Nobody, and at that distance too.
Sources
- Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Project Gutenberg eBook #11: gutenberg.org/ebooks/11
- Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, Project Gutenberg eBook #12: gutenberg.org/ebooks/12
More to read
- Gogol’s Strangest Sentences: The Nose, The Overcoat and Dead Souls
- The Strangest Lines in Moby-Dick
- Kafka’s Most Unsettling Lines, and Where They Come From
Looking for lines from modern novels? Browse Lucy’s own quote collection.