lewis-carroll on S Anand

Quotes from Alice in Wonderland

Wed, 20 Dec 2006 12:00:00 +0000

From Lewis Caroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. These are the quotes I found most… how shall I put it… eye-opening. Paradigm-shifting.

“..the patriotic archbishop of Canterbury found it advisable-”
“Found WHAT?” said the Duck.
“Found IT,” the Mouse replied rather crossly. “Of course you know what ‘it’ means.”
“I know what ‘it’ means well enough, when I find a thing,” said the Duck: “it’s generally a frog or a worm. The question is, what did the archbishop find?”

“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.”

“To begin with,” said the Cat, “a dog’s not mad. Do you grant that?”
“I suppose so,” said Alice.
“Well, then,” the Cat went on, “you see a dog growls when it’s angry, and wags it’s tail when it’s pleased. Now I growl when I’m pleased, and wag my tail when I’m angry. Therefore I’m mad.”

“I can’t believe THAT!” said Alice.
“Can’t you?” said the Queen in a pitying tone. “Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.”
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 believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!”

“I can’t remember things before they happen.”
“It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,” the Queen remarked.

“Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else - if you ran 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 you in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means 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.”

“Fan her head!” the Red Queen anxiously interrupted. “She’ll be feverish after so much thinking.”

“Five nights are warmer than one night, then?” Alice ventured to ask.
“Five times as warm, of course.”
“But they should also be five times as cold, by the same rule - “
“Just so!” cried the Red Queen. “Five times as warm, AND five times as cold - just as I’m five times as rich as you are, AND five times as clever!”

Comments

unknown 8 Apr 2007 5:27 pm: could you put the part from Alice in Wonderland where TwiddleDee and TwiddleDum are telling the story about the oysters when the walrus says somehthing like, The time has the walrus said to speak of other things… thanks
jolene 20 Dec 2006 12:00 pm: the time has come, my little friends, to talk of other things. of shoes and ships and sealing wax, cabbages and kings. and why the sea is boiling hot, and whether pigs have wings, calloo-callay, come, run away. with cabages and kings!
johnna 18 Sep 2008 2:08 am: i adore every quote from this story. my favorite is the Cat. i just had to say how much i get out of reading your quotes. much oblige!
Captain Whitney 17 Apr 2009 5:15 am: Insanity, pure and simple. Isn’t it beautiful?
courtney 14 Mar 2010 4:10 am: Off with his head! I almost love beheadings as much as I love caviar
Moon 1 Jan 2010 8:31 am: Twinkle twinkle little bat, how I wonder what your at. Up above the world you fly, like a tea tray in the sky. But I don’t want to go amongst mad people. Oh you cant help that, we’re all mad here.
Aditya 20 Jun 2012 7:01 am: “Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else – if you ran 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 you in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”

Such is life and inflation!

Moria poetry

Thu, 08 Aug 2002 12:00:00 +0000

The first link I found on Google when searching for “Moria” was Moria poetry. Now, Moria is this text-based game that I used to play until day-before. I like it. I don’t like poetry. Still, I gave it a shot, and before long, I read stuff like

“Buffa in the seria
of my sights split infinitive sunrise
cicadas and more cicadas.”

Sounds Vogon. No offence meant. But the only poetry I’ve enjoyed till date is Alice’s The Mouse’s Tail.

Science jokes

Tue, 26 Mar 2002 12:00:00 +0000

Science jokes. Includes several old classics like “The four branches of arithmetic - ambition, distraction, uglification and derision.” (Lewis Caroll).

Oxford

Sat, 21 Oct 2000 12:00:00 +0000

We visited Oxford in the morning. It was a tour with the Indian YMCA. Though I slept through most of the beauty of the English country side, Oxford itself was a classic example. We went up a tower from which we could see most of Oxford. It was a small town, (about an hour-and-half from London) with lots of spires and quite an old architecture. The Oxford University is split into many colleges, Magdalen (pronounced Maud-len) being the most famous of the lot. Lewis Caroll (of Alice in Wonderland) and Tolkien (of Lord of the Rings) hailed from here. We went first to Christchurch college. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything as beautiful as the grass there, with the possible exception of Hampton Court Palace. From there, we took a walk along a river to Magdalen college.

The river was practically filled with people rowing. It was a saturday, so I guess everyone was practicing, but even then, there were far too many boats. Looks like EVERYONE at Oxford has an elective in rowing or something. It was fun to hear the coaches shout instructions over a microphone to those rowing. After walking along the river for about a mile, we learnt that Magdalen was somewhere else. Not enough time to see it, so we just walked back. On the way we found this troupe, the Huckleberrys, who were performing on the road, opposite to a MacDonald’s. They were even selling CDs of their album. The music was pretty fast, and nice too.

I stepped in to the MacDonald’s for some french fries. The prices were quite reasonable. That reminded me of one of the World Economy classes. We all know that Purchasing Power Parity should determine the exchange rate in the long run. (Those who do not are advised to attend an elementary course on International Finance at IIM-B.) Now, it appears that the OECD estimate of the Japanese Yen against the dollar says that the Yen is overvalued by at least 60%. A World Bank study says its overvalued by 50%. These studies are based on PPP. However, if you look at the price of a Big Mac in the US and in Japan, it turns out that the Yen is perfectly valued.

OK, coincidence, you say. What then of Thomas Friedman’s “Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention” which asserts that no two countries have fought a major war since after both of them have gotten their MacDonald’s? (Yugoslavia doesn’t count. They fought the NATO, so to speak, which is not a country.)

The next leg of the trip was Stratford upon Avon, which is Shakespeare’s birthplace. Being the uncultured bumpkin that I am, the bulk of my Shakespearean knowledge stems from Jeffrey Archer’s “Shall We Tell The President”. Anyway, we strolled over to Shakespeare’s birthplace, but refrained from paying a 5 pound entry fee. Apparantly, in Britain, you pay to see EVERYTHING. They make more money out of tourism than any other single industry. Then we went to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, which is the ‘original’ Shakespearean drama company. But the highlight of the trip was the “Teddy Bear Museum”.

Gyles Brandreth had set up this Teddy Bear Museum in 1984, and it had teddy bears from all over the world. Tony Blair’s teddy bear was there on vacation. Margaret Thatcher’s was there. Vivien Leigh’s was there. You name it. It was wonderful, especially since we could cuddle the teddies. They had a teddy library too, stocked with some masterpieces:

Lateral Thinking, by Edward de Bruno
The Goldilocks Conspiracy, by Little Bear
Vanity Bear, by Thackeray
Dr. Spock’s Cub & Bear Care, of the Medibear series
The Hunchbear of Notredame, by Victor Hugo
Bear Watching, by Desmond Forrest
The Complete Works of Shakesbear
Encyclopaedia Beartannica

I’d take up a job there, if they’d offer me one.