One is not unoccupied because one is absorbed. There is visible labor and invisible labor. To contemplate is to labor, to think is to act.

Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way.

Oh! I always deserve the best treatment, because I never put up with any other; and, therefore, you must give me a plain, direct answer.

I like good strong words that mean something, and I can’t abide the little elegant ones that say nothing at all; I had rather have a single honest sentence, rough and true, than a page of silken phrases that slip through your fingers and leave you empty-handed when you most want help.

If people care more for my clothes than they do for me, I don’t wish to see them; for I’d rather be what I am, and speak my mind, and do my work, than sit in silk and be stared at for a doll, when there’s honest living to be earned and honest words to be said.

That’s just why—because talent isn’t genius, and no amount of energy can make it so. I want to be great, or nothing.

I am all in a sea of wonders; I doubt; I fear; I think strange things which I dare not tell to my own soul. And yet I must not be weak; there is work for me to do, and others to help, and I will be of use.

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.

“What is the use of a book,” thought Alice, “without pictures or conversations?”

Everything’s got a moral, if only you can find it.

‘I can’t explain myself, I’m afraid, sir,’ said Alice, ‘because I’m not myself, you see.’

God has supplied man with the intelligence that enables him to overcome the limitations of natural conditions. I furnished myself with a light.