“Of Cabbages and Kings.” The Wisdom of Lewis Carroll

Do you feel like you’ve tumbled down the rabbit hole? I do most every time I check the news, which I avoid as much as possible.Lewis Carrol speaks to this present day craziness.

“I don’t think…” then you shouldn’t talk, said the Hatter.”  (Or govern, Beth adds)

“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” ~Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Me too.

Alice: “How long is forever?”
White Rabbit: “Sometimes, just one second.”

“Curiouser and curiouser.”  (Indeed)

“The hurrider I go, the behinder I get.” (Always)

“If you drink much from a bottle marked ‘poison’ it is certain to disagree with you sooner or later.”

Undoubtedly. And remember to follow the white rabbit. I have a particular fondness for rabbits, and if you follow one as it scampers about, it’s bound to lead to an adventure. (Unless, it’s riding on the back of a turtle.) 

Speaking of which, “No, no! The adventures first, explanations take such a dreadful time.” Alice in Wonderland 

(oh yes. Skip the boring stuff)

“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, it wouldn’t be. And what it wouldn’t be, it would. You see?” ***I totally get that quote. We’re living in it now.

“Begin at the beginning,” the King said, very gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.” ― Lewis Carroll  

(Fitting quote for Beth in her writing cave

‘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.’

“Have I gone mad?

I’m afraid so, but let me tell you something, the best people usually are.” ―Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

“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.”

“I don’t much care where –”

“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.” (Amen to that)

“I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.”  (It happens)

“Mad Hatter: “Why is a raven like a writing-desk?”

“Have you guessed the riddle yet?” the Hatter said, turning to Alice again.

“No, I give it up,” Alice replied: “What’s the answer?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” said the Hatter.” (I’m puzzling over this one)
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

“The time has come,” the walrus said, “to talk of many things: Of shoes and ships – and sealing wax – of cabbages and kings.”  (Such wise words)

“I’m not strange, weird, off, nor crazy, my reality is just different from yours.”

“How puzzling all these changes are! I’m never sure what I’m going to be, from one minute to another.”  (Me either, on some days)

“I’d give all the wealth that years have piled, the slow result of life’s decay,
To be once more a little child
for one bright summer day.”
― Lewis Carroll

(Image of two grandbabies)

“Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.”
― Lewis Carroll, Jabberwocky 

My dear father can recite theJabberwocky.  When the severe windstorm swept through the Shenandoah Valley the summer before last, daughter Elise and I huddled in the dark in our ‘safe’ spot in the house and she read it aloud with a flashlight while the wind raged. Also, other Lewis Carroll quotes. Somehow, it seemed fitting. And so, with this profundity, I leave you.