There's nothing a well-regulated child hates so much as regularity. I believe a really healthy boy would thoroughly enjoy Greek Grammar--if only he might stand on his head to learn it!
Will you walk a little faster? said a whiting to a snail, "There's a porpoise close behind us, and he's treading on my tail! See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance: They are waiting on the shingle--will you come and join the dance?
And how many hours a day did you do lessons?' said Alice, in a hurry to change the subject. Ten hours the first day,' said the Mock Turtle: 'nine the next, and so on.' What a curious plan!' exclaimed Alice. That's the reason they're called lessons,' the Gryphon remarked: 'because they lessen from day to day.
But then, shall I never get any older than I am now? That'll be a comfort, one way -- never to be an old woman -- but then -- always to have lessons to learn!
The Red Queen shook her head. "You may call it 'nonsense' if you like," she said, "but I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!
'Speak when you're spoken to!' The Queen sharply interrupted her. 'But if everybody obeyed that rule,' said Alice, who was always ready for a little argument, 'and if you only spoke when you were spoken to, and the other person always waited for you to begin, you see nobody would ever say anything, so that - ' 'Ridiculous!' cried the Queen. 'Why, don't you see, child - ' here she broke off with a frown, and, after thinking for a minute, suddenly changed the subject of the conversation.
I have had prayers answered - most strangely so sometimes - but I think our Heavenly Father's loving-kindness has been even more evident in what He has refused me.
Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, “and what is the use of a book,” thought Alice, “without pictures or conversation?
And thus they give the time, that Nature meant for peaceful sleep and meditative snores, to ceaseless din and mindless merriment and waste of shoes and floors.
I maintain that any writer of a book is fully authorised in attaching any meaning he likes to a word or phrase he intends to use. If I find an author saying, at the beginning of his book, "Let it be understood that by the word 'black' I shall always mean 'white,' and by the word 'white' I shall always mean 'black,'" I meekly accept his ruling, however injudicious I think it.
I'm very much afraid I didn't mean anything but nonsense. Still, you know, words mean more than we mean to express when we use them; so a whole book ought to mean a great deal more than the writer means. So, whatever good meanings are in the book, I'm glad to accept as the meaning of the book.