“No, I will not join your Civil War reenactment troupe.”

“Is it not better to aim your spear at the moon and strike only an eagle than to aim your spear at the eagle and strike only a rock?”

“The Mad Hatter: Have I gone mad?Alice Kingsley: I'm afraid so. You're entirely bonkers. But I'll tell you a secret. All the best people are.”

“Nowhere can I think so happily as in a train. I am not inspired; nothing so uncomfortable as that. I am never seized with a sudden idea for a masterpiece, nor form a sudden plan for some new enterprise. My thoughts are just pleasantly reflective. I think of all the good deeds I have done, and (when these give out) of all the good deeds I am going to do. I look out of the window and say lazily to myself, “How jolly to live there”; and a little farther on, “How jolly not to live there.” I see a cow, and I wonder what it is like to be a cow, and I wonder whether the cow wonders what it is to be like me; and perhaps, by this time, we have passed on to a sheep, and I wonder if it is more fun being a sheep. My mind wanders on in a way which would annoy Pelman a good deal, but it wanders on quite happily, and the “clankety-clank” of the train adds a very soothing accompaniment. So soothing, indeed, that at any moment I can close my eyes and pass into a pleasant state of sleep.”

“But now I am six. And I'm clever as clever. And now I think I'll stay six now forever and ever.”

“No profit was too small to despise; no loss was too small to abhor.”

“A cynic had defined aid as simply the system by which poor white people in rich countries gave money to rich black people in poor countries to put into Swiss bank accounts.”