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Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things…

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Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, Chapter 5 (the White Queen), 1871 Verified quote
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The story behind this quote

The White Queen says this in chapter 5 of Through the Looking-Glass, “Wool and Water”. Alice, feeling lonely in the wood, has begun to cry; the Queen, alarmed, tells her to “consider” anything, her age for instance. Alice is “seven and a half exactly”. The Queen announces that she herself is “just one hundred and one, five months and a day”. Alice cannot believe it: “one can’t believe impossible things.” “I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” replies the Queen, who at Alice’s age did it for half an hour a day. Then the wind blows her shawl across a brook, and moments later she turns into a sheep.

Lewis Carroll published this sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland at the end of 1871. Its story follows a game of chess, in which Alice, a pawn, advances square by square to become a queen. The White Queen lives backwards and screams before she pricks her finger: for her, impossible things are the rule.

The source

Through the Looking-Glass, Chapter 5 (the White Queen), 1871

Checked word for word in the work itself.

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More quotes by Lewis Carroll

Curiouser and curiouser!

Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter 2 (Alice), 1865 Verified quote Read its story
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Begin at the beginning, and go on till you come to the end: then stop.

Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter XII (the King of Hearts), 1865 Verified quote Read its story
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Author

Lewis Carroll

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a mathematics lecturer at Oxford, wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass as Lewis Carroll. Their logic games and nonsense verse delight readers of every age.

Quotes by Lewis Carroll