A writer always wears glasses and never combs his hair. Half the time he feels angry about everything and the other half depressed. He spends most of his life in bars, arguing with other dishevelled, bespectacled writers. He says very 'deep' things. He always has amazing ideas for the plot of his next novel, and hates the one he has just published.
It is ... impossible to keep one's excellence in a little glass casket, like a jewel, to take it out whenever wanted. On the contrary, it can only be conserved by continuous and good practice.
At school I was called Fred, which is my middle name. At that time, Fred was considered to be a bit of a horrible name, so that's why. Otherwise, I was called Titchy because I was little. I was still only about 4ft something when I left school. I grew a foot under glass in my first year as a gardener. It's really quite amazing what sun and manure can do.
Do not go for glass beads leaving the mine of diamonds. This life is a great chance. What, seekest thou the pleasures of the world? He is the fountain of all bliss. See for the highest, aim at that highest, and you shall reach the highest.
As a viewed myself in a fragment of looking-glass..., I was so impressed with a sense of vague awe at my appearance ... that I was seized with a violent tremour.
Happiness is a chance to talk to a friend, to hear good music, to have a good glass of wine. Happiness is a chance to be myself and to find people with whom I agree or who I don't agree but I can learn something.
An optimist will tell you the glass is half-full; the pessimist, half-empty; and the engineer will tell you the glass is twice the size it needs to be.
To the Looking-Glass world it was Alice that said 'I've a sceptre in hand, I've a crown on my head. Let the Looking-Glass creatures, whatever they be, Come and dine with the Red Queen, the White Queen, and me.
People who, out of an inborn moderation, leave every glass standing only half-emptied refuse to admit that everything in the world has its sediments and dregs.
We are sensitized by the books we read. And the more books we read, and the deeper their lessons sink into us, the more pairs of glasses we have. And those glasses enable us to see things we would have otherwise missed.
There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.
Suppose the looking glass smashes, the image disappears, and the romantic figure with the green of forest depths all about it is there no longer, but only that shell of a person which is seen by other people - what an airless, shallow, bald, prominent world it becomes! A world not to be lived in. As we face each other in omnibuses and underground railways we are looking into the mirror that accounts for the vagueness, the gleam of glassiness, in our eyes.
I'll be at charges for a looking-glass And entertain a score or two of tailors To study fashions to adorn my body: Since I am crept in favor with myself, I will maintain it with some little cost.
More and more do I feel, as I advance in life, how little we really know of each other. Friendship seems to me like the touch of musical-glasses--it is only contact; but the glasses themselves, and their contents, remain quite distinct and unmingled.
My glass shall not persuade me I am old, So long as youth and thou are of one date; But when in thee time's furrows I behold, Then look I death my days should expiate.