Duchess Quotes

“If everybody minded their own business,” the Duchess said, in a hoarse growl, “the world would go round a deal faster than it does.”

“Tut, tut, child!” said the Duchess. “Everything’s got a moral, if only you can find it.”

“And the moral of that is—’Oh, ‘tis love, ‘tis love, that makes the world go round!’” “Somebody said,” Alice whispered, “that it’s done by everybody minding their own business!” “Ah well! It means much the same thing,” said the Duchess, digging her sharp little chin into Alice’s shoulder as she added, “and the moral of that is—‘Take care of the sense, and the sounds will take care of themselves.’”

“And the moral of that is—‘Be what you would seem to be’—or, if you’d like it put more simply—‘Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.’”

“I hope you will grow up gentle and good, and never learn bad ways; do your work with a good will, lift your feet up well when you trot, and never bite or kick even in play.”

“The Princess Alicia hurried up-stairs to tell a most particular secret to a most particularly confidential friend of hers, who was a Duchess. People did suppose her to be a doll; but she really was a Duchess, though nobody knew it except the Princess.”

“And the moral of that is—‘The more there is of mine, the less there is of yours.‘”

“There are good thoughtful men like our master, that any horse may be proud to serve; and there are bad, cruel men, who never ought to have a horse or dog to call their own.”