Nonsense Books quotes

The following lines by Mr. Lear were written for a young lady of his acquaintance, who had quoted to him the words of a young lady not of his acquaintance,

“How pleasant to know Mr. Lear!”

“How pleasant to know Mr. Lear!” Who has written such volumes of stuff! Some think him ill-tempered and queer, But a few think him pleasant enough.

“How pleasant to know Mr. Lear!”

Who has written such volumes of stuff!

Some think him ill-tempered and queer, But a few think him pleasant enough.

“How pleasant to know Mr. Lear!” Who has written such volumes of stuff!

Some think him ill-tempered and queer,

But a few think him pleasant enough.

His mind is concrete and fastidious, His nose is remarkably big; His visage is more or less hideous,

His beard it resembles a wig.

He has ears, and two eyes, and ten fingers, Leastways if you reckon two thumbs; Long ago he was one of the singers, But now he is one of the dumbs.

He has ears, and two eyes, and ten fingers, Leastways if you reckon two thumbs; Long ago he was one of the singers,

But now he is one of the dumbs.

He sits in a beautiful parlor, With hundreds of books on the wall; He drinks a great deal of Marsala, But never gets tipsy at all.

He has many friends, lay men and clerical, Old Foss is the name of his cat; His body is perfectly spherical,

He weareth a runcible hat.

When he walks in waterproof white, The children run after him so! Calling out, “He’s come out in his night— Gown, that crazy old Englishman, oh!”

He has many friends, lay men and clerical, Old Foss is the name of his cat;

His body is perfectly spherical,

He weareth a runcible hat.

… is distinguished from all his followers and imitators by the superior consistency with which he has adhered to his aim—that of amusing his readers by fantastic absurdities, as void of vulgarity or cynicism as they are incapable of being made to harbor any symbolical meaning.

He “never deviates into sense;” but those who appreciate him never feel the need of such deviation.

He has a genius for coining absurd names and words, which, even when they are suggested by the exigencies of his metre, have a ludicrous appropriateness to the matter in hand.

There was a Young Lady of Portugal, Whose ideas were excessively nautical;

She climbed up a tree to examine the sea,

But declared she would never leave Portugal.

“Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling Your ring?” Said the Piggy, “I will.” So they took it away, and were married next day By the Turkey who lives on the hill.

They dined on mince and slices of quince,

Which they ate with a runcible spoon; And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand, They danced by the light of the moon, The moon, The moon, They danced by the light of the moon.

They dined on mince and slices of quince,

Which they ate with a runcible spoon;

And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand, They danced by the light of the moon, The moon, The moon, They danced by the light of the moon.

In spite of all their friends could say, On a winter’s morn, on a stormy day, In a sieve they went to sea. And when the sieve turned round and round, And everyone cried, “You’ll all be drowned!” They called aloud, “Our sieve ain’t big;

But we don’t care a button, we don’t care a fig:

In a sieve we’ll go to sea!” Far and few, far and few, Are the lands where the Jumblies live: Their heads are green, and their hands are blue And they went to sea in a sieve.

and in the evening they all retired into the teakettle, where they all managed to sleep very comfortably, while Pussy and the Quangle-Wangle managed the boat.

After a time, they saw some land at a distance; and, when they came to it, they found it was an island made of water quite surrounded by earth.

Besides that, it was bordered by evanescent isthmuses, with a great gulf-stream running about all over it; so that it was perfectly beautiful, and contained only a single tree, 503 feet high.

On which Violet, who was perfectly acquainted with the art of mitten-making, said to the Crabs,

“Do your claws unscrew, or are they fixtures?”

“They are all made to unscrew,” said the Crabs; and forthwith they deposited a great pile of claws close to the boat, with which Violet uncombed all the pale pink worsted, and then made the loveliest mittens with it you can imagine.

… the setting sun—his steps supported by two superincumbent confidential Cucumbers, and a large number of Waterwagtails proceeding in advance of him by three and three in a row—till he finally disappeared on the brink of the western sky in a crystal cloud of sudorific sand.

So remarkable a sight, of course, impressed the four children very deeply; and they returned immediately to their boat with a strong sense of undeveloped asthma and a great appetite.

Shortly after this, the travellers were obliged to sail directly below some high overhanging rocks, from the top of one of which a particularly odious little boy, dressed in rose-colored knickerbockers, and with a pewter plate upon his head, threw an enormous pumpkin at the …

The Fishes lived in the lake, and fed chiefly on boiled periwinkles.

And all these seven families lived together in the utmost fun and felicity.

One day all the seven fathers and the seven mothers of the seven families agreed that they would send their children out to see the world.

and at last there was nothing left to record this painful incident except the cherry and seven small green feathers.

And that was the vicious and voluble end of the seven young Parrots.

When the seven young Storks set out, they walked or flew for fourteen weeks in a straight line, and for six weeks more in a crooked one; and after that they ran as hard as they could for one hundred and eight miles;

Grate some nutmeg over the surface, and cover them carefully with powdered gingerbread, curry-powder, and a sufficient quantity of Cayenne pepper.

Remove the pan into the next room, and place it on the floor. Bring it back again, and let it simmer for three-quarters of an hour.

Shake the pan violently till all the Amblongusses have become of a pale purple color.

Watch patiently till the crust begins to rise, and add a pinch of salt from time to time.

Serve up in a clean dish, and throw the whole out of window as fast as possible.

Procure some strips of beef, and, having cut them into the smallest possible slices, proceed to cut them still smaller—eight, or perhaps nine times.

When the paste is perfectly dry, but not before, proceed to beat the pig violently with the handle of a large broom.

If he squeals, beat him again.

Visit the paste and beat the pig alternately for some days, and ascertain if, at the end of that period, the whole is about to turn into Gosky Patties.

Visit the paste and beat the pig alternately for some days, and ascertain if, at the end of that period, the whole is about to turn into Gosky Patties.

If it does not then, it never will; and in that case the pig may be let loose, and the whole process may be considered as finished.

A was an ant Who seldom stood still, And who made a nice house In the side of a hill.

Moreover, in no portion of these Nonsense drawings have I ever allowed any caricature of private or public persons to appear, and throughout, more care than might be supposed has been given to make the subjects incapable of misinterpretation:

“Nonsense,” pure and absolute, having been my aim throughout.

As for the persistently absurd report of the late Earl of Derby being the author of the first Book of Nonsense, I may relate an incident which occurred to me four summers ago, the first that gave me any insight into the origin of the …

“That,” replied the other, “is simply a piece of mystification; I am in a position to know that the whole book was composed and illustrated by Lord Derby himself.

In fact, there is no such a person at all as Edward Lear.

”

On the Coast of Coromandel Where the early pumpkins blow, In the middle of the woods Lived the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò.

Two old chairs, and half a candle,

One old jug without a handle— These were all his worldly goods: In the middle of the woods, These were all the worldly goods Of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò, Of the Yonghy-Bonghy Bò.

They sought in vain for even a bone Respectfully to bury; They said, “Hers was a dreadful fate!”

(And Echo answered, “Very.”)

They nailed her Dobie to the wall, Where last her form was seen, And underneath they wrote these words, In yellow, blue, and green:

Note.—First published in Times of India, Bombay, July, 1874.

Who, or why, or which, or what,

Is the Akond of Swat?