"The Phantom Tollbooth" Quotes

There was once a boy named Milo, who didn't know what to do with himself----not just sometimes, but always.

As he and his unhappy thoughts hurried along  (for while he was never anxious to be where he was going, he liked to get there as quickly as possible) it seemed a great wonder that the world, which was so large, could sometimes feel so small and empty.

Expectations is the place you must always go to before you get where you're going.  Of course, some people never go beyond Expectations.....

Whether or not you find your own way, you're bound to find some way.  If you happen to find my way, please return it, as it was lost years ago.  I imagine by now it's quite rusty.

"That's a ridiculous law," said Milo quite indignantly.  "Everybody thinks."   ......

"And most of the time you don't ," said a yellow one sitting in a daffodil.  "That's why you're here.  You weren't thinking , and you weren't paying attention either.  People who don't pay attention often get stuck in the Doldrums."

......we'd never get nothing done."

"You mean you'd never get anything done," corrected Milo.

"We don't want to get anything done," snapped another angrily; "we want to get nothing done, and we can do that without your help."

(speaking of time)  If there's so much of it, it couldn't be very valuable, was the general opinion, and it soon fell into disrepute.  People wasted it and even gave it away.

"I never knew words could be so confusing," Milo said to Tock as he bent down to scratch the dog's ear.

"Only when you use a lot to say a little," answered Tock.

"SILENCE!" thundered the policeman......."And now," he continued, speaking to Milo, "where were you on the night of July 27?"

"What does that have to do with it?" asked Milo.

"It's my birthday, that's what," said the policeman as he entered "Forgot my birthday" in his little book.

"....and that explains why today people use as many words as they can and think themselves very wise for doing so.  For always remember that while it is wrong to use too few, it is often far worse to use too many."

...as he climbed into the wagon with Tock and the other cabinet members.  "How are you going to make it move?  It doesn't have a -------"

"Be very quiet," advised the duke, "for it goes without saying."

And sure enough, as soon as they were all quite still, it began to move quickly through the streets.......

Since he was taller sitting than standing, he didn't bother to get up.

"....it's a simple matter of entering the Mountains of Ignorance, full of perilous pitfalls and ominous overtones----a land to which many venture but few return."

And the crowd waved and cheered wildly, for, while they didn't care at all about anyone arriving, they were always very pleased to see someone go.

"....in my family everyone is born in the air, with his head at exactly the height it's going to be when he's an adult, and then we all grow toward the ground.  When we're fully grown up or, as you can see, grown down, our feet finally touch.  Of course, there are a few of us whose feet never reach the ground no matter how old we get, but I suppose it's the same in every family."  .......

"You certainly must be very old to have reached the ground already."

"Oh no," said Milo, seriously.  "In my family we all start on the ground and grow up, and we never know how far until we actually get there."

"What a silly system."  The boy laughed.  "Then your head keeps changing its height and you always see things in a different way?  Why, when you're fifteen things won't look at all the way they did when you were ten, and at twenty everything will change again."

after Milo concentrated very hard to see things as an adult---he floated off the ground to meet with his new friend, Alec, who "grows down"---but then crashed down to the earth again.  

"Interesting, wasn't it?" asked Alec.

"Yes it was," agreed Milo, rubbing his head and dusting himself off, "but I think I'll continue to see things as a child.  It's not so far to fall."

"Besides, being lost is never a matter of not knowing where you are; it's a matter of not knowing where you aren't---and I don't care at all about where I'm not."

".....but, as you know, the most important reason for going from one place to another is to see what's in between..."

"Why, did you know that there are almost as many kinds of stillness as there are sounds?  But sadly enough, no one pays attention to them these days.  Have you ever heard the wonderful silence just before the dawn?" she inquired "Or the quiet and calm just as a storm ends?  Or perhaps you know the silence when you haven't an answer to a question you've been asked, or the hush of a country road at night, or the expectant pause in a roomful of people when someone is just about to speak, or most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes and you're all alone in the whole house?  Each one is different you know, and all very beautiful, if you listen carefully."

Of speech:  "Some of it is light and airy, some sharp and pointed, but most of it, I'm afraid, is just heavy and dull."

"It doesn't make me happy to hold back the sounds," she began softly, "for it we listen to them very carefully they can sometimes tell us things far better than words."

For you can't improve sound by having only silence.  The problem is to use each at the proper time.

....for you can swim all day in the Sea of Knowledge and still come out completely dry. Most people do.

....as long as the answer is right, who cares if the question is wrong?  If you want sense, you'll have to make it yourself.

....the best way to get from one place from another is to erase everything and begin again.  

Infinity is a dreadfully poor place.  They can never manage to make ends meet.

"You'll find," he remarked gently, "that the only thing you can do easily is be wrong, and that's hardly worth the effort."

"For you often learn more by being wrong for the right reasons than you do by being right for the wrong reasons."

"....but it's not just learning things that's important.  It's learning what to do with what you learn and learning why you learn things at all that matters."

"You may not see it now," said the Princess of Pure Reason, looking knowingly at Milo's puzzled face, "but whatever we learn has a purpose and whatever we do affects everything and everyone else, if even in the tiniest way.  Why, when a housefly flaps his wings, a breeze goes round the world; when a speck of dust falls to the ground, the entire planet weighs a little more; and when you stamp your foot, the earth moves slightly off its course.  Whenever you laugh, gladness spreads like the ripples in a pond; and whenever you're sad, no one anywhere can be really happy.  And it's much the same thing with knowledge, for whenever you learn something new, the whole world becomes that much richer."

"But what of the Castle in the Air?"  .......

"Let it drift away," said Rhyme.

"And good riddance," added Reason, "for no matter how beautiful it seems, it's still nothing but a prison."

of the Demons of Compromise:  And, since they always settled their differences by doing what none of them really wanted, they rarely got anywhere at all----and neither did anyone they met.

"But I could never have done it," he objected, "without everyone else's help."

"That may be true," said Reason gravely, "but you had the courage to try, and what you can do is often simply a matter of what you will do."

....so many things are possible just as long as you don't know they're impossible.