“My father was a Brownie, Sir;
My mother was a Fairy.
The notion had occurred to her,
The children would be happier,
If they were taught to vary.

The notion soon became a craze;
And, when it once began, she
Brought us all out in different ways -
One was a Pixy, two were Fays,
Another was a Banshee.”

Canto 4
Phantasmagoria (1869)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 27, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "My father was a Brownie, Sir; My mother was a Fairy. The notion had occurred to her, The children would be happier, …" by Lewis Carroll?

Lewis Carroll241

English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer 1832–1898

Related quotes

“My mother saw herself as a victim. Once upon a time she had shaped her future and made decisions -- she had left Somalia for Aden, divorced her first husband and chosen my father--but at some point, it seemed, she lost hope. Many Somali women in her position would have worked, would have taken control of their lives, but my mother, having absorbed the Arab attitude that pious women should not work outside the home, felt that this would not be proper. It never occurred to her to go out and create a new life for herself, although she can't have been older than thirty-five or forty when my father left. Instead, she remained completely dependent. She nursed grievances; she was resentful; she was often violent; and she was always depressed.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

Source: Infidel (2007), Ch. 5

“I think it was my grandmother who gave me my ease in being a woman. She was unquestionably feminine — small and dainty and pretty and wholly without masculine protest or feminist aggrievement. She had gone to college when this was a very unusual thing for a girl to do, she had a very firm grasp of anything she paid attention to, she had married and had a child, and she a career of her own. All this was true of my mother as well. But my mother was filled with passionate resentment about the condition of women, as perhaps my grandmother might have been had my grandfather lived and had she borne five children and had little opportunity to use her special gifts and training. As it was, the two women I knew best were mothers and had professional training. So I had no reason to doubt that brains were suitable for a woman. And as I had my father's kind of mind — which was also his mother's — I learned that the mind is not sex-typed.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1970s, Blackberry Winter, 1972, p. 54-55

“All of my decisions I made when I was a kid were decisions, would my mother and father be proud of.”

Ken Venturi (1931–2013) Professional golfer

Interview Ken Venturi http://www.asapsports.com/show_interview.php?id=5285, Kemper Insurance Open, Potomac, Maryland. ASAP Sports - Golf, June 3, 2000.

“I have to totally credit that to my mother. There were two children. I was the only girl. And she just always talked to me. She would tell me things that happened to her … her dreams, her past … it’s like the monologues in my plays, it really is. Because her stories were loaded with imagery and tragedy, darkness and sarcasm and humor…”

Adrienne Kennedy (1931) African-American playwright

On how her mother’s influence appears in her works in “Adrienne Kennedy by Suzan-Lori Parks” https://bombmagazine.org/articles/adrienne-kennedy/ in BOMB Magazine (1996 Jan 1)