Explore Quotes by Norton Juster

What you can do is often simply a matter of what you will do.

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

Is everyone who lives in Ignorance like you?" asked Milo. "Much worse," he said longingly. "But I don't live here. I'm from a place very far away called Context.

They walked for a while, all silent in their thoughts, until they reached the car and Alec drew a fine telescope from his shirt and handed it to Milo. "Carry this with you on your journey," he said softly, "for there is much worth noticing that often escapes the eye. Through it you can see everything from the tender moss in a sidewalk crack to the glow of the farthest star — and, most important of all, you can see things as they really are, not just as they seem to be. It's my gift to you.

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. Milo thought this was quite the wisest thing he'd heard all day.

He paused again as a tear of longing rolled from cheek to lip with the sweet-salty taste of an old memory.

But I suppose there's a lot to see everywhere, if only you keep your eyes open.

AHA!" interrupted Officer Shrift, making another note in his little book. "Just as I thought: boys are the cause of everything.

If you want sense, you'll have to make it yourself.

Do you think it will rain? Milo: But I thought you were the Weather Man? No, I'm the Whether man, for it is more important to know whether there will be weather, whether than what the weather will be.

We're right here on this very spot. 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.

Perhaps someday you can have one city as easy to see as Illusions and as hard to forget as Reality.

Since you got here by not thinking, it seems reasonable to expect that, in order to get out, you must start thinking.

Why, did you know that if a beaver two feet long with a tail a foot and a half long can build a dam twelve feet high and six feet wide in two days, all you would need to build Boulder Dam is a beaver sixty-eight feet long with a fifty-one-foot tail?" "Where would you find a beaver that big?" grumbled the Humbug as his pencil point snapped. "I'm sure I don't know," he replied, "but if you did, you'd certainly know what to do with him.

They all looked very much like the residents of any small valley to which you've never been.

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.

You see. . . it's really quite strenuous doing nothing all day, so once a week we take a holiday and go nowhere, which was just where we were going when you came along. Would you care to join us?

But just because you can never reach it, doesn’t mean that it’s not worth looking for.

Expect everything so that nothing comes unexpected.

In this box are all the words I know… Most of them you will never need, some you will use constantly, but with them you may ask all the questions which have never been answered and answer all the questions which have never been asked. All the great books of the past and all the ones yet to come are made with these words. With them there is no obstacle you cannot overcome. All you must learn to do is use them well and in the right places.

You see, to tall men I'm a midget, and to short men I'm a giant; to the skinny ones I'm a fat man, and to the fat ones I'm a thin man.