The Cheshire Cat is a large, smiling cat with the power to vanish and appear whenever he likes, causing him to be a bit smug, even in the face of the King and Queen of Hearts. He guides Alice in certain directions and reappears as if to check on her, and she seems to like him.
The Cheshire Cat Quotes in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
The Alice's Adventures in Wonderland quotes below are all either spoken by The Cheshire Cat or refer to The Cheshire Cat. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Note: all page numbers and citation info for the quotes below refer to the Bantam Classics edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland published in 1984.
Chapter 6
Quotes
'Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: 'we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.'
'How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.
'You must be,' said the Cat, 'or you wouldn't have come here.'
Related Characters:
Alice (speaker), The Cheshire Cat (speaker)
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Alice in Wonderland LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Cheshire Cat Character Timeline in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
The timeline below shows where the character The Cheshire Cat appears in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 6 - Pig and Pepper
...the excessive amount of pepper the cook is putting in the soup; everybody except a cat, which sits on the hearth, smiling. Alice asks the group nervously why the cat is...
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The Cheshire Cat appears, grinning as before. Alice asks it which way to go. The Cat replies that...
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The Cat asks Alice if she is going to play croquet with the Queen today but Alice...
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...Hatter, and shouldn’t be too mad, because it’s past March. As she sets off, the Cat appears again to check if Alice had said “pig” or “fig”, and then finally disappears...
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Chapter 8 - The Queen's Croquet-Ground
Just then, the Cheshire Cat appears, and Alice waits for its ears to arrive, before telling it her qualms with...
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