Quote by Lewis Carroll

“"For any one with true dramatic instincts, it is only the Overture that is ended! The real treat has yet to begin. You go to a theatre, and pay your ten shillings for a stall, and what do you get for your money? Perhaps it's a dialogue between a couple of farmers — unnatural in their overdone caricature of farmers' dress — more unnatural in their constrained attitudes and gestures — most unnatural in their attempts at ease and geniality in their talk. Go instead and take a seat in a third-class railway-carriage, and you'll get the same dialogue done to the life! Front-seats — no orchestra to block the view — and nothing to pay!"... "I wonder if Shakespeare had that thought in his mind," I said, "when he wrote 'All the world's a stage'?" The old man sighed. "And so it is," he said, "look at it as you will. Life is indeed a drama; a drama with but few encores — and no bouquets!" he added dreamily. "We spend one half of it regretting the things we did in the other half!" "And the secret of enjoying it," he continued, resuming his cheerful tone, "is intensity!" "But not in the modern æsthetic sense, I presume? Like the young lady, in Punch, who begins a conversation with 'Are you intense?'" "By no means!" replied the Earl. "What I mean is intensity of thought — a concentrated attention. We lose half the pleasure we might have in Life, by not really attending.”