Quote 10
"I only hope the boat won't tipple over!" she said to herself. "Oh, what a lovely one! Only I couldn't quite reach it." And it certainly did seem a little provoking ("almost as if it happened to be on purpose," she thought) that, though she managed to pick plenty of beautiful rushes as the boat glided by, there was always a more lovely one that she couldn't reach.
"The prettiest are always further!" she said at last, with a sigh at the obstinacy of the rushes in growing so far off, as, with flushed cheeks and dripping hair and hands, she scrambled back into her place, and began to arrange her new-found treasures.
What mattered it to her just then that the rushes had begun to fade, and to lose all their scent and beauty, from the very moment that she picked them? Even real scented rushes, you know, last only a very little while – and these, being dream-rushes, melted away almost like snow, as they lay in heaps at her feet – but Alice hardly noticed this, there were so many other curious things to think about. (Looking-Glass 5.87-89)
It's not having but collecting the rushes that is important to Alice. In one sense, this is disheartening – she's just picking them for the fun of it and doesn't care about having them. But in another sense, what she values is the process of her adventure, not the end product or some souvenir.
Quote 11
She generally gave herself very good advice (though she very seldom followed it), and sometimes she scolded herself so severely as to bring tears to her eyes; and once she remembered trying to box her own ears for having cheated herself in a game of croquet she was playing against herself, for this curious child was very fond of pretending to be two people. (Wonderland 1.21)
Early in the Alice books, we learn that Alice seems to have several personalities swirling around inside her. It's easy for her to pretend to be more than one person, to see both sides of an argument, and to get lost in the roles she's playing.
Quote 12
"I wonder if I've been changed in the night? Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is 'Who in the world am I?' Ah, that's the great puzzle!" (Wonderland 2.7)
The joke, of course, is that Alice wasn't the same when she got up this morning. Everyone is a little different every morning than they were the day before, and for a growing child the change is even more obvious. This creates a crisis for Alice – if she's not the same person she used to be, does that mean she's losing her identity?