From a letter Carroll wrote to the actress Ellen Terry on 13 November 1890, thanking her for a kindness. It is not from the Alice books, which is where people usually assume it lives. He also wrote it as a question — the flat declarative version in circulation is a later tidying of his sentence, not a different sentence.
“One of the deep secrets of life is that all that is really worth the doing is what we do for others” Lewis Carroll, letter to Ellen Terry, 13 November 1890 · Verbatim: “And so you have found out that secret — one of the deep secrets of Life — that all, that is really worth the doing, is what we do for others?”
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? We couldn’t establish where this was first published, so there’s no rights status to give. Credit it as shown above — just don’t present it as public domain, and get permission for commercial or published reuse.
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In context
Evoking the world of Lewis Carroll — English author, mathematician & Oxford lecturer. Theme: "One of the deep secrets of life is that all that is really worth the doing is what we do for others". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Minimalist
Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "One of the deep secrets of life is that all that is really worth the doing is what we do for others". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Provenance
The letter
Work
Letter to Ellen Terry
Date
13 November 1890
Occasion
Thanking Terry for giving elocution lessons to Isa Bowman, a friend’s child
Cited from
The Selected Letters of Lewis Carroll, ed. Morton N. Cohen, p. 200 (Pantheon, 1982)
And so you have found out that secret — one of the deep secrets of Life — that all, that is really worth the doing, is what we do for others? Even as the old adage tells us, “What I spent, that I lost; what I gave, that I had.”
As transcribed by Quote Investigator from the Cohen edition of Carroll’s selected letters. Note the question mark, the capital Life, and the commas around “that is really worth the doing” — all of which the popular version drops.
Quote Investigator traced it, and credits Carroll. Its article on this quotation ↗ quotes the 1890 letter in full and concludes: “Lewis Carroll deserves credit for the quotation which he penned in an 1890 letter to Ellen Terry. The phrasing is sometimes simplified when it appears in collections of quotations.” Its citation is The Selected Letters of Lewis Carroll, ed. Morton N. Cohen with Roger Lancelyn Green, letter of 13 November 1890, p. 200 (Pantheon, 1982), marked verified with scans.
Wikiquote reaches the same conclusion. The Lewis Carroll page ↗ lists the popular wording in its sourced Letters section and describes it as a paraphrase of a statement in a thank-you note from Carroll to Ellen Terry, giving the same underlying sentence.
The streamlining is old, not an internet invention. QI records that Langford Reed’s biography The Life of Lewis Carroll — first published in 1932 — already rendered the line in something close to its modern declarative form, in a chapter on the Ellen Terry letters.
This letter is not in the 1898 biography. We searched the full text of Stuart Dodgson Collingwood’s The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll (1898) ↗, the earliest large collection of Carroll’s correspondence. It does print letters from Carroll to Ellen Terry — one about Shylock and The Merchant of Venice appears at page 182 — but not the November 1890 one, and this sentence appears nowhere in its text. So we cannot show the line in print before 1931.
Carroll wrote the sentence in 1890 and died in 1898, but rights follow first publication, and we could not establish when this letter first appeared in print. It is not in Collingwood’s 1898 Life and Letters; the earliest printing we can document is Langford Reed’s biography of 1932, with the standard modern text in Morton N. Cohen’s 1982 edition. Because we cannot place a printing before 1931, we assert no status — credit Carroll as shown, but do not present the text as public domain without checking the edition you are quoting.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
What usually goes wrong
The name is right. Almost everything else about how this line travels is not.
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SourceAlice in Wonderland
It is regularly captioned as coming from the Alice books. It does not appear in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland or Through the Looking-Glass — we searched both full texts. It comes from private correspondence.
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WordingThe tidied version
Carroll wrote it as a question put to Ellen Terry — “And so you have found out that secret…?” — not as a maxim. Quotation collections turned the question into a statement, a change QI notes and dates back to at least 1932.
Carroll had asked Ellen Terry — then the most famous actress in England — whether she could recommend a few elocution teachers for Isa Bowman, the child of a friend. Terry gave the lessons herself. The letter is Carroll, slightly floored, trying to thank her.
That is why the sentence is a question rather than a maxim: he is not handing down wisdom, he is telling her she has just demonstrated something. Read that way the line is warmer and a good deal less pious than the version on the poster.
He is not handing down wisdom. He is telling her she has just demonstrated something.
Who was Isa Bowman?
Isa Bowman was a young actress who played Alice on stage and became a close friend of Carroll’s; she later wrote a memoir of him. Quote Investigator, citing Langford Reed’s biography, records that the favour prompting this letter was elocution coaching Terry gave her, when Carroll had expected only a list of names and addresses.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1832–1898 · English author, mathematician & Oxford lecturer
Lewis Carroll was the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a mathematics lecturer at Christ Church, Oxford. Under the pseudonym he wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871); under his own name he published on geometry and logic. He was also a prolific letter-writer, and a good deal of what circulates as “Carroll” online comes from that correspondence rather than the Alice books.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Cite this
Lewis Carroll to Ellen Terry, 13 November 1890, in The Selected Letters of Lewis Carroll, ed. Morton N. Cohen with Roger Lancelyn Green (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982), 200; as documented by Quote Investigator, “Quote Origin: One of the Deep Secrets of Life Is That All That Is Really Worth the Doing Is What We Do For Others” (25 December 2023). The popular wording is a streamlined form of Carroll’s sentence.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘One of the deep secrets of life is that all that is really worth the doing is what we do for others’?” Last verified 20 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/one-of-the-deep-secrets-of-life-is-that-all-that-is-really/