Lemony Snicket Quotes - Page 4

The sky was dark blue twilight, pretty to look at but lonely to walk under.

...The sea... some have said is nothing but a library of all the tears in history.

I like a story that could never happen to me. If I want real life I'll read a newspaper.

It doesn't matter if you never see someone again, I told myself. There are millions of people in the world, and most of them never see each other in the first place.

There are some who say that you should forgive everyone, even the people whohave disappointed you immeasurably. There are others who say you should not forgive anyone, and should stomp off in a huff no matter how many times they apologize. Of these two philosophies, the second one is of course much more fun, but it can also grow exhausting to stomp off in a huff every time someone has disappointed you, as everyone disappoints everyone eventually, and one can’t stomp off in a huff every minute of the day.

A long time ago, there was no such thing as school, and children spent their days learning a trade, a phrase which here means "standing around doing tedious tasks under the instruction of a bossy adult." In time, however, people realized that the children could be allowed to sit, and the first school was invented.

Everybody will die, but very few people want to be reminded of that fact.

Occasionally, events in one's life become clearer through the prism of experience, a phrase which simply means that things tend to be clearer as time goes on. For instance, when a person is just born, they usually have no idea what curtains are and spend a great deal of their first months wondering why on earth Mommy and Daddy have hung large pieces of cloth over each window in the nursery. But as the person grows older, the idea of curtains becomes clearer through the prism of experience. The person will learn the word "curtains" and notice that they are actually quite handy for keeping a room dark when it is time to sleep, and for decorating an otherwise boring window area. Eventually, they will entirely accept the idea of curtains of their own, or venetian blinds, and it is all due to the prism of experience.

Some people think destiny is something you cannot escape, such as death or a curdled cheesecake, both of which always turn up sooner or later.

You cannot wait for an untroubled world to have an untroubled moment. The terrible phone call, the rainstorm, the sinister knock on the door—they will all come. Soon enough arrive the treacherous villain and the unfair trial and the smoke and the flames of the suspicious fires to burn everything away. In the meantime, it is best to grab what wonderful moments you find lying around.

The world is too quiet without you nearby.

But even if they could go home it would be difficult for me to tell you what the moral of the story is. In some stories, it's easy. The moral of 'The Three Bears', for instance, is "Never break into someone else's house". The moral of 'Snow White' is "Never eat apples". The moral of World War One is "Never assassinate Archduke Ferdinand.

We both wanted to know each other's secrets, and we both wanted the other person to go first.

I am alone this evening, and I am alone because of a cruel twist of fate, a phrase which here means that nothing has happened the way I thought it would. Once I was a content man, with a comfortable home, a successful career, a person I loved very much, and an extremely reliable typewriter, but all of those things have been taken away from me, and now the only trace I have of those happy days is the tattoo on my left ankle. As I sit in this very tiny room, printing these words with a very large pencil, I feel as if my whole life has been nothing but a dismal play, presented just for someone else’s amusement, and that the playwright who invented my cruel twist of fate is somewhere far above me, laughing and laughing at his creation.

It is good to brush your teeth when you are angry, because you brush harder and do a better job.

The expression 'Those who can't do, teach' is a curious one, because if you look at the world , you'll see that teachers aren't particularly worse at doing things than anyone else, so perhaps the expression might be better worded as 'nobody can do anything

There are some people who believe that home is where one hangs one's hat, but these people tend to live in closets and on little pegs.

Tears are curious things, for like earthquakes or puppet shows they can occur at any time, without any warning and without any good reason.

Just because something is traditional is no reason to do it, of course. Piracy, for example, is a tradition that has been carried on for hundreds of years, but that doesn't mean we should all attack ships and steal their gold.

Wishing, like sipping a glass of punch, or pulling aside a bearskin rug in order to access a hidden trapdoor in the floor, is merely a quiet way to spend one's time before the candles are extinguished on one's birthday cake.

The world is full of disappointment," I said."Yes," she said, "I heard him say that. And every creature is simply trying to get what it wants, and to make their way through a difficult world. Do you believe that?""No," I said. "There's more than that.""Like what?""Like good books," I said, "and good people. And good librarians, who are almost both at once.

It is very useful, when one is young, to learn the difference between "literally" and "figuratively." If something happens literally, it actually happens; if something happens figuratively, it feels like it is happening. If you are literally jumping for joy, for instance, it means you are leaping in the air because you are very happy. If you are figuratively jumping for joy, it means you are so happy that you could jump for joy, but are saving your energy for other matters.

An Overall Feeling of Doom that One Cannot Ever Escape no Matter What One Does

It’s hard when you’re missing your family. You wake up every morning like someone took one of your legs.

How did you do that?” Mr. Poe asked. “Nice girls shouldn’t know how to do such things.”“My sister is a nice girl,” Klaus said, “and she knows how to do all sorts of things.

If an optimist had his left arm chewed off by an alligator, he might say in a pleasant and hopeful voice, "Well this isn't too bad, I don't have a left arm anymore but at least nobody will ever ask me if I'm left-handed or right-handed," but most of us would say something more along the lines of, "Aaaaaa! My arm! My arm!

A passport, as I'm sure you know, is a document that one shows to government officials whenever one reaches a border between two countries, so that the official can learn who you are, where you were born, and how you look when photographed unflatteringly.

Unless you have been very, very lucky, you have undoubtedly experienced events in your life that have made you cry. So unless you have been very, very lucky, you know that a good, long session of weeping can often make you feel better, even if your circumstances have not changed one bit.

You cannot have a really terrific library without at least one terrific librarian, the way you cannot have a really terrific bedroom unless you can lock the door.

You would run much slower if you were dragging something behind you, like a knapsack or a sheriff.

People who think nothing could go wrong are usually disappointed.

There is nothing particularly wrong with salmon, of course, but like caramel candy, strawberry yogurt, or liquid carpet cleaner, if you eat too much of it you are not going to enjoy your meal.

I am heartbroken, but I have been heartbroken before, and this might be the best for which I can hope.

The story of the book filled the car with exciting adventures of the sort that are fun to read about, so we didn’t have to think about the exciting adventures of the sort that are no fun to live through.

I suppose I'll have to add the force of gravity to my list of enemies.

There's nothing wrong with athletics, but they shouldn't get in the way of your schoolwork.

But some secrets are so strange and so dangerous that showing them to people makes the strangeness and the danger pour into their lives like a dark, dark ink.

In the vast majority of cases, however, getting into trouble has nothing to do with one's self-esteem. It usually has much more to do with whatever is causing the trouble - a monster, a bus driver, a banana peel, killer bees, the school principal - than what you think of yourself.

We are respecting our parents' wishes....They didn't want to shelter us from the world's treacheries. They wanted us to survive them.