LSLemony Snicket

215 collected words

Lemony Snicket

Dates not recorded

Name supplied in the contributor-provided quotation collection. Basic attribution label; identity, lifetime and quotation authenticity have not been independently verified.

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Quotations and sayings

01Undated

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. You hoped to know Ellington Feinr forever, but there's no such thing as forever, really. Everything is much shorter than that.

Lemony Snicket / quote

02Undated

The way sadness works is one of the strange riddles of the world. If you are stricken with a great sadness, you may feel as if you have been set aflame, not only because of the enormous pain, but also because your sadness may spread over your life, like smoke from an enormous fire. You might find it difficult to see anything but your own sadness, the way smoke can cover a landscape so that all anyone can see is black. You may find that if someone pours water all over you, you are damp and distracted, but not cured of your sadness, the way a fire department can douse a fire but never recover what has been burnt down.

Lemony Snicket / quote

03Undated

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.

Lemony Snicket / quote

04Undated

There is no point in delaying crying. Sadness is like having a vicious alligator around. You can ignore it for only so long before it begins devouring things and you have to pay attention.

Lemony Snicket / quote

05Undated

Everyone tells you it's all right to cry, but not enough people say it's all right if you don't want people to know.

Lemony Snicket / quote

06Undated

The way sadness works is one of the strangest riddles of the world. If you are stricken with a great sadness, you may feel as if you have been set aflame, not only because of the enormous pain, but also because your sadness may spread over your life, like smoke from an enormous fire. You might find it difficult to see anything but your own sadness, the way smoke can cover a landscape so that all anyone can see is black. You may find that happy things are tainted with sadness, the way smoke leaves its ashen colors and scents on everything it touches. And you may find that if someone pours water all over you, you are damp and distracted, but not cured of your sadness, the way a fire department can douse a fire but never recover what has been burnt down.

Lemony Snicket / quote

07Undated

But like so many unfortunate events in life, just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it isn't so.

Lemony Snicket / quote

08Undated

We believe in an aristocracy... Not an aristocracy of power, based on rank or wealth, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate, and the plucky. Our members are found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between us when we meet... We represent the true human tradition, the one permanent victory over cruelty and chaos. We're an invincible army, but not a victorious one. We've had different names throughout history, but all the words that describe us are false and all attempts to organize us fail. Right now we're called V.F.D., but all our schisms and arguments might cause us to disappear. It won't matter. People like us always slip through the net. Our true home is the imagination, and our kingdom is the wide-open world.

Lemony Snicket / quote

09Undated

We represent the true human condition, the one permanent victory over cruelty and chaos. . . . Our true home is the imagination, and our kingdom is the wide-open world.

Lemony Snicket / quote

10Undated

The library turned out to be a very pleasant place, but it was not the comfortable chairs, the huge wooden bookshelves, or the hush of people reading that made the three siblings feel so good as they walked into the room. It is useless for me to tell you all about the brass lamps in the shapes of different fish, or the bright blue curtains that rippled like water as a breeze came in from the window, because although these were wonderful things they were no what made the three children smile. The Quagmire triplets were smiling, too, and although I have not researched the Quagmires nearly as much as I have the Baudelaires, I can say with reasonable accuracy that they were smiling for the same reason.

Lemony Snicket / quote

11Undated

Though he was not as dastardly as Esmé or Count Olaf or the hook-handed man, Jerome was still an ersatz guardian, because a real guardian is supposed to provide a home, with a place to sleep and something to wear, and all Jerome had given them in the end was "Good luck." Jerome reached the end of the block and turned left, and the Baudelaires were once again alone in the world.

Lemony Snicket / quote

12Undated

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.

Lemony Snicket / quote

13Undated

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.

Lemony Snicket / quote

14Undated

Terrible fires resemble terrible people. They are unpredictable. They are selfish. they are deadly and ruinous. And no matter where they are prowling, no matter what treachery they are cooking up, they have something in common. They can be stopped.

Lemony Snicket / quote

15Undated

It was a puzzle, a dark and lonely one, and if I were a piece in this puzzle, I did not know where it belonged. I needed to put myself aside, just for a little while, until I saw where I might fit in.

Lemony Snicket / quote

16Undated

When you find the sort of people who will show up to give you a ride exactly when they've promised to do so, hold on to them for dear life.

Lemony Snicket / quote

17Undated

The trouble with being patient is that eventually you get tired of it.

Lemony Snicket / quote

18Undated

There's no way to tell what will make someone break down in tears. There are some who will cry at the merest melancholy word, and there are some who need the longest, cruelest speech to even dampen one eyelash. There are those who will cry at any sad song but no sad book, and there are those who are immune to the most saddening newspaper articles but will weep for days over a terrible meal. People cry at silence or at violence, in a graveyard or a schoolyard.

Lemony Snicket / quote

19Undated

If you're not scared, she told me, it's not bravery.

Lemony Snicket / quote

20Undated

It is unwise to make something permanent when the whole world is shifting.

Lemony Snicket / quote

21Undated

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.

Lemony Snicket / quote

22Undated

People who think nothing could go wrong are usually disappointed.

Lemony Snicket / quote

23Undated

There are some things you cannot explain to anyone, even whey they have been explained to you, over and over, almost since the day you were born.

Lemony Snicket / quote

24Undated

Are you saying that being a criminal is a matter of opinion?" I asked.Qwerty smiled, but it was sad around the edges. "No," he said. "It's a matter of handcuffs.

Lemony Snicket / quote