Top 500 Lemony Snicket Quotes (2024 Update)
Page 5 of 10

201. “The difference between the two sides of the schism, is that one side puts out fires, and the other starts them.”

— Lemony Snicket

202. “So you’re a real person! I always thought you were a legendary figure, like unicorns or Giuseppe Verdi.”

— Lemony Snicket

203. “Money is like a child – rarely unaccompanied. When it disappears, look to those who were supposed to be keeping an eye on it while you were at the grocery store. You might also look for someone who has a lot of extra children sitting around, with long, suspicious explanations for how they got there.”

— Lemony Snicket

204. “Who knows what any of those people or fish would do in our shoes?” Violet said. “It’s impossible to know.”

— Lemony Snicket

205. “There are many, many types of books in the world, which makes good sense, because there are many, many types of people, and everybody wants to read something different. For instance, people who hate stories in which terrible things happen to small children should put this book down immediately.”

— Lemony Snicket

206. “You know about all the villainous people who are lurking in the hotel?” Klaus said, equally incredulously. “Yes,” Justice Strauss said. “We observed rings on all the wooden furniture, from people refusing to use coasters. Obviously there are many villains staying in the hotel.”

— Lemony Snicket

207. “Like everyone else, scientists are wrong from time to time, and it is easy to see that they are wrong about the table of the elements. Because although this table contains a great many elements, from the element oxygen, which is found in the air, to the element aluminum, which is found in cans of soda, the table of the elements does not contain one of the most powerful elements that make up our world, and that is the element of surprise.”

— Lemony Snicket

208. “But one type of book that practically no one likes to read is a book about the law. Books about the law are notorious for being very long, very dull, and very difficult to read. This is one reason many lawyers make heaps of money. The money is an incentive – the word “incentive” here means “an offered reward to persuade you to do something you don’t want to do – to read long, dull, and difficult books.”

— Lemony Snicket

209. “We don’t need a destination or a way of navigating, because we’ll go wherever it takes us.”

— Lemony Snicket

210. “It was something from the earth or the sky or the sea, or from a dream or the pages of a book I wasn’t yet old enough to read, about monsters I wasn’t brave enough to face. Soon it was an immense noise that rattled everything in my body. It was the sound of being chased in a nightmare, or the blind and violent fury of a bad parent, a tantrum that deafened the ears of the living and slithered across the bones of the dead.”

— Lemony Snicket

211. “I’m afraid that’s the wicked way of the world. Everything’s covered in smoke and mirrors.”

— Lemony Snicket

212. “Pietrisycamollaviadelrechiotemexity,” Sunny said, which you will probably recall means something along the lines of “I must admit I don’t have the faintest idea of what is going on.” Sunny had now said this particular thing three times over the course of her life, and she was beginning to wonder if this was something she was only going to say more and more as she grew older.”

— Lemony Snicket

213. “I’m not a stranger,” I said, and pointed to his book. “I’m someone who reads the same authors you do.”

— Lemony Snicket

214. “What a schmuck!”

— Lemony Snicket

215. “I wasn’t sad the way a spider isn’t an insect.”

— Lemony Snicket

216. “But your imaginings would be ersatz, as all imaginings are.”

— Lemony Snicket

217. “Nobody can teach you how to like something. You can like it, or you can pretend to like it, in order to make someone happy.”

— Lemony Snicket

218. “Mob psychology,” Sunny said, remembering a term Klaus had taught her shortly before she took her first steps.”

— Lemony Snicket

219. “I don’t know why anyone likes sledding in the first place.” I said. “Life goes downhill enough without speeding the process along.”

— Lemony Snicket

220. “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

221. “As I’m sure you know, whenever you are examining someone else’s belongings, you are bound to learn many interesting things about the person of which you were not previously aware... I recently looked in the refrigerator of one of my enemies and learned she was a vegetarian, or at least pretending to be one, or had a vegetarian visiting her for a few days.”

— Lemony Snicket

222. “The holiday season is a time for storytelling, and whether you are hearing the story of a candelabra staying lit for more than a week, or a baby born in a barn without proper medical supervision, these stories often feature miracles. Miracles are like pimples, because once you start looking for them you find more than you ever dreamed you’d see, and this holiday story features any number of miracles, depending on your point of view.”

— Lemony Snicket

223. “The last time I saw you, I was trying to throw thumbtacks into your cradle!”

— Lemony Snicket

224. “They are stupid, aren’t they?” Dr. Orwell agreed, as though they were talking about the weather instead of insulting young children.”

— Lemony Snicket

225. “I’m happier than a pig eating bacon!”

— Lemony Snicket

226. “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

227. “Duncan kept his hand on Violet’s and talked to her about terrible concerts he had attended back when the Quagmire parents were alive, and she was happy to hear his stories. Isadora began working on a poem about libraries and showed Klaus what she had written in her notebook, and Klaus was happy to offer suggestions. And Sunny snuggled down in Violet’s lap and chewed on the armrest of her seat, happy to bite something that was so sturdy.”

— Lemony Snicket

228. “I was tired of working in the lumber industry,” Phil said. “I was sure I could find a better job, and look at me now – cook on a dilapidated submarine. Life keeps on getting better and better.” “You always were an optimist,” Klaus said.”

— Lemony Snicket

229. “But unlike this book, the dictionary also discusses words that are far more pleasant to contemplate. The word ‘bubble’ is in the dictionary, for instance, as is the word ‘peacock,’ the word ‘vacation,’ and the words ‘the’ ‘author’s’ ‘execution’ ‘has’ ‘been’ ‘canceled,’ which makes a sentence that is always pleasant to hear.”

— Lemony Snicket

230. “I can see the headline now: ’murderer attempts to murder murderer.”

— Lemony Snicket

231. “It is true there are more important things than dinner, but it is difficult to keep those things in mind when you haven’t had dinner.”

— Lemony Snicket

232. “The night has a thousand eyes,’” Kit said hoarsely, and lifted her head to face the villain. The Baudelaires could tell by her voice that she was reciting the words of someone else. “’And the day but one; yet the light of the bright world dies with the dying sun. The mind has a thousand eyes, and the heart but one: yet the light of a whole life dies when love is done.”

— Lemony Snicket

233. “Friends can make you feel that the world is smaller and less sneaky than it really is, because you know people who have similar experiences.”

— Lemony Snicket

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

— Lemony Snicket

235. “Of course, all nights are dark days, because night is simply a badly lit version of day, due to the fact that the Earth travels around and around the sun reminding everyone that it is time to get out of bed and start the day with a cup of coffee or a secret message folded up into a paper airplane that can sail out the barred window of a ranger station.”

— Lemony Snicket

236. “You would do well to be less particular. With a library it is easier to hope for serendipity than to look for a precise answer.”

— Lemony Snicket

237. “In any case, this is how all our stories begin, in darkness with our eyes closed, and all our stories end the same way, too, with all of us uttering some last words – or perhaps someone else’s – before slipping back into darkness as our series of unfortunate events comes to an end.”

— Lemony Snicket

238. “Death is something you cannot escape, such as death, or a cheesecake that has curdled, both of which always turn up sooner later.”

— Lemony Snicket

239. “Remember, sometimes something might seem like bad news, but it could turn out to be a blessing in disguise.”

— Lemony Snicket

240. “It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try to readjust the way you thought of things.”

— Lemony Snicket

241. “Some people say that a sunrise is a miracle, because it is somewhat mysterious and often very beautiful, but other people say it is simply a fact of life, because it happens every day and far too early in the morning.”

— Lemony Snicket

242. “And in my experience, well-read people are less likely to be evil.”

— Lemony Snicket

243. “When we met, you were pretty, and I was lonely. Now, I am pretty lonely.”

— Lemony Snicket

244. “Ceviche is an acquired taste, a phrase which here means ’something you don’t like the first few times you eat it...”

— Lemony Snicket

245. “Defenestration” is.”

— Lemony Snicket

246. “I never thought I’d live to see the day.”

— Lemony Snicket

247. “But we can also ask for something we are much more likely to get, and that is to find a person or two, somewhere in our travels, who will tell us that we are noble enough, whether it is true or not. We can ask for someone who will say, “You are noble enough,” and remind us of our good qualities when we have forgotten them, or cast them into doubt.”

— Lemony Snicket

248. “I’m sure you have heard it said that appearance does not matter so much, and that it is what’s on the inside that counts. This is, of course, utter nonsense, because if it were true then people who were good on this inside would would never have to comb their hair or take a bath, and the whole world would smell even worse than it already does.”

— Lemony Snicket

249. “Oftentimes. when people are miserable, they will want to make other people miserable, too. But it never helps.”

— Lemony Snicket

250. “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 Feint forever, but there’s no such thing as forever, really. Everything is much shorter than that.”

— Lemony Snicket