Top 500 Lemony Snicket Quotes (2025 Update)
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351. “A young man who asks too much about clothing will find himself the subject of unflattering rumors.”

— Lemony Snicket

352. “As I’m sure you know, there are two types of “What?” in the world. The first type simply means “Excuse me, I didn’t hear you. Could you please repeat yourself?” The second type is a little trickier. It means something more along the lines of “Excuse me, I did hear you, but I can’t believe that’s really what you meant.”

— Lemony Snicket

353. “I had seen buildings burn before, as part of my training and as part of my childhood. I had seen small homes and enormous mansions devoured by fire, and I had seen flames destroy factories and symphony halls and houses of worship. A school seems worse, I thought as the fire roared into the sky. Even when the school is empty, it’s a terrible thing.”

— Lemony Snicket

354. “The map is not the territory,” Snicket’s chaperon advises him. “That’s an expression which means the world does not match the picture in our heads.”

— Lemony Snicket

355. “But you can’t read every story, and answer every question even if you’d like to.”

— Lemony Snicket

356. “It is the things that have a history, L. Compared to them we are ghosts.”

— Lemony Snicket

357. “Tee hee torture!”

— Lemony Snicket

358. “So it goes,′ Prosper Lost said, a little sadly. ‘There are some stories you never get to finish.”

— Lemony Snicket

359. “Some of the bravest and most resourceful people in the world have come to bad ends.”

— Lemony Snicket

360. “No matter what documents you investigate, and what objects you retrieve, you many never answer the questions that are most important to you, but nevertheless, sooner or later you must finish whatever file you have begun.”

— Lemony Snicket

361. “It is good to see people happy with one another. It is a glimpse of a world in which everyone is that way. A happy world might be boring, I told myself, but watching Jake grin at Cleo grinning at Jake grinning at Cleo and back again, I thought it was worth the risk.”

— Lemony Snicket

362. “But I will take a page from the book of the Snow Scout leader, and skip ahead to the next interesting thing that happened, which was very, very late at night, when so many interesting parts of stories happen and so many people miss them because they are asleep in their beds, or hiding in the broom closet of a mustard factory, disguised as a dustpan to fool the night watchwoman. It.”

— Lemony Snicket

363. “Josephine caught my eye and gave me a signal we’d used for years to indicate that one of us had to leave. The signal was mouthing the words “I have to leave” and pointing at the door.”

— Lemony Snicket

364. “But lyrics are not proof; photographs are.”

— Lemony Snicket

365. “I’m not smart, Snicket. I don’t ask the right questions and I never find the right answers.”

— Lemony Snicket

366. “A secret note is secret. There is no reason to sign it.”

— Lemony Snicket

367. “It is always interesting to observe what people are wearing in the middle of the night, although there are more pleasant ways to make such observations without being accused of murder.”

— Lemony Snicket

368. “A wonderful laugh is no excuse for villainous behavior!”

— Lemony Snicket

369. “Don’t you see?′ he asked. ‘I’m not just the island’s facilitator. I’m the island’s parent. I keep this library far away from the people under my care, so that they will never be disturbed by the world’s terrible secrets.”

— Lemony Snicket

370. “It is never seven that you count to, before you do something difficult. It is never at the count of two. It is always three, and it is strange.”

— Lemony Snicket

371. “I looked at the poor, sickly plant, trying to grow in the coffee grounds instead of the earth, where it belonged. I wondered what happened to things that grew up in the wrong place.”

— Lemony Snicket

372. “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

373. “All of life is just shadows.”

— Lemony Snicket

374. “One of the greatest myths in the world–and the phrase “greatest myths” is just a fancy way of saying “big fat lies”–is that troublesome things get less and less troublesome if you do them more and more. The truth is that troublesome things tend to remain troublesome no matter how many times you do them, and that you should avoid doing them unless they are absolutely urgent.”

— Lemony Snicket

375. “I can’t sleep if there’s murderers on the loose!” cried another guest. “Amen, brother!” said another person. “If a crime has been committed, then it’s our duty to stand around in our pajamas in the name of justice!”

— Lemony Snicket

376. “They were charming and resourceful, and had pleasant facial features, but they were extremely unlucky, and most everything that happened to them was rife with misfortune, misery, and despair.”

— Lemony Snicket

377. “Villainy, I thought to myself, despite all the myths and fairy tales, despite all the stories in books and all the articles in newspapers, is not very mysterious at all. It is a person in a room.”

— Lemony Snicket

378. “The dark was real, though. It almost always is.”

— Lemony Snicket

379. “It made the Baudelaire sisters a little sad to see all those books sitting in the library unread and unnoticed, like stray dogs or lost children that nobody wanted to take home.”

— Lemony Snicket

380. “Villainy can win against one library, but not against an organization of readers.”

— Lemony Snicket

381. “Nobody likes to be tapped on the knee. Practically nobody likes to be tapped anywhere.”

— Lemony Snicket

382. “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

383. “Respecting one’s elders is difficult enough, but when they are soaked with water and have proved themselves to be dishonest, it is nearly impossible.”

— Lemony Snicket

384. “It is unfortunate, of course, that this quiet happy moment was the last one the children would have for quite some time, but there is nothing anyone can do about it now. Just when the Baudelaires were beginning to think about lunch, they heard a car pull up in front of the house and toot its horn. To the children it signaled the arrival of Stephano. To us it should signal the beginning of more misery.”

— Lemony Snicket

385. “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

386. “As I’m sure you know, whenever there is a mirror around, it is almost impossible not to take a look at yourself. Even though we all know what we look like, we all like just to look at our reflections, if only to see how we’re doing.”

— Lemony Snicket

387. “You’ll soon find out that much of this job involves a lot of waiting around,” the hook-handed man said. “I usually keep something around to help pass the time, like a deck of cards or a large rock.”

— Lemony Snicket

388. “They were probably hitting the town. I hoped it was hitting them back.”

— Lemony Snicket

389. “A lock isn’t going to stop us. Not when we’ve come all this way.”

— Lemony Snicket

390. “Optimist” is a word which here refers to a person, such as Phil, who thinks hopeful and pleasant thoughts about nearly everything. For instance, 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 my left arm anymore, but at least nobody will ever ask me whether I am right-handed or left-handed,” but most of us would say something more along the lines of “Aaaaah! My arm! My arm!”

— Lemony Snicket

391. “I’d never forget Sunny! Never in a million years! Not that I will live that long! Particularly because I don’t exercise very much! But I don’t like exercising, so it’s worth it!”

— Lemony Snicket

392. “People who think nothing can go wrong are usually disappointed.”

— Lemony Snicket

393. “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

394. “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

395. “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

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

— Lemony Snicket

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

— Lemony Snicket

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

— Lemony Snicket

399. “Defenestration” is.”

— Lemony Snicket

400. “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