Quotes from Horseradish

Lemony Snicket ·  168 pages

Rating: (5.5K votes)


“Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Horseradish


“Everyone, at some point in their lives, wakes up in the middle of the night with the feeling that they are all alone in the world, and that nobody loves them now and that nobody will ever love them, and that they will never have a decent night's sleep again and will spend their lives wandering blearily around a loveless landscape, hoping desperately that their circumstances will improve, but suspecting, in their heart of hearts, that they will remain unloved forever. The best thing to do in these circumstances is to wake somebody else up, so that they can feel this way, too.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Horseradish


“Everyone should be able to do one card trick, tell two jokes, and recite three poems, in case they are ever trapped in an elevator.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Horseradish


“If writers wrote as carelessly as some people talk, then adhasdh asdglaseuyt[bn[ pasdlgkhasdfasdf.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Horseradish


“A good library will never be too neat, or too dusty, because somebody will always be in it, taking books off the shelves and staying up late reading them.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Horseradish



“When someone is crying, of course, the noble thing to do is to comfort them. But if someone is trying to hide their tears, it may also be noble to pretend you do not notice them.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Horseradish


“Love can change a person the way a parent can change a baby- awkwardly, and often with a great deal of mess.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Horseradish


“It is always sad when someone leaves home, unless they are simply going around the corner and will return in a few minutes with ice-cream sandwiches.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Horseradish


“It is difficult, when faced with a situation you cannot control, to admit you can do nothing.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Horseradish


“There are times to stay put, and what you want will come to you, and there are times to go out into the world and find such a thing for yourself.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Horseradish



“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!”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Horseradish


“A library is like an island in the middle of a vast sea of ignorance, particularly if the library is very tall and the surrounding area has been flooded.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Horseradish


“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.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Horseradish


“Entertaining a notion, like entertaining a baby cousin or entertaining a pack of hyenas, is a dangerous thing to refuse to do. If you refuse to entertain a baby cousin, the baby cousin may get bored and entertain itself by wandering off and falling down a well. If you refuse to entertain a pack of hyenas, they may become restless and entertain themselves by devouring you. But if you refuse to entertain a notion - which is just a fancy way of saying that you refuse to think about a certain idea - you have to be much braver than someone who is merely facing some blood-thirsty animals, or some parents who are upset to find their little darling at the bottom of a well, because nobody knows what an idea will do when it goes off to entertain itself.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Horseradish


“Most schools have a loud system of loud bells, which startle the students and teachers at regular intervals and remind them that time is passing even more slowly than it seems.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Horseradish



“One of the remarkable things about love is that, despite very irritating people writing poems and songs about how pleasant it is, it really is quite pleasant.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Horseradish


“Siblings that say they never fight are most definitely hiding something”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Horseradish


“But there are times in this harum-scarum world when figuring out the right thing to do is quite simple, but doing the right thing is simply impossible....”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Horseradish


“In most cases, the best strategy for a job interview is to be fairly honest, because the worst thing that can happen is that you won't get the job and will spend the rest of your life foraging for food in the wilderness and seeking shelter underneath a tree or the awning of a bowling alley that has gone out of business.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Horseradish


“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.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Horseradish



“Shyness is a curious thing, because, like quicksand, it can strike people at any time, and also, like quicksand, it usually makes its victims look down.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Horseradish


“There are those who say that life is like a book, with chapters for each event in your life and a limited number of pages on which you can spend your time. But I prefer to think that a book is like a life, particularly a good one, which is well to worth staying up all night to finish.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Horseradish


“It is so rare in this world to meet a trustworthy person who truly wants to help you, and finding such a person can make you feel warm and safe, even if you are in the middle of a windy valley high up in the mountains.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Horseradish


“One of the most difficult things to think about in life is one’s regrets. Something will happen to you, and you will do the wrong thing, and for years afterward you will wish you had done something different.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Horseradish


“The way sadness works is one of the strangest riddles of the world.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Horseradish



“Temper tantrums, however fun they may be to throw, rarely solve whatever problem is causing them.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Horseradish


“Sometimes when someone tells a ridiculous lie, it is best to ignore it entirely.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Horseradish


“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.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Horseradish


About the author

Lemony Snicket
Born place: in San Francisco, The United States
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Popular quotes

“For there was never any yet that wholly could escape love, and never shall there be any, never so long as beauty shall be, never so long as eyes can see.”
― quote from Daphnis and Chloe


“Because when you’re not considered to be a threat, you can get away with much, much more”
― John Marrs, quote from The Good Samaritan


“I don’t understand this notion of ethnic pride. “Proud to be Irish,” “Puerto Rican pride,” “Black pride.” It seems to me that pride should be reserved for accomplishments; things you attain or achieve, not things that happen to you by chance. Being Irish isn’t a skill; it’s genetic. You wouldn’t say, “I’m proud to have brown hair,” or “I’m proud to be short and stocky.” So why the fuck should you say you’re proud to be Irish? I’m Irish, but I’m not particularly proud of it. Just glad! Goddamn glad to be Irish!”
― George Carlin, quote from Napalm & Silly Putty


“I leaned my head back. "I look worse than I did the night you met me."
"I thought you looked fine."
I rolled my head to the side, so I could see him. Hoping the shadows made it so he couldn't see me. "What are you talking about? I looked like a Cirque du Soleil performer."
"What are you talking about?"
"The black dots around my eyes?"
He shook his head. "I'm lost."
"You were staring--"
"Oh, yeah." He gazed through the windshield. "Sorry about that. I've just never seen eyes as green as yours. I was trying to figure out if you wore contacts."
"You were looking at my eyes?"
"Yeah."
"Not the makeup?"
He turned his attention back to me. "I didn't realize you were wearing any. That night, anyway. Tonight it's pretty obvious."
"Oh." Didn't I feel silly? "I thought--" I shook my head. "Never mind." On second thought...
"You don't like all the makeup?"
"I just don't think you need it. I mean, you look pretty without it."
Oh, really? That was totally unexpected.”
― Rachel Hawthorne, quote from The Boyfriend League


“The book describes the death experience in terms of the different elements of the body, going deeper and deeper. Physically you feel heavy when the earth element dissolves into water; and when water dissolves into fire you find that the circulation begins to cease functioning. When fire dissolves into air, any feeling of warmth or growth begins to dissolve; and when air dissolves into space you lose the last feeling of contact with the physical world. Finally, when space or consciousness dissolves into the central nāḍī, there is a sense of internal luminosity, an inner glow, when everything has become completely introverted.”
― Padmasambhava, quote from Tibetan Book of the Dead


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