“Assumptions are dangerous things to make, and like all dangerous things to make -- bombs, for instance, or strawberry shortcake -- if you make even the tiniest mistake you can find yourself in terrible trouble. Making assumptions simply means believing things are a certain way with little or no evidence that shows you are correct, and you can see at once how this can lead to terrible trouble. For instance, one morning you might wake up and make the assumption that your bed was in the same place that it always was, even though you would have no real evidence that this was so. But when you got out of your bed, you might discover that it had floated out to sea, and now you would be in terrible trouble all because of the incorrect assumption that you'd made. You can see that it is better not to make too many assumptions, particularly in the morning.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Austere Academy
“There is no worse sound in the world than someone who cannot play the violin but insists on doing so anyway.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Austere Academy
“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, quote from The Austere Academy
“Everybody will die, but very few people want to be reminded of that fact.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Austere Academy
“For Beatrice - you will always be in my mind, in my heart and in your grave.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Austere Academy
“In times of extreme stress, one can often find energy hidden in even the most exhausted areas of the body.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Austere Academy
“The expression "following suit" is a curious one, because it has nothing to do with walking behind a matching set of clothing. If you follow suit, it means you do the same thing somebody else has just done. If all of your friends decided to jump off a bridge into the icy waters of an ocean or river, for instance, and you jumped in right after them, you would be following suit. You can see why following suit can be a dangerous thing to do, because you could end up drowning simply because somebody else thought of it first.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Austere Academy
“It looked exhausting and pointless, two things that should be avoided at all costs”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Austere Academy
“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 from The Austere Academy
“Klaus had known for all twelve of his years that his older sister found a hand on her shoulder comforting - as long as the hand was attached to an arm, of course.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Austere Academy
“I'm afraid it's not nonsense," Genghis said, shaking his turbaned head and continuing his story. "As I was saying before the little girl interrupted me, the baby didn't dash off with the other orphans. She just sat there like a sack of flour. So I walked over to her and gave her a kick to get her moving."
"Excellent idea!" Nero said. "What a wonderful story this is! And then what happened?"
"Well, at first it seemed like I'd kicked a big hole in the baby," Genghis said, his eyes shining, "which seemed lucky, because Sunny was a terrible athlete and it would have been a blessing to put her out of her misery."
Nero clapped his hands. "I know just what you mean, Genghis," he said. "She's a terrible secretary as well."
"But she did all that stapling," Mr. Remora protested.
"Shut up and let the coach finish his story," Nero said.
"But when I looked down," Genghis continued, "I saw that I hadn't kicked a hole in a baby. I'd kicked a hole in a bag of flour! I'd been tricked!"
"That's terrible!" Nero cried.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Austere Academy
“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 The Austere Academy
“You write poetry?" Klaus asked.
He had read a lot about poets but had never met one.
"Just a little bit," Isadora said modestly. "I write poems down in this notebook. It's an interest of mine."
"Sappho!" Sunny shrieked, which meant something like, "I'd be very pleased to hear a poem of yours!”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Austere Academy
“If you were smart," Genghis said, "you would have borrowed the silverware of one of your friends."
"We never thought of that," Klaus said. When one is forced to tell atrocious lies, one often feels a guilty flutter in one's stomach, and Klaus felt such a flutter now. "You certainly are an intelligent man."
"Not only am I intelligent," Genghis agreed, "but I'm also very smart.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Austere Academy
“If you have walked into a museum recently - whether you did so to attend an art exhibition or to escape from the police - you may have noticed a type of painting known as a triptych. A triptych has three panels, with something different painted on each of the panels. For instance, my friend Professor Reed made a triptych for me, and he painted fire on one panel, a typewriter on another, and the face of a beautiful, intelligent woman on the third. The triptych is entitled What Happened to Beatrice and I cannot look upon it without weeping.
I am a writer, and not a painter, but if I were to try and paint a triptych entitled The Baudelaire Orphans' Miserable Experiences at Prufrock Prep, I would paint Mr. Remora on one panel, Mrs. Brass on another, and a box of staples on the third, and the results would make me so sad that between the Beatrice triptych and the Baudelaire triptych I would scarcely stop weeping all da”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Austere Academy
“Yes, I know," Isadora said, and then read her poem, leaning forward so Carmelita Spats would not overhear:
"I would rather eat a bowl of vampire bats
than spend an hour with Carmelita Spats."
The Baudelaires giggled and then covered their mouths so nobody would know they were laughing at Carmelita.
"That was great," Klaus said. "I like the part about the bowl of bats.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Austere Academy
“A person who designs buildings is called an architect, but in the case of Prufrock Prep a better term might be 'depressed architect.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Austere Academy
“As I'm sure you know, a good night's sleep helps you perform well in school, and so if you are a student you should always get a good night's sleep unless you have come to the good part of your book, and then you should stay up all night and let your schoolwork fall by the wayside, a phrase which here means 'flunk.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Austere Academy
“There is one, and only one, advantage to somebody who cannot play the violin insisting on doing so anyways, and the advantage is that they often play so loudly that they cannot hear if the audience is having a conversation. It is extremely rude, of course, for an audience to talk during a concert performance, but when the performance is a wretched one, and lasts six hours, such rudeness can be forgiven.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Austere Academy
“Mr. Poe meant well, but a jar of mustard probably also means well and would do a better job of keeping the Baudelaires out of danger.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Austere Academy
“There's nothing wrong with athletics, but they shouldn't get in the way of your schoolwork.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Austere Academy
“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, quote from The Austere Academy
“In between bites of banana, Mr. Remora would tell stories, and the children would write the stories down in notebooks, and every so often there would be a test. The stories were very short, and there were a whole lot of them on every conceivable subject. "One day I went to the store to purchase a carton of milk," Mr. Remora would say, chewing on a banana. "When I got home, I poured the milk into a glass and drank it. Then I watched television. The end." Or: "One afternoon a man named Edward got into a green truck and drove to a farm. The farm had geese and cows. The end." Mr. Ramora would tell story after story, and eat banana after banana, and it would get more and more difficult for Violet to pay attention.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Austere Academy
“Well, Nero," Genghis said, "I just wanted to give you this rose-a small gift of congratulations for the wonderful concert you gave us last night!"
"Oh, thank you," Nero said, taking the rose out of Genghis's hand and giving it a good smell. "I was wonderful, wasn't I?"
"You were perfection!" Genghis said. "The first time you played your sonata, I was deeply moved. The second time, I had tears in my eyes. The third time, I was sobbing. The fourth time, I had an uncontrollable emotional attack. The fifth time-" The Baudelaires did not hear about the fifth time because Nero's door swung shut behind them.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Austere Academy
“The Baudelaire orphans hung on to one another, and wept and wept while the adults argued endlessly behind them. Finally-as, I'm sorry to say, Count Olaf forced the Quagmires into puppy costumes so he could sneak them onto the airplane without anyone noticing-the Baudelaires cried themselves out and just sat on the lawn together in weary silence.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Austere Academy
“Whenever you see the words 'hee hee hee' in a book, or 'ha ha ha,' or 'har har har,' or 'heh heh heh,' or even 'ho ho ho,' those words mean somebody was laughing. In the case, however, the words 'hee hee hee' cannot really describe what Vice Principal Nero's laugh sounded like. The laugh was squeaky, and it was wheezy, and it had a rough crackly edge to it, as if Nero were eating tin cans and he laughed at the children. But most of all the laugh sounded cruel.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Austere Academy
“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 from The Austere Academy
“As if he were reading her thoughts, Klaus put a hand on Violet's shoulder, and she smiled at him. Klaush had known for all his twelve years that his sister found a hand on her shoulder comforting- as long as the hand was attached to an arm, of course.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Austere Academy
“If you were going to give a gold medal tot he least delightful person on Earth, you would have to give that medal to a person named Carmelita Spats, and if you didn't give it to her, Carmelita Spats was the sort of person who would snatch it from your hands anyway. Carmelita Spats was rude, she was violent, and she was filthy, and it is really a shame that I must describe her to you, because there are enough ghastly and distressing things in this story without even mentioning such an unpleasant person.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Austere Academy
Lemony Snicket
Born place: in San Francisco, The United States
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“I was very fond of Lagneau’s phrase: “I have no comfort but in my absolute despair.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, quote from Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter
“a degree in psychiatry merely qualifies one to begin learning about the intricacies and foibles of the human personality.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Carrion Comfort
“You,” he whispered, bringing his hand to hover by my cheek.
“Are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.”
And then he touched me.”
― Jessica Verday, quote from The Hidden
“She lifted her chin. "I've been shouting for you."
Sam shrugged, sauntering over to her. "I figured you could wait a few minutes, given that I saved the day and all." His brows rose high on his ash-covered face.
"Some hero." She gestured to the ruin of the tower around them. "I've never seen such sloppy work”
― Sarah J. Maas, quote from The Assassin and the Pirate Lord
“Thus, in imagination, individuals seem freer under the dominance of the bourgeoisie than before, because their conditions of life seem accidental; in reality, of course, they are less free, because they are to a greater extent governed by material forces.”
― Karl Marx, quote from The German Ideology
My Soul to Keep
Stone of Farewell
Runaway
Mysterious Skin
The Lusiads
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