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"It is very useful, when one is young, to learn the difference between "literally" and "figuratively." If something happens literally, it actually happens; if something happens figuratively, it feels like it is happening. If you are literally jumping for joy, for instance, it means you are leaping in the air because you are very happy. If you are figuratively jumping for joy, it means you are so happy that you could jump for joy, but are saving your energy for other matters."
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"Words are the fallen ruins of silent majesty."

"He had been thinking of how landscape moulds a language. It was impossible to imagine these hills giving forth anything but the soft syllables of Irish, just as only certain forms of German could be spoken on the high crags of Europe; or Dutch in the muddy, guttural, phlegmish lowlands."

"And why does he talk so funny? Doesn't he mean squashed tomatoes?I don't think that they had tomatoes when he comes from, said Bod. And that's just how they talk then."

"What's the point of using words nobody knows or can say comfortably?"

"Most of the people who have verbally asserted that 'there is no master of pronounciation' have intentionally made a claim and unintentionally made their claim believable. (It is 'pro-nun-ciation' not 'pro-noun-ciation'.)"

"'Good English' is whatever educated people talk so that what is good in one place or time would not be so in another."
Explore more quotes by Lemony Snicket


"There's nothing wrong with athletics, but they shouldn't get in the way of your schoolwork."


"A new experience can be extremely pleasurable, or extremely irritating, or somewhere in between, and you never know until you try it out."


"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."


"How did you do that? Mr. Poe asked. "Nice girls shouldn't know how to do such things."My sister is a nice girl, Klaus said, "and she knows how to do all sorts of things."


"It is useless for me to describe to you how terrible Violet, Klaus, and even Sunny felt in the time that followed. If you have ever lost someone very important to you, then you already know how it feels, and if you haven't, you cannot possibly imagine it."


"A letter may be coded, and a word may be coded. A theatrical performance may be coded, and a sonnet may be coded, and there are times when it seems the entire world is in code. Some believe that the world can be decoded by performing research in a library. Others believe that the world can be decoded by reading a newspaper."


"I never want to be away from you again, except at work, in the restroom or when one of us is at a movie the other does not want to see."


"I stood in the corridor feeling like an angry pebble. It didn't matter where I rolled off to. The mystery and treachery of the world continued, and a pebble like me could get angry over anything it liked and it wouldn't do any good. Librarians not reading, I thought to myself. Sometimes I don't know why I bother."
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