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"Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it isn't so."
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"You cannot force someone to believe something they do not believe, you can only manage to force them to speak or act as if they do."

"Night poured over the desert. It came suddenly, in purple. In the clear air, the stars drilled down out of the sky, reminding any thoughtful watcher that it is in the deserts and high places that religions are generated. When men see nothing but bottomless infinity over their heads they have always had a driving and desperate urge to find someone to put in the way."

"It is argued that because they believed thoroughly in a just, moral God they could put there faith there and let the smaller insecurities take care of themselves. But I think that because they trusted themselves and respected themselves as individuals, because they knew beyond doubt that they were valuable and potential moral units- because of this they could give God their own courage and dignity and then receive it back. Such things have disappeared perhaps because men do not trust themselves anymore, and when that happens there is nothing left except perhaps to find some strong sure man, even though he may be wrong, and to dangle from his coat-tails."

"People are not stupid. They believe things for reasons. The last way for skeptics to get the attention of bright, curious, intelligent people is to belittle or condescend or to show arrogance toward their beliefs."
Explore more quotes by Lemony Snicket


"One of the greatest myths in the world - & the phrase 'greatest myths' is just a fancy way of saying 'big fat lies' -- is that troublesome things get less & less troublesome if you do them more & more. People say this myth when they are teaching children to ride bicycles, for instance, as though falling off a bicycle & skinning your knee is less troublesome the fourteenth time you do it than it is the first time. The truth is that troublesome things tend to remain troublesome no matter how many times you do them, & that you should avoid doing them unless they are absolutely urgent."


"In an emergency, one often learns that one's companions can be of even less help in extraordinary circumstances than they are during an average evening."


"I'm jealous of your hooks," Kevin replied. "Having no hands is better than having two equally strong hands."Don't be ridiculous," one of the white-faced women replied. "Having a white face is worse than both of your situations."But you have a white face because you put makeup on," Colette said, as Sunny climbed back out of the trunk and knelt down in the snow. "You're putting powder on your face right now."


"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."


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


"You would run much slower if you were dragging something behind you, like a knapsack or a sheriff."


"It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know. 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 and readjust the way you thought of things."


"We'll see what you find out," Stew said. "You'll find out what it feels like to be thrown from a speeding train to the rocky bottom of a drained sea. Except you won't really find out, because you'll be dead. Get it? What I mean is, it'll kill you when I throw you from this train so you'll be in no state to find out what it feels like. Get it? Due to your death by falling from a train."


"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."


"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."
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