"If writers wrote as carelessly as some people talk, then adhasdh asdglaseuyt[bn[ pasdlgkhasdfasdf."
— Lemony Snicket (Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid)

"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."
— Lemony Snicket (Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid)

"Reading is one form of escape. Running for your life is another."
— Lemony Snicket

"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 (Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid)

"Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant filled with odd little waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don't always like."
— Lemony Snicket

"People aren't either wicked or noble. They're like chef's salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict."
— Lemony Snicket (The Grim Grotto)

"Wicked people never have time for reading. It's one of the reasons for their wickedness."
— Lemony Snicket

"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 (Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid)

"It is one of life's bitterest truths that bedtime so often arrives just when things are really getting interesting."
— Lemony Snicket (The Grim Grotto)

"A man of my acquaintance once wrote a poem called "The Road Less Traveled", describing a journey he took through the woods along a path most travelers never used. The poet found that the road less traveled was peaceful but quite lonely, and he was probably a bit nervous as he went along, because if anything happened on the road less traveled, the other travelers would be on the road more frequently traveled and so couldn't hear him as he cried for help. Sure enough, that poet is dead."
— Lemony Snicket (The Slippery Slope)

"They didn't understand it, but like so many unfortunate events in life, just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it isn't so."
— Lemony Snicket (The Bad Beginning)

"One of the world's most popular entertainments is a deck of cards, which contains thirteen each of four suits, highlighted by kings, queens and jacks, who are possibly the queen's younger, more attractive boyfriends."
— Lemony Snicket

"There is no worse sound in the world than someone who cannot play the violin but insists on doing so anyway."
— Lemony Snicket (The Austere Academy)

"Those unable to catalog the past are doomed to repeat it."
— Lemony Snicket (The End)

"If you have ever lost a loved one, then you know exactly how it feels. And if you have not, then you cannot possibly imagine it."
— Lemony Snicket (The Bad Beginning)

""Life isn't fair," he said, in his undisguised voice, and for once the Baudelaire orphans agreed with every word the man said."
— Lemony Snicket (The End)

"Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent"
— Victor Hugo

"The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories, that it has come to be disbelieved in. Few people dare now to say that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet it is in this way that love begins, and in this way only."
— Victor Hugo (Les Misérables)

"The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved -- loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves."
— Victor Hugo

"Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees."
— Victor Hugo

"No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come."
— Victor Hugo

"To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark."
— Victor Hugo

"A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is visible labor and there is invisible labor."
— Victor Hugo (Les Misérables)

"He who opens a school door, closes a prison."
— Victor Hugo

""Promise to give me a kiss on my brow when I am dead.--I shall feel it."

She dropped her head again on Marius' knees, and her eyelids closed. He thought the poor soul had departed. Eponine remained motionless. All at once, at the very moment when Marius fancied her asleep forever, she slowly opened her eyes in which appeared the sombre profundity of death, and said to him in a tone whose sweetness seemed already to proceed from another world:--

"And by the way, Monsieur Marius, I believe that I was a little bit in love with you.""
— Victor Hugo (Les Misérables)

"Each man should frame life so that at some future hour fact and his dreaming meet."
— Victor Hugo

"What is said about men often has as much influence upon their lives, and especially upon their destinies, as what they do."
— Victor Hugo (Les Misérables)

"Fashions have done more harm than revolutions."
— Victor Hugo

"so long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation which, in the midst of civilization, artificially creates a hell on earth, and complicates with human fatality a destiny that is divine; so long as the three problems of the century - the degradation of man by the exploitation of his labour, the ruin of women by starvation and the atrophy of childhood by physical and spiritual night are not solved; so long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words and from a still broader point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, there should be a need for books such as this."
— Victor Hugo

"Teach the ignorant as much as you can; society is culpable in not providing a free education for all and it must answer for the night which it produces. If the soul is left in darkness sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness."
— Victor Hugo (Les Misérables)

"It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live."
— Victor Hugo (Les Misérables)

"Plea Against the Death Penalty

Look, examine, reflect. You hold capital punishment up as an example. Why? Because of what it teaches. And just what is it that you wish to teach by means of this example? That thou shalt not kill. And how do you teach that "thou shalt not kill"? By killing.

I have examined the death penalty under each of its two aspects: as a direct action, and as an indirect one. What does it come down to? Nothing but something horrible and useless, nothing but a way of shedding blood that is called a crime when an individual commits it, but is (sadly) called "justice" when society brings it about. Make no mistake, you lawmakers and judges, in the eyes of God as in those of conscience, what is a crime when individuals do it is no less an offense when society commits the deed."
— Victor Hugo

"An intelligent hell would be better than a stupid paradise."
— Victor Hugo (Ninety-Three)

"Let us study things that are no more. It is necessary to understand them, if only to avoid them."
— Victor Hugo (Les Misérables)

"There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher."
— Victor Hugo

"He never went out without a book under his arm, and he often came back with two."
— Victor Hugo (Les Misérables)

"It is from books that wise people derive consolation in the troubles of life"
— Victor Hugo

"Not being heard is no reason for silence."
— Victor Hugo

"...It all seemed to him to have disappeared as if behind a curtain at a theater. There are such curtains that drop in life. God is moving on to the next act."
— Victor Hugo (Les Misérables)

"If you wish to understand what Revolution is, call it Progress; and if you wish to understand what Progress is, call it Tomorrow."
— Victor Hugo (Les Misérables)

"So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation, which, in the face of civilisation, artificially creates hells on earth, and complicates a destiny that is divine, with human fatality; so long as the three problems of the age — the degradation of man by poverty, the ruin of woman by starvation, and the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night — are not solved; so long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words, and from a yet more extended point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, books like this cannot be useless. Preface of Les Miserables"
— Victor Hugo

"This is the shade of meaning: the door of a physician should never be closed; the door of a priest should always be open."
— Victor Hugo (Les Misérables)

"You ask me what forces me to speak? a strange thing; my conscience."
— Victor Hugo (Les Misérables)

"Victor Hugo was a madman who thought he was Victor Hugo"
— Jean Cocteau

"The left-handed are precious; they take places which are inconvenient for the rest."
— Victor Hugo

"Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions"
— Victor Hugo (Les Misérables)

"Almost nobody dances sober, unless they happen to be insane."
— H.P. Lovecraft

"For some stories, it's easy. The moral of 'The Three Bears,' for instance, is "Never break into someone else's house.' The moral of 'Snow White' is 'Never eat apples.' The moral of World War I is 'Never assassinate Archduke Ferdinand.'"
— Lemony Snicket (The Wide Window)