"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious - the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science."
— Albert Einstein (Albert Einstein)

"Just because something is traditional is no reason to do it, of course."
— Lemony Snicket (The Blank Book)

"Right, good temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant."
— Lemony Snicket (The Reptile Room)

"The book was long, and difficult to read, and Klaus became more and more tired as the night wore on. Occasionally his eyes would close. He found himself reading the same sentence over and over. He found himself reading the same sentence over and over. He found himself reading the same sentence over and over."
— Lemony Snicket

"Whenever you are examining someone else's belongings, you are bound to learn many interesting things about the person of which you were not previously aware."
— Lemony Snicket (The Blank Book)

"Desperate times call for desperate measures" is an aphorism which here means "sometimes you need to change your facial expression in order to create a workable disguise." The quoting of an aphorism, such as "It takes a village to raise a child," "No news is good news," and "Love conquers all," rarely indicates that something helpful is about to happen, which is why we provide our volunteers with a disguise kit in addition to helpful phrases of advice."
— Lemony Snicket (Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography)

"And a refrigerator may hold a basket of strawberries, which would be important if a maniac said to you, "If you don't give me a basket of strawberries right now, I'm going to poke you with this large stick." But when the two elder Baudelaires and Quigley Quagmire opened the refrigerator, they found nothing that would help someone who was wounded, dying of thirst, or being threatened by a strawberry-crazed, stick-carrying maniac."
— Lemony Snicket

"Having a personal philosophy is like having a pet marmoset, because it may be very attractive when you acquire it, but there may be situations when it will not come in handy at all."
— Lemony Snicket (The Grim Grotto)

"The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you."
— David Foster Wallace

"The difference between stupid and intelligent people – and this is true whether or not they are well-educated – is that intelligent people can handle subtlety. "
— Neal Stephenson (The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer)

"Like every other creature on the face of the earth, Godfrey was, by birthright, a stupendous badass, albeit in the somewhat narrow technical sense that he could trace his ancestry back up a long line of slightly less highly evolved stupendous badasses to that first self-replicating gizmo---which, given the number and variety of its descendants, might justifiably be described as the most stupendous badass of all time. Everyone and everything that wasn't a stupendous badass was dead."
— Neal Stephenson (Cryptonomicon)

"Nell," the Constable continued, indicating through his tone of voice that the lesson was concluding, "the difference between ignorant and educated people is that the latter know more facts. But that has nothing to do with whether they are stupid or intelligent. The difference between stupid and intelligent people—and this is true whether or not they are well-educated—is that intelligent people can handle subtlety. They are not baffled by ambiguous or even contradictory situations—in fact, they expect them and are apt to become suspicious when things seem overly straightforward."
— Neal Stephenson (The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer)

"The franchise and the virus work on the same principle, what thrives in one place will thrive in another. You just have to find a sufficiently virulent business plan, condense it into a three-ring binder ― its DNA ― Xerox it, and embed it in the fertile line of a well-traveled highway, preferably one with a left turn lane. Then the growth will expand until it runs up against its property lines."
— Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash)

"Gaston was not only a fierce lover, with endless wisdom and imagination, but he was also, perhaps, the first man in the history of the species who had made an emergency landing and had come close to killing himself and his sweetheart simply to make love in a field of violets."
— Gabriel García Márquez (One Hundred Years of Solitude)

"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away."
— Maya Angelou

"The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated. "
— James Baldwin

"Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were, but without it we go nowhere."
— Carl Sagan