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Quote by Lemony Snicket

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The Ersatz Elevator

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Lemony Snicket

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“Besides getting several paper cuts in the same day or receiving the news that someone in your family has betrayed you to your enemies, one of the most unpleasant experiences in life is a job interview. It is very nerve-wracking to explain to someone all the things you can do in the hopes that they will pay you to do them. I once had a very difficult job interview in which I had not only to explain that I could hit an olive with a bow and arrow, memorize up to three pages of poetry, and determine if there was poison mixed into cheese fondue without tasting it, but I had to demonstrate all these things as well.”

Lemony SnicketA Series Of Unfortunate Events
Book:The Carnivorous Carnival
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“Faith is always coveted most and needed most urgently where will is lacking; for will, as the affect of command, is the decisive sign of sovereignty and strength. In other words, the less one knows how to command, the more urgently one covets someone who commands, who commands severely—a god, prince, class, physician, father confessor, dogma, or party conscience. From this one might perhaps gather that the two world religions, Buddhism and Christianity, may have owed their origin and above all their sudden spread to a tremendous collapse and disease of the will. And that is what actually happened: both religions encountered a situation in which the will had become diseased, giving rise to a demand that had become utterly desperate for some "thou shalt." Both religions taught fanaticism in ages in which the will had become exhausted, and thus they offered innumerable people some support, a new possibility of willing, some delight in willing. For fanaticism is the only "strength of the will" that even the weak and insecure can be brought to attain, being a sort of hypnotism of the whole system of the senses and the intellect for the benefit of an excessive nourishment (hypertrophy) of a single point of view and feeling that henceforth becomes dominant— which the Christian calls his faith. Once a human being reaches the fundamental conviction that he must be commanded, he becomes "a believer." Conversely, one could conceive of such a pleasure and power of self-determination, such a freedom of the will [ This conception of "freedom of the will" ( alias, autonomy) does not involve any belief in what Nietzsche called "the superstition of free will" in section 345 ( alias, the exemption of human actions from an otherwise universal determinism).] that the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for certainty, being practiced in maintaining himself on insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near abysses. Such a spirit would be the free spirit par excellence.”

ScienceFaithMoralityWill To Power
Book:The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs
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“Of all the ridiculous expressions people use - and people use a great many ridiculous expressions - one of the most ridiculous is "No news is good news." "No new is good news" simply means that if you don't hear from someone, everything is probably fine, and you can see at once why this expression makes such little sense, because everything being fine is only one of many, many reasons why someone may not contact you. Perhaps they are tied up. Maybe they are surrounded by fierce weasels, or perhaps they are wedged tightly between two refrigerators and cannot get themselves out. The expression might well be changed to "No new is bad news," except that people may not be able to contact you because they have just been crowned king or are competing in a gymnastics tournament. The point is that there is no way to know why someone has not contacted you, until they contact you and explain themselves. For this reason, the sensible expression would be "No news is no news," except that it is so obvious it is hardly an expression at all.”

Lemony SnicketA Series Of Unfortunate Events
Book:The Hostile Hospital
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“Who will take care of us out there?" Klaus said, looking out on the flat horizon. "Nobody," Violet said. "We'll have to take care of ourselves. We'll have to be self-sustaining." "Like the hot air mobile home," Klaus said, "that could travel and survive all by itself." "Like me," Sunny said, and abruptly stood up. Violet and Klaus gasped in surprise as their baby sister took her first wobbly steps, and then walked closely beside her, ready to catch her if she fell. But she didn't fall. Sunny took a few more self-sustaining steps, and then the three Baudelaires stood together, casting long shadows across the horizon in the dying light of the sunset.”

Lemony SnicketA Series Of Unfortunate Events
Book:The Vile Village
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“If you are like most people, you have an assortment of friends and family you can call upon in times of trouble. For instance, if you woke up in the middle of the night and saw a masked woman trying to crawl through your bedroom window, you might call your mother or father to help you push her back out. If you found yourself hopelessly lost in the middle of a strange city, you might ask the police to give you a ride home. And if you were an author locked in an Italian restaurant that was slowly filling up with water, you might call upon your acquaintances in the locksmith, pasta, and sponge business to come and rescue you.”

Lemony SnicketA Series Of Unfortunate Events
Book:The Hostile Hospital
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“There are many, many things that are difficult in this life, but one thing that isn't difficult at all is figuring out whether someone is excited or not when they open a present. If someone is excited, they will often put exclamation points at the end of their sentences to indicate their excited tone of voice. If they say "Oh!" for instance, the exclamation point would indicate that the person is saying "Oh!" in an excited way, rather than simply saying "Oh," with a comma after it, which would indicate that the present is somewhat disappointing. "Oh," Violet said, as she opened her present. "Oh," Klaus said, as he opened his. "Oh," Sunny said, as she tore open her shopping bag with her teeth.”

Lemony SnicketA Series Of Unfortunate Events
Book:The Ersatz Elevator
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