“Often we pass beside happiness without seeing it, without looking at it, or even if we have seen and looked at it, without recognizing it.”
“When you compare the sorrows of real life to the pleasures of the imaginary one, you will never want to live again, only to dream forever.”
“There are two ways of seeing: with the body and with the soul. The body's sight can sometimes forget, but the soul remembers forever.”
“His fair landlady was in despair. She would most willingly have made M. d'Artagnan her husband--such a handsome man, and such a fierce mustache!”
“Well, father, in the shipwreck of life, for life is an eternal shipwreck of our hopes, I cast into the sea my useless encumbrance, that is all, and I remain with my own will, disposed to live perfectly alone, and, consequently, perfectly free. (Eugenie to her father)”
Source: The Count of Monte-Cristo
“Darling, replied Valentine, has not the count just told us that all human wisdom was contained in these two words,- "Wait and hope"?”
Source: The Count of Monte Cristo
“I love the life you've always made so sweet for me and I'd regret it if I had to die.' 'Do you mean to say that if I left you---' 'I'd die, yes.' 'Then you love me?”
Source: The Count of Monte Cristo
“I have no will, unless it be the will never to decide. I have been so overwhelmed by the many storms that have broken over my head, that I am become passive in the hands of the Almighty, like a sparrow in the talons of an eagle. I live, because it is not ordained for me to die.”
Source: Count of Monte Cristo: {Complete & Illustrated}
“Ah," said the jailer, "do not always brood over what is impossible, or you will be mad in a fortnight.”
Source: Delphi Works of Alexandre Dumas (Illustrated)
“The wretched and miserable should turn to their Saviour first, yet they do not hope in Him until all other hope is exhausted.”
“And now, farewell to kindness, humanity and gratitude... I have substituted myself for Providence in rewarding the good; may the God of vengeance now yield me His place to punish the wicked.”
“There is neither happiness nor unhappiness in this world; there is only the comparison of one state with another. Only a man who has felt ultimate despair is capable of feeling ultimate bliss. It is necessary to have wished for death in order to know how good it is to live.....the sum of all human wisdom will be contained in these two words: Wait and Hope.”
“Upon my word," said Dantes, "you make me shudder. Is the world filled with tigers and crocodiles?" "Yes; and remember that two legged tigers and crocodiles are more dangerous than the others.”
Source: THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO: Classic French Literature
“Be kind. Aim for my heart.”
“Without reflecting that this is the only moment in which you can study character," said the count; "on the steps of the scaffold death tears off the mask that has been worn through life, and the real visage is disclosed.”
Source: The Count of Monte Cristo
“We’ll go where the air is pure, where all sounds are soothing, where, no matter how proud one may be, one feels humble and finds oneself small- in short, we’ll go to the sea. I love the sea as one loves a mistress and I long for her when I haven’t seen her for some time”
Source: The Count of Monte Cristo
“Unfortunates, who ought to begin with God, do not have any hope in him till they have exhausted all other means of deliverance.”
Source: The Count Of Monte Cristo (Illustrated Edition of the Adventure Classic): Historical Thriller from the renowned French writer, known for The Three Musketeers, The Black Tulip, Twenty Years After, La Reine Margot and The Man in the Iron Mask
“Be happy, noble heart, be blessed for all the good thou hast done and wilt do hereafter, and let my gratitude remain in obscurity like your good deeds.”
Source: Delphi Works of Alexandre Dumas (Illustrated)
“Yet man will never be perfect until he learns to create and destroy; he does know how to destroy, and that is half the battle.”
Source: Delphi Works of Alexandre Dumas (Illustrated)
“There are some situations which men understand by instinct, by which reason is powerless to explain; in such cases the greatest poet is he who gives utterance to the most natural and vehement outburst of sorrow. Those who hear the bitter cry are as much impressed as if they listened to an entire poem, and when th sufferer is sincere they are right in regarding his outburst as sublime.”
Source: THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO: Classic French Literature
“I know what happiness and what despair are, and I never make a jest of such feelings. Take it, then, but in exchange —”
Source: The Count of Monte Cristo
“I hate this life of the fashionable world, always ordered, measured, ruled, like our music-paper. What I have always wished for, desired, and coveted, is the life of an artist, free and independent, relying only on my own resources, and accountable only to myself.”
Source: Delphi Works of Alexandre Dumas (Illustrated)
“Love is the most selfish of all the passions.”
Source: The Three Musketeers
“We must never expect discretion in first love: it is accompanied by such excessive joy that unless the joy is allowed to overflow, it will choke you.”
Source: The Three Musketeers
“Athos liked every one to exercise his own free-will. He never gave his advice before it was demanded and even then it must be demanded twice. "In general, people only ask for advice," he said "that they may not follow it or if they should follow it that they may have somebody to blame for having given it".”
Source: The Three Musketeers
“D'Artagnan, my friend, thou art brave, thou art prudent, thou hast excellent qualities, but- women will destroy thee!" -D'Artagnan”
“To be a woman condemned to a wretched and disgraceful punishment is no impediment to beauty, but it is an insurmountable obstacle to power. Like all persons of real genius, her ladyship well knew what accorded with her nature and her means. Poverty disgusted her -subjection deprived her of two-thirds of her greatness. Her ladyship was only a queen amongst queens: the enjoyment of satisfied pride was essential to her sway. To command beings of an inferior nature, was, to her, rather a humiliation than a pleasure.”
“Joy to hearts which have suffered long is like the dew on the ground after a long drought; both the heart and the ground absorb that beneficent moisture falling on them, and nothing is outwardly apparant.”
Source: The Count of Monte Cristo
“Life is a storm. One minute you will bathe under the sun and the next you will be shattered upon the rocks. That's when you shout, "Do your worst, for I will do mine!" and you will be remembered forever.”
“Why, in truth, sir," was Monte Cristo's reply, "man is but an ugly caterpillar for him who studies him through a solar microscope; but you said, I think, that I had nothing else to do. Now, really, let me ask, sir, have you? — do you believe you have anything to do? or to speak in plain terms, do you really think that what you do deserves being called anything?”
Source: ALEXANDRE DUMAS Premium Collection – 27 Novels in One Volume: The Three Musketeers Series, The Marie Antoinette Novels, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Valois Trilogy and more (Illustrated): Historical Novels & Adventure Classics: Queen Margot, Taking the Bastille, The Man in the Iron Mask, The Sicilian Bandit, The Conspirators, The Hero of the People, The Queen’s Necklace…
“Kitty: I thought your ladyship was ill. I wanted to help you. Lady deWinter: I ill? Do you take me for a weak woman? When I am insulted I do not feel ill - I avenge myself. Do you hear?”
“There is no friendship that cares about an overheard secret.”
Source: The Three Musketeers: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
“Nothing makes time pass or shortens the way like a thought that absorbs in itself all the faculties of the one who is thinking. External existence is then like a sleep of which this thought is the dream. Under its influence, time has no more measure, space has no more distance.”
Source: The Three Musketeers: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
“The merit of all things lies in their difficulty.”
Source: The Three Musketeers: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
“I came to Paris with four écus in my pocket, and I’d have fought with anybody who told me I was in no condition to buy the Louvre.”
Source: The Three Musketeers: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
“It is only the dead who do not return.”
Source: THE THREE MUSKETEERS - Complete Collection: The Three Musketeers,Twenty Years After,The Vicomte of Bragelonne,Ten Years Later,Louise da la Valliere&The Man in the Iron Mask: Adventure Classics
“Time, dear friend, time brings round opportunity; opportunity is the martingale of man. The more we have ventured the more we gain, when we know how to wait.”
Source: ALEXANDRE DUMAS Ultimate Collection: 40+ Titles Including The Three Musketeers Series, The Marie Antoinette Novels, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Valois Trilogy and more (Illustrated): Historical Novels, Adventure Classics, True Crime Stories & Biography (Queen Margot, The Black Tulip, The Queen’s Necklace, Taking the Bastille, The Man in the Iron Mask, The Sicilian Bandit…)
“On what slender threads do life and fortune hang.”
“I do not often laugh, sir, as you may perceive by the air of my countenance; but nevertheless, I retain the privilege of laughing when I please.”
Source: The three musketeers, tr. by W. Robson
“Tell the angel who will watch over your life to pray now and then for a man who, like Satan, believed himself for an instant to be equal to God, but who realized in all humility that supreme power and wisdom are in the hands of God alone.”
Source: The Count of Monte Cristo
“But that's not the name of a man, it's the name of a mountain! (...) "It is my name," Athos said calmly. "But you said your name was d'Artagnan." "I?" "Yes, you." "That is to say, someone said to me: 'You are M. d'Artagnan?' I replied: 'You think so?' My guards shouted that they were sure of it. I did not want to vex them. Besides, I might have been mistaken.”
“To save a man and thereby to spare a father's agony and a mother's feelings is not to do a noble deed, it is but an act of humanity.”
Source: The Count of Monte Cristo: Abridged Edition
“Your life story is a novel; and people, though they love novels wound between two yellow paper covers, are oddly suspicious of those which come to them in living vellum.”
“Starvation!" exclaimed the abbe, springing from his seat. "Why, the vilest animals are not suffered to die by such a death as that. The very dogs that wander houseless and homeless in the streets find some pitying hand to cast them a mouthful of bread; and that a man, a Christian, should be allowed to perish of hunger in the midst of other men who call themselves Christians, is too horrible for belief. Oh, it is impossible - utterly impossible!”
Source: Count of Monte Cristo: {Complete & Illustrated}
“That is a dream also; only he has remained asleep, while you have awakened; and who knows which of you is the most fortunate?”
Source: ALEXANDRE DUMAS Ultimate Collection: 40+ Titles Including The Three Musketeers Series, The Marie Antoinette Novels, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Valois Trilogy and more (Illustrated): Historical Novels, Adventure Classics, True Crime Stories & Biography (Queen Margot, The Black Tulip, The Queen’s Necklace, Taking the Bastille, The Man in the Iron Mask, The Sicilian Bandit…)
“Edmond Dantes: I don't believe in God. Abbe Faria: That doesn't matter, He believes in you.”
“Your bitter memories still have time to turn into sweet ones.”
“It is not the tree that forsakes the flower, but the flower that forsakes the tree.”
“He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness.”
Source: Count of Monte Cristo: {Complete & Illustrated}
“When a man resolves to avenge himself, he should first of all tear out the heart from his breast.”
