The Count of Monte Cristo

by Alexandre Dumas

I have always had more dread of a pen, a bottle of ink, and a sheet of paper, than of a sword or pistol." "The fellow

to learn is not to know; there are the learners and the learned. Memory makes the one, philosophy the other."

Decidedly man is an ungrateful and egotistical animal.

"The king has made him a baron, and can make him a peer, but he cannot make him a gentleman,

"you know that human inventions march from the complex to the simple, and simplicity is always perfection."

Ah, maternal love is a great virtue, a powerful motive—so powerful that it excuses a multitude of things, even if, after Duncan's death, Lady Macbeth had been at all pricked by her conscience."

Ideas do not become extinct, sire; they slumber sometimes,

Moral wounds have this peculiarity,—they may be hidden, but they never close; always painful, always ready to bleed when touched, they remain fresh and open in the heart.

"Great is truth," muttered the count, "fire cannot burn, nor water drown it!

There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, Morrel, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of living.