The Count of Monte Cristo

by Alexandre Dumas

“We are always in a hurry to be happy, M. Danglars; for when we have suffered a long time, we have great difficulty in believing in good fortune.

joy takes a strange effect at times, it seems to oppress us almost the same as sorrow.”

“better is a sure enemy to well.”

For all evils there are two remedies—time and silence.

simplicity is always perfection.”

“Youth is a flower of which love is the fruit; happy is he who, after having watched its silent growth, is permitted to gather and call it his own.”

“for by endeavouring to avoid one fault you will fall into another. You must resolve upon one simple and single line of conduct,

Many men might have been handsomer, but certainly there could be none whose appearance was more significant, if the expression may be used.

in a word, and I repeat it, because it expresses all I wish to convey,—we will wait.”

Inured as men may be to danger, forewarned as they may be of peril, they understand, by the fluttering of the heart and the shuddering of the frame, the enormous difference between a dream and a reality, between the project and the execution.

“The wise man, my child, has said, ‘It is good to think of death.’”

I acted well as a man, but you have acted better than man.

Joy to hearts which have suffered long is like the dew on the ground after a long drought;

In all well-organised brains, the predominating idea—and there always is one—is sure to be the last thought before sleeping, and the first upon waking in the morning.

Unfortunately, in this world of ours, each person views things through a certain medium, and so is prevented from seeing in the same light as others,

Though he had acknowledged his guilt, he was protected by his grief. There are some situations which men understand by instinct, but which reason is powerless to explain;