The Count of Monte Cristo

by Alexandre Dumas

unless wicked ideas take root in a naturally depraved mind, human nature, in a right and wholesome state, revolts at crime. Still, from an artificial civilization have originated wants, vices, and false tastes, which occasionally become so powerful as to stifle within us all good feelings, and ultimately to lead us into guilt and wickedness.

looked on with that egotistical pity men feel for a misfortune that they have escaped yesterday, and which may overtake them to-morrow. A few drops of the rum restored suspended animation, while the friction of his limbs restored their elasticity.

in fact, the application of the axiom, “Pretend to think well of yourself, and the world will think well of you,” an axiom a hundred times more useful in society nowadays than that of the Greeks, “Know thyself,” a knowledge for which, in our days, we have substituted the less difficult and more advantageous science of knowing others.

There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more.