The Count of Monte Cristo (AmazonClassics Edition)

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.

In politics, my dear fellow, you know, as well as I do, there are no men, but ideas—no feelings, but interests; in politics we do not kill a man, we only remove an obstacle, that is all.

Dantès had exhausted all human resources, and he then turned to God.

for in prosperity prayers seem but a mere medley of words, until misfortune comes and the unhappy sufferer first understands the meaning of the sublime language in which he invokes the pity of heaven!

He told himself that it was the enmity of man, and not the vengeance of heaven, that had thus plunged him into the deepest misery. He consigned his unknown persecutors to the most horrible tortures he could imagine, and found them all insufficient, because after torture came death, and after death, if not repose, at least the boon of unconsciousness.

“Possibly nothing at all; the overflow of my brain would probably, in a state of freedom, have evaporated in a thousand follies; misfortune is needed to bring to light the treasures of the human intellect.

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

“You have been free to choose your career,” observed the Count of Morcerf, with a sigh; “and you have chosen the path strewed with flowers.”—“Precisely, monsieur,” replied Monte Cristo, with one of those smiles that a painter could never represent or a physiologist analyze.