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They always say that joy cannot harm you, which is why I came in without warning. Come now, smile; don’t look at me like that, with those wild eyes. I am back and there is happiness in store for us.’
happiness, I believe, is even more dazzling than pride.’
listening to the moaning of the sea, as endless as her sorrow, and ceaselessly wondering if it would not be better to lean forward, sink beneath her own weight into the abyss and let herself be swallowed up, rather than to suffer all the cruel uncertainties of hopeless expectation.
to a happy man, a prayer is a monotonous composition, void of meaning, until the day when suffering deciphers the sublime language through which the poor victim addresses God.
‘It is as clear as daylight, and you must have a very simple and kind heart not to have guessed the truth immediately.’
You must not let yourself pursue phantoms which do not deceive even your generous heart:
Moreover, my true treasure, my friend, is not the one that awaits me under the dark rocks of Monte Cristo, but your presence, and the time that we spend together for five or six hours a day, in spite of our jailers; it is those rays of understanding that you have shone into my brain and the languages that you have implanted in my memory and which now grow there, putting out further branches of language in their turn.
But, as often happens, in great sorrow as in great storms, the abyss lies between the crests of two waves;
great open book above our heads which is called the sky and in which God writes on the blue firmament in diamond letters.
The heart breaks when it has swelled too much in the warm breath of hope, then finds itself enclosed in cold reality.
‘This is some wild yarn you are spinning.’
Let my gratitude remain hidden in the shadows like your good deeds.’
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 for ever.
You are being watched over and if, like those of Icarus, your wings should melt in the sun, we are there to catch you.’
He was called the Count of Monte Cristo.
their desire to see one another was the same: this desire had become a need, and they could understand death better than a single day’s separation.
pale colour was either the only defect or perhaps the chief quality.
He had the furrowed brow that spoke of bitter, inescapable thoughts; he had those burning eyes that penetrate to the depths of a soul;
‘Never is a very long time, but it counts for a lot that you should believe
Sometimes I get up from the table at the end of my dinner, in the middle of the night, and have a sudden desire to set off for some part of the world; so I leave.’
