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‘I cannot think that man is meant to find happiness so easily! Happiness is like one of those palaces on an enchanted island, its gates guarded by dragons. One must fight to gain it;
‘The king! I thought him enough of a philosopher to realize that there is no such thing as murder in politics. You know as well as I do, my dear boy, that in politics there are no people, only ideas; no feelings, only interests. In politics, you don’t kill a man, you remove an obstacle, that’s all.
When I go back to the past, I forget the present. I walk free and independently through history, and forget that I am a prisoner.’
Misfortune is needed to plumb certain mysterious depths in the understanding of men; pressure is needed to explode the charge. My captivity concentrated all my faculties on a single point. They had previously been dispersed, now they clashed in a narrow space; and, as you know, the clash of clouds produces electricity, electricity produces lightning and lightning gives light.’
unless an evil thought is born in a twisted mind, human nature is repelled by crime.
‘Is the world full of tigers and crocodiles, then?’ ‘Yes, except that the tigers and crocodiles with two legs are more dangerous than the rest.’
Learning does not make one learned: there are those who have knowledge and those who have understanding. The first requires memory, the second philosophy.’
The heart breaks when it has swelled too much in the warm breath of hope, then finds itself enclosed in cold reality.
and he was nicknamed The Stoic.
I like him already
Hatred is blind and anger deaf: the one who pours himself a cup of vengeance is likely to drink a bitter draught.’
‘How well I know you by your deeds and how invariably you succeed in living down to what one expects of you!’
Man is undoubtedly a most ungrateful and selfish creature
There are two medicines for all ills: time and silence.
As for Mme de Villefort, she rebuked her son with a moderation that would surely not have pleased Jean-Jacques Rousseau,2 if little Edouard had been called Emile.
haha! I see what you did there
‘Admire yourself and others will admire you’,
