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it is a kind of dizzying comfort to contemplate the open abyss when, at the bottom of that abyss, lies nothingness.
‘For, in simple and permitted matters, our natural appetites warn us not to exceed the boundaries of what is permissible for us. The tiger, which spills blood in the natural course of things, because this is its state of being, its destiny, needs only for its sense of smell to inform it that a prey is within reach; immediately it leaps towards this prey, falls on it and tears it apart. That is its instinct, which it obeys. But mankind, on the contrary, is repelled by blood. It is not the laws of society that condemn murder, but the laws of nature.’
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.’
Learning does not make one learned: there are those who have knowledge and those who have understanding. The first requires memory, the second philosophy.’
You must not let yourself pursue phantoms which do not deceive even your generous heart: I shall remain here until the hour of my deliverance which can no longer be any other than the hour of my death. As for you, flee, begone! You are young, agile and strong. Do not bother about me, I release you from your oath.’
‘You are my son, Dantès!’ the old man cried. ‘You are the child of my captivity. My priestly office condemned me to celibacy: God sent you to me both to console the man who could not be a father and the prisoner who could not be free.’ And he held out his good arm to the young man, who fell weeping on his breast.
I like ghosts. I have heard it said that the dead have never done, in six thousand years, as much evil as the living do in a single day.
‘Ah, Monsieur, here are three signatures that are worth many millions,’ Danglars said, rising to his feet, as though to salute the power of gold personified in the man seated before him.
‘Mankind is an ugly worm when you look at it through a solar microscope. But I think you said I have nothing to do. Now, Monsieur, I ask you, do you imagine you have anything to do? Or, to put it more clearly, do you believe that what you do deserves to be called something?’
so I was right to say that relatively – you know that everything is relative, Monsieur – relative to all that I have done, you have very little to do, and relative to what I have learned, you still have very much to learn.’
It is not the tree that forsakes the flower, but the flower that forsakes the tree.’
‘There is both Providence and God,’ said Monte Cristo. ‘The proof is that you are lying there, desperate, denying God, and I am standing before you, rich, happy, healthy and safe, clasping my hands before the God in whom you try not to believe and in whom, even so, you do believe in the depths of your heart.’
‘What will I do with him, Maximilien? Why, as surely as you are here and I am shaking your hand, I shall kill him tomorrow before ten in the morning. That’s what I’ll do with him.’
‘What commands the Count of Monte Cristo,’ the strange man interrupted, ‘is the Count of Monte Cristo. So, not a word of all this, I beg you. I do what I wish, Monsieur Beauchamp, and believe me, it is always very well done.’
Alas, mother, there are people who have suffered greatly, and who did not die, but raised a new fortune on the ruins of all those promises of happiness that heaven had made to them, and on the debris of all the hopes that God had given them! I learned as much, mother, I have seen these men. I know that from the depths of the abyss into which their enemies plunged them, they have risen with such strength and glory that they have overcome their former vanquisher and cast him down in his turn.
Well, my dear father, in the shipwreck of life – for life is an eternal shipwreck of our hopes – I throw all my useless baggage in the sea, that’s all, and remain with my will, prepared to live entirely alone and consequently entirely free.’
‘Can you be a coward?’ Villefort cried, in a contemptuous voice. ‘I have indeed always noticed that poisoners are cowards. But are you a coward, who had enough frightful courage to watch two old people and a girl die in front of you, when you had killed them?
There are some situations which men instinctively comprehend but are unable to comment on intellectually. In such cases, the greatest poet is the one who emits the most powerful and the most natural cry. The crowd takes this cry for a complete story, and it is right to be satisfied with that, and still more so to find it sublime when it is truthful.
‘the friends whom we have lost do not rest in the earth, they are buried in our hearts, and that is how God wanted it, so that we should always be in their company. I have two friends who are always with me, in that way: one is the man who gave me life, the other is the one who gave me understanding. The spirit of both lives in me. I consult them when I am in doubt and, if I have done any good, I owe it to their advice.
As for you, Morrel, this is the whole secret of my behaviour towards you: there is neither happiness nor misfortune in this world, there is merely the comparison between one state and another, nothing more. Only someone who has suffered the deepest misfortune is capable of experiencing the heights of felicity.
all human wisdom is contained in these two words: ‘wait’ and ‘hope’!
