The Count of Monte Cristo Quotes

“(...) until the day when God deigns to unveil the future to mankind, all human wisdom is contained in these two words: ‘wait’ and ‘hope’!”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“All human wisdom is summed up in these two words - 'Wait and hope.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“Yes, monsieur, I believe so; for until now, no man has found himself in a position similar to mine. The dominions of kings are limited either by mountains or rivers, or a change of manners, or an alteration of language. My kingdom is bounded only by the world, for I am not an Italian, or a Frenchman, or a Hindu, or an American, or a Spaniard—I am a cosmopolite. No country can say it saw my birth. God alone knows what country will see me die. I adopt all customs, speak all languages. You believe me to be a Frenchman, for I speak French with the same facility and purity as yourself. Well, Ali, my Nubian, believes me to be an Arab; Bertuccio, my steward, takes me for a Roman; Haydée, my slave, thinks me a Greek. You may, therefore, comprehend, that being of no country, asking no protection from any government, acknowledging no man as my brother, not one of the scruples that arrest the powerful, or the obstacles which paralyze the weak, paralyzes or arrests me. I have only two adversaries—I will not say two conquerors, for with perseverance I subdue even them,—they are time and distance. There is a third, and the most terrible—that is my condition as a mortal being. This alone can stop me in my onward career, before I have attained the goal at which I aim, for all the rest I have reduced to mathematical terms. What men call the chances of fate—namely, ruin, change, circumstances—I have fully anticipated, and if any of these should overtake me, yet it will not overwhelm me. Unless I die, I shall always be what I am, and therefore it is that I utter the things you have never heard, even from the mouths of kings—for kings have need, and other persons have fear of you. For who is there who does not say to himself, in a society as incongruously organized as ours, 'Perhaps some day I shall have to do with the king's attorney'?”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“He decided it was human hatred and not divine vengeance that had plunged him into this abyss. He doomed these unknown men to every torment that his inflamed imagination could devise, while still considering that the most frightful were too mild and, above all, too brief for them: torture was followed by death, and death brought, if not repose, at least an insensibility that resembled it.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“Death, according to the care we take to be on good or bad terms with it, is either a friend which will rock us as gently as a nursing mother or an enemy which will savagely tear apart body and soul. One day, when our world has lived another thousand years, when people have mastered all the destructive forces of nature and harnessed them to the general good of mankind, and when, as you just said, men have learnt the secrets of death, then death will be as sweet and voluptuous as sleep in a lover’s arms.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“On the first step of the scaffold, death tears away the mask that one has worn all one's life, and the true face appears.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“Nasıl her meyvenin bir kurdu varsa, her insanın da yüreğini kemiren bir tutkusu vardır.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“as you see, i am absolutely pitiless in my pursuit of you. you thought you could escape my lavish generosity, but you will not. so listen”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“i may be eccentric, it's true, but my eccentricity does not extent to breaking my word once i have given it”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“Non vi è né felicità né infelicità in questo mondo, ma soltanto il paragone di una condizione con un'altra, ecco tutto. Soltanto chi ha provato l'estremo dolore può gustare la suprema felicità. Bisogna aver desiderato la morte, Maximilien, per sapere quale bene è la vita.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“Moral wounds have this peculiarity, - they may be hidden, but they never close; always painful, always ready to bleed when touched, they remain fresh and open in the heart.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“I swear, you are frightening me!’ said Dantès. ‘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.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“Listen,” said the count, and deep hatred mounted to his face, as the blood would to the face of any other. “If a man had by unheard-of and excruciating tortures destroyed your father, your mother, your betrothed—a being who, when torn from you, left a desolation, a wound that never closes, in your breast—do you think the reparation that society gives you is sufficient when it interposes the knife of the guillotine between the base of the occiput and the trapezal muscles of the murderer, and allows him who has caused us years of moral sufferings to escape with a few moments of physical pain?”

“Yes, I know,” said Franz, “that human justice is insufficient to console us; she can give blood in return for blood, that is all; but you must demand from her only what it is in her power to grant.”

“I will put another case to you,” continued the count; “that where society, attacked by the death of a person, avenges death by death. But are there not a thousand tortures by which a man may be made to suffer without society taking the least cognizance of them, or offering him even the insufficient means of vengeance, of which we have just spoken? Are there not crimes for which the impalement of the Turks, the augers of the Persians, the stake and the brand of the Iroquois Indians, are inadequate tortures, and which are unpunished by society? Answer me, do not these crimes exist?”

“Yes,” answered Franz; “and it is to punish them that duelling is tolerated.”

“Ah, duelling,” cried the count; “a pleasant manner, upon my soul, of arriving at your end when that end is vengeance! A man has carried off your mistress, a man has seduced your wife, a man has dishonored your daughter; he has rendered the whole life of one who had the right to expect from Heaven that portion of happiness God has promised to every one of his creatures, an existence of misery and infamy; and you think you are avenged because you send a ball through the head, or pass a sword through the breast, of that man who has planted madness in your brain, and despair in your heart. And remember, moreover, that it is often he who comes off victorious from the strife, absolved of all crime in the eyes of the world. No, no,” continued the count, “had I to avenge myself, it is not thus I would take revenge.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“But madame, does mankind ever lose anything?
The arts change about and make a tour of the world; things take a different name, and the vulgar do not follow them- that is all; but there is always the same result.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“Wait and hope.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“Maximiliano se apoyaba en uno de estos árboles, y tenía clavados sus ojos inciertos sobre las dos tumbas. Su dolor era profundo, casi le trastornaba. -Maximiliano -le dijo el conde-, no es ahí donde se debe mirar, sino allí. Y le señaló el cielo.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“Mirad cómo la naturaleza sabe calmar los más agudos dolores.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“El edificio que la desgracia destruye, la Providencia puede reedificarlo.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“La voluntad de Dios es que el hombre que ha creado y en cuyo corazón ha puesto con tantas raíces el amor a la vida, haga cuanto pueda por conservar esta vida, tan trabajosa algunas veces y siempre tan
amada.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“La incertidumbre es el peor de todos los suplicios.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“Sólo el que ha experimentado el colmo del infortunio puede sentir la felicidad suprema. Es preciso haber querido morir, amigo mío, para saber cuán buena y hermosa es la vida.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“La ausencia separa a las personas casi mejor que la muerte.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“Ölüm nedir? Dinginliğin bir derece fazlası, sessizliğin belki de iki derece ötesi.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count Of Monte Cristo

“Yaşamanın ne kadar güzel olduğunu öğrenebilmek için ölmeyi istemiş olmak gerekir.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count Of Monte Cristo

“Benim yüreğim başkalarından daha zayıftı belki, ben onların çekebileceğindan daha fazla çektim, hepsi bu.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count Of Monte Cristo

“We are used to adversity; let’s not be crushed by a mere disappointment, or else I shall have suffered for nothing. The heart breaks when it has swelled too much in the warm breath of hope, then finds itself enclosed in cold reality.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“Вы требуете, чтобы я стал пошлым, вульгарным; словом, вы требуете от меня объяснений.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count Of Monte Cristo

“From my earliest recollections, I have been beloved by no one. So much the worst. That has naturally led me to love no one. So much the better.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“Pen and ink, and a sheet of paper!

Here they are... there is a surer way of killing a man, than if one stands at the corner of a wood to assasinate him! I have always feared a pen, a bottle of ink, and a sheet of paper, more than a sword or a pistol.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“Politics has made you laugh at everything, and political men have made you disbelieve everything”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo