The Count of Monte Cristo Quotes

All human wisdom is contained in these two words - Wait and Hope.

Woman is sacred; the woman one loves is holy.

It's necessary to have wished for death in order to know how good it is to live.

Life is a storm, my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes. You must look into that storm and shout as you did in Rome. Do your worst, for I will do mine! Then the fates will know you as we know you.

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.

The difference between treason and patriotism is only a matter of dates.

How did I escape? With difficulty. How did I plan this moment? With pleasure.

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 forever.

Learning does not make one learned: there are those who have knowledge and those who have understanding. The first requires memory and the second philosophy.

All human wisdom is contained in these two words--"Wait and Hope.

For all evils there are two remedies - time and silence.

There are two ways of seeing: with the body and with the soul. The body's sight can sometimes forget, but the soul remembers forever.

I have always had more dread of a pen, a bottle of ink, and a sheet of paper than of a sword or pistol.

We are always in a hurry to be happy...; for when we have suffered a long time, we have great difficulty in believing in good fortune.

Ah, lips that say one thing, while the heart thinks another,.

I don’t think man was meant to attain happiness so easily. Happiness is like those palaces in fairy tales whose gates are guarded by dragons: we must fight in order to conquer it.

Those born to wealth, and who have the means of gratifying every wish, know not what is the real happiness of life, just as those who have been tossed on the stormy waters of the ocean on a few frail planks can alone realize the blessings of fair weather.

Until the day when God shall deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in these two words,-Wait and hope.

Often we pass beside happiness without seeing it, without looking at it, or even if we have seen and looked at it, without recognizing it.

There is neither happiness nor unhappiness in this world; there is only the comparison of one state with another. Only a man who has felt ultimate despair is capable of feeling ultimate bliss. It is necessary to have wished for death in order to know how good it is to live.....the sum of all human wisdom will be contained in these two words: Wait and Hope.

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

What would you not have accomplished if you had been free?" "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. Compression is needed to explode gunpowder. Captivity has brought my mental faculties to a focus; and you are well aware that from the collision of clouds electricity is produced — from electricity, lightning, from lightning, illumination.

It is the way of weakened minds to see everything through a black cloud. The soul forms its own horizons; your soul is darkened, and consequently the sky of the future appears stormy and unpromising.

Hatred is blind; rage carries you away; and he who pours out vengeance runs the risk of tasting a bitter draught.

What I’ve loved most after you, is myself: that is, my dignity and that strength which made me superior to other men. That Strength was my life. You’ve broken it with a word, so I must die.

...remember that what has once been done may be done again.

Philosophy cannot be taught; it is the application of the sciences to truth.

Now I'd like someone to tell me there is no drama in real life!.

And now...farewell to kindness, humanity and gratitude. I have substituted myself for Providence in rewarding the good; may the God of vengeance now yield me His place to punish the wicked.

Be happy, noble heart, be blessed for all the good thou hast done and wilt do hereafter, and let my gratitude remain in obscurity like your good deeds.

A weakened mind always sees everything through a black veil. The soul makes its own horizons; your soul is dark, which is why you see such a cloudy sky.

Life is a storm. One minute you will bathe under the sun and the next you will be shattered upon the rocks. That's when you shout, "Do your worst, for I will do mine!" and you will be remembered forever.

So, preferring death to capture, I accomplished the most astonishing deeds, and which, more then once, showed me that the too great care we take of our bodies is the only obstacle to the sucess of those projects which require rapid decision, and vigorous and determined execution. In reality, when you have once devoted your life to your enterprises, you are no longer the equal of other men, or, rather, other men are no longer your equals, and whosoever has taken this resolution, feels his strength and resources doubled.

Haste is a poor counselor.

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.

I hate this life of the fashionable world, always ordered, measured, ruled, like our music-paper. What I have always wished for, desired, and coveted, is the life of an artist, free and independent, relying only on my own resources, and accountable only to myself.

He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness… Live, then and be happy beloved children of my heart and never forget that until the day when God shall deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in these two words – wait and hope.

I have no will, unless it be the will never to decide. I have been so overwhelmed by the many storms that have broken over my head, that I am become passive in the hands of the Almighty, like a sparrow in the talons of an eagle. I live, because it is not ordained for me to die.

Yet man will never be perfect until he learns to create and destroy; he does know how to destroy, and that is half the battle.

If you wish to discover the guilty person, first find out to whom the crime might be useful.

But Valentine, why despair, why always paint the future in such sombre hues?" Maximilien asked. "Because, my friend, I judge it by the past.

On what slender threads do life and fortune hang… !.

Perhaps what I am about to say will appear strange to you gentlemen, socialists, progressives, humanitarians as you are, but I never worry about my neighbor, I never try to protect society which does not protect me -- indeed, I might add, which generally takes no heed of me except to do me harm -- and, since I hold them low in my esteem and remain neutral towards them, I believe that society and my neighbor are in my debt.

Pain, thou art not an evil.

Order is the key to all problems.

It is the infirmity of our nature always to believe ourselves much more unhappy than those who groan by our sides!.

He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness.

The wretched and the miserable should turn to their Savior first, yet they do not hope in Him until all other hope is exhausted.

And now,' said the unknown, 'farewell kindness, humanity, and gratitude! Farewell to all the feelings that expand the heart! I have been heaven's substitute to recompense the good - now the god of vengeance yields to me his power to punish the wicked!.

Your life story is a novel; and people, though they love novels wound between two yellow paper covers, are oddly suspicious of those which come to them in living vellum.

In every country where independence has taken the place of liberty, the first desire of a manly heart is to possess a weapon which at once renders him capable of defence or attack, and, by rendering its owner fearsome, makes him feared.

Well, father, in the shipwreck of life, for life is an eternal shipwreck of our hopes, I cast into the sea my useless encumbrance, that is all, and I remain with my own will, disposed to live perfectly alone, and, consequently, perfectly free. (Eugenie to her father).

God is merciful to all, as he has been to you; he is first a father, then a judge.

...for there are two distinct sorts of ideas, those that proceed from the head and those that emanate from the heart.

There are people who are willing to suffer and swallow their tears at leisure, and God will not doubt reward them in heaven for their resignation; but those who have the will to struggle strike back at fate in retaliation for the blows they receive. Do you intend to fight back at fate, Valentine? That's what I came here to ask you. -Maximilien Morrel.

Live, for a day will come when you will be happy and bless life.

You're not worried about anything, are you?" said Danglers. "It seems to me everything's going perfectly for you." "That's exactly what worries me," replied Dantes. "I don't think man was meant to attain happiness so easily. Happiness is like those palaces in fairy tales whose gates are guarded by dragons: we must fight in order to conquer it.

Tell the angel who will watch over your life to pray now and then for a man who, like Satan, believed himself for an instant to be equal to God, but who realized in all humility that supreme power and wisdom are in the hands of God alone.

Return to the world still more brilliant because of your former sorrows.

Joy to hearts which have suffered long is like the dew on the ground after a long drought; both the heart and the ground absorb that beneficent moisture falling on them, and nothing is outwardly apparant.

We’ll go where the air is pure, where all sounds are soothing, where, no matter how proud one may be, one feels humble and finds oneself small- in short, we’ll go to the sea. I love the sea as one loves a mistress and I long for her when I haven’t seen her for some time.

Ah," said the jailer, "do not always brood over what is impossible, or you will be mad in a fortnight.

There are some situations which men understand by instinct, by which reason is powerless to explain; in such cases the greatest poet is he who gives utterance to the most natural and vehement outburst of sorrow. Those who hear the bitter cry are as much impressed as if they listened to an entire poem, and when th sufferer is sincere they are right in regarding his outburst as sublime.

We are never quits with those who oblige us," was Dantes' reply; "for when we do not owe them money, we owe them gratitude.

Can we account for instinct?' said Monte Cristo. 'Are there not some places where we seem to breathe sadness? — why, we cannot tell. It is a chain of recollections — an idea which carries you back to other times, to other places — which, very likely, have no connection with the present time and place.

I have no fear of ghosts, and I have never heard it said that so much harm had been done by the dead during 6,000 years as it brought by the living in a single day.

You who are in power have only the means that money produces — we who are in expectation, have those which devotion prompts.

Weakened minds see everything through a black veil; the soul forms its own horizons; your soul is darkened, and consequently the sky of your future appears stormy and unpromising.

...does that not tell you that grief is like life and that there is always somethings unknown beyond it?.

Upon my word,' said Dantes, 'you make me tremble. If I listen much longer to you, I shall believe the world is filled with tigers and crocodiles.' 'Remember that two-legged tigers and crocodiles are more dangerous than those that walk on four.

I have been taken by Satan into the highest mountain in the earth, and when there he said he to me, ‘Child of earth, what wouldst thou have to make thee adore me?’ I replied, ‘Listen, I wish to be Providence myself, for I feel that the most beautiful, noblest, most sublime thing in the world, is to recompense and punish.

To save a man and thereby to spare a father's agony and a mother's feelings is not to do a noble deed, it is but an act of humanity.

God is always the last resource.