The Count of Monte Cristo

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

"Drunk, if you like; so much the worse for those who fear wine, for it is because they have bad thoughts which they are afraid the liquor will extract from their hearts."

"Private misfortunes must never induce us to neglect business."

"How strange," continued the king, with some asperity; "the police think that they have disposed of the whole matter when they say, 'A murder has been committed,' and especially so when they can add, 'And we are on the track of the guilty persons.'"

"There is … a clever maxim which bears upon what I was saying to you some little while ago, and that is, that unless wicked ideas take root in a naturally depraved mind, human nature, in a right and wholesome state, revolts at crime. Still, from an artificial civilisation have originated wants, vices, and false tastes, which occasionally become so powerful as to stifle within us all good feelings, and ultimately to lead us into guilt and wickedness..."

"You must teach me a small part of what you know," said Dantes, "if only to prevent your growing weary of me. I can well believe that so learned a person as yourself would prefer absolute solitude to being tormented with the company of one as ignorant and uninformed as myself. If you will only agree to my request, I promise you never to mention another word about escaping." The abbe smiled. "Alas, my boy," said he, "human knowledge is confined within very narrow limits; and when I have taught you mathematics, physics, history, and the three or four modern languages with which I am acquainted, you will know as much as I do myself. Now, it will scarcely require two years for me to communicate to you the stock of learning I possess." "Two years!" exclaimed Dantes; "do you really believe I can acquire all these things in so short a time?" "Not their application, certainly, but their principles you may; to learn is not to know; there are the learners and the learned. Memory makes the one, philosophy the other."

"The patron of The Young Amelia proposed as a place of landing the Island of Monte Cristo, which being completely deserted, and having neither soldiers nor revenue officers, seemed to have been placed in the midst of the ocean since the time of the heathen Olympus by Mercury, the god of merchants and robbers, classes of mankind which we in modern times have separated if not made distinct, but which antiquity appears to have included in the same category."

"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."

"You have, then, not forgotten that I saved your life; that is strange, for it is a week ago."

"“No, monsieur,” returned Monte Cristo “upon the simple condition that they should respect myself and my friends. Perhaps what I am about to say may seem strange to you, who are socialists, and vaunt humanity and your duty to your neighbor, but I never seek to protect a society which does not protect me, and which I will even say, generally occupies itself about me only to injure me; and thus by giving them a low place in my esteem, and preserving a neutrality towards them, it is society and my neighbor who are indebted to me.” “Bravo,” cried Chateau–Renaud; “you are the first man I ever met sufficiently courageous to preach egotism. Bravo, count, bravo!”"

"Ah, here comes your proud and selfish nature to the fore! Well, well, I have once again found a man ready to hack at another's self-respect with a hatchet, but who cries out when his own is pricked with a pin."

"But really, my dear Count, we are talking as much of women as they do of us: it is unpardonable."

"No one would have thought in looking at this old, weather-beaten, floral-decked tower (which might be likened to an elderly dame dressed up to receive her grandchildren at a birthday feast) that it would have been capable of telling strange things, if,—in addition to the menacing ears which the proverb says all walls are provided with, — it had also a voice. The garden was crossed by a path of red gravel, edged by a border of thick box, of many years' growth, and of a tone and color that would have delighted the heart of Delacroix, our modern Rubens. This path was formed in the shape of the figure of 8, thus, in its windings, making a walk of sixty feet in a garden of only twenty. Never had Flora, the fresh and smiling goddess of gardeners, been honored with a purer or more scrupulous worship than that which was paid to her in this little enclosure. In fact, of the twenty rose-trees which formed the parterre, not one bore the mark of the slug, nor were there evidences anywhere of the clustering aphis which is so destructive to plants growing in a damp soil."

"Calm yourself, my friend," said the count, with the smile which he made at will either terrible or benevolent, and which now expressed only the kindliest feeling; "I am not an inspector, but a traveller, brought here by a curiosity he half repents of, since he causes you to lose your time."

"Monte Cristo had seen enough. Every man has a devouring passion in his heart, as every fruit has its worm; that of the telegraph man was horticulture. He began gathering the grape-leaves which screened the sun from the grapes, and won the heart of the gardener. "Did you come here, sir, to see the telegraph?" he said. "Yes, if it isn't contrary to the rules." "Oh, no," said the gardener; "not in the least, since there is no danger that anyone can possibly understand what we are saying." "I have been told," said the count, "that you do not always yourselves understand the signals you repeat." "That is true, sir, and that is what I like best," said the man, smiling. "Why do you like that best?" "Because then I have no responsibility. I am a machine then, and nothing else, and so long as I work, nothing more is required of me." "Is it possible," said Monte Cristo to himself, "that I can have met with a man that has no ambition? That would spoil my plans.""

"Oh, sir, what are you proposing?" "A jest."

"Now you are rich," said Monte Cristo. "Yes," replied the man, "but at what a price!" "Listen, friend," said Monte Cristo. "I do not wish to cause you any remorse; believe me, then, when I swear to you that you have wronged no man, but on the contrary have benefited mankind."

"The sum of all human wisdom will be contained in these two words: Wait and hope."

"Tell the angel who will watch over your future destiny, Morrel, to pray sometimes for a man who, like Satan, thought himself, for an instant, equal to God; but who now acknowledges, with Christian humility, that God alone possesses supreme power and infinite wisdom... There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, Morrel, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life."

"There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more"

"All human wisdom is contained in these words: Wait and hope!"

"I guess the Count of Monte Cristo is an antihero — he’s not a villain, but he’s not a role model either. He works a very, very long con to exact revenge on the men who betrayed him, but by the end he realizes the perils of trying to play god and the limitations of his own morality. My interpretation of that novel has changed as I’ve read it at different stages of my life, and right now, I see it as an exploration of the complexities of good and evil and how easily one shifts into the other."

"The long and terrible ordeal to which Dantès is subjected in “The Count of Monte Cristo”—years of indescribable suffering and wounds that will never fully heal—is an allegory of the human temptation to self-justice. Dantès does indeed execute justice himself; he builds his plans on resentment and carries out his revenge. Yet, in the end, he realizes that his moral and spiritual situation has only worsened. Revenge does not repair the injustice, and not even the ruin or death of his enemies can undo the pain he has endured. He comes then to understand, in the most extreme way, that serenity is not simply the arithmetic sum of material satisfaction and personal vindication, but a completely different way of seeing the world, oneself, and other human beings."