Novels About Revenge

"Read Wuthering Heights when you’re 18 and you think Heathcliff is a romantic hero; when you’re 30, he’s a monster; at 50 you see he’s just human."

"Wuthering Heights is a more difficult book to understand than Jane Eyre, because Emily was a greater poet than Charlotte. When Charlotte wrote she said with eloquence and splendour and passion “I love”, “I hate”, “I suffer”. Her experience, though more intense, is on a level with our own. But there is no “I” in Wuthering Heights. There are no governesses. There are no employers. There is love, but it is not the love of men and women. Emily was inspired by some more general conception. The impulse which urged her to create was not her own suffering or her own injuries. She looked out upon a world cleft into gigantic disorder and felt within her the power to unite it in a book. That gigantic ambition is to be felt throughout the novel — a struggle, half thwarted but of superb conviction, to say something through the mouths of her characters which is not merely “I love” or “I hate”, but “we, the whole human race” and “you, the eternal powers...” the sentence remains unfinished. It is not strange that it should be so; rather it is astonishing that she can make us feel what she had it in her to say at all. It surges up in the half-articulate words of Catherine Earnshaw, “If all else perished and remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger; I should not seem part of it”. It breaks out again in the presence of the dead. “I see a repose that neither earth nor hell can break, and I feel an assurance of the endless and shadowless hereafter — the eternity they have entered — where life is boundless in its duration, and love in its sympathy and joy in its fulness.” It is this suggestion of power underlying the apparitions of human nature and lifting them up into the presence of greatness that gives the book its huge stature among other novels. But it was not enough for Emily Brontë to write a few lyrics, to utter a cry, to express a creed. In her poems she did this once and for all, and her poems will perhaps outlast her novel. But she was novelist as well as poet. She must take upon herself a more laborious and a more ungrateful task. She must face the fact of other existences, grapple with the mechanism of external things, build up, in recognisable shape, farms and houses and report the speeches of men and women who existed independently of herself. And so we reach these summits of emotion not by rant or rhapsody but by hearing a girl sing old songs to herself as she rocks in the branches of a tree; by watching the moor sheep crop the turf; by listening to the soft wind breathing through the grass. The life at the farm with all its absurdities and its improbability is laid open to us. We are given every opportunity of comparing Wuthering Heights with a real farm and Heathcliff with a real man. How, we are allowed to ask, can there be truth or insight or the finer shades of emotion in men and women who so little resemble what we have seen ourselves? But even as we ask it we see in Heathcliff the brother that a sister of genius might have seen; he is impossible we say, but nevertheless no boy in literature has a more vivid existence than his. So it is with the two Catherines; never could women feel as they do or act in their manner, we say. All the same, they are the most lovable women in English fiction. It is as if she could tear up all that we know human beings by, and fill these unrecognisable transparences with such a gust of life that they transcend reality. Hers, then, is the rarest of all powers. She could free life from its dependence on facts; with a few touches indicate the spirit of a face so that it needs no body; by speaking of the moor make the wind blow and the thunder roar."

"I'd be glad of a retaliation that wouldn't recoil on myself; but treachery and violence are spears pointed at both ends; they wound those who resort to them worse than their enemies."

"Yesterday, you know, Mr. Earnshaw should have been at the funeral. He kept himself sober for the purpose - tolerably sober; not going to bed mad at six o'clock, and getting up drunk at twelve. Consequently he rose, in suicidal low spirits; as fit for the church as for a dance; and instead, he sat down by the fire and swallowed gin or brandy by tumblerfuls."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

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

"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."

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

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

"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..."

"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.'"

"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."

"“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!”"

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

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

"Your parents gave their lives to keep you alive, Harry. A poor way to repay them - gambling their sacrifice for a bag of magic tricks."

"An unworthy trick! A low and cowardly attempt to sabotage the Gryffindor Seeker! Detention for all of you [Draco Malfoy, Vincent Crabbe, Gregory Goyle and Marcus Flint] and fifty points from Slytherin! I shall be speaking to Professor Dumbledore about this, make no mistake! Ah, here he comes now!"

"Now, my three friends could hardly fail to notice that I disappeared once a month. I made up all sorts of stories. I told them my mother was ill, and that I had to go home to see her... I was terrified they would desert me the moment they found out what I was. But of course, they, like you, Hermione, worked out the truth..."

"Ah, of course, there is no need to say any more, Miss Granger. Tell me, which of you will be dying this year?"

"And Potter, do try and win, won't you? Or we'll be out of the running for the eighth year in a row, as Professor Snape was kind enough to remind me only last night..."

"Well, you look in excellent health to me, Potter, so you'll excuse me if I don't let you off homework. I assure you that if you die, you need not hand it in."

"And they didn't desert me at all. Instead, they did something for me that would make my transformations not only bearable, but the best times of my life. They became Animagi."

"There's enough filth on my robes without you touching them."

"What was there to be gained by fighting the most evil wizard who has ever existed? Only innocent lives, Peter."

"I still don't like your tone, boy. If you can speak of your beatings in that casual way, they clearly aren't hitting you hard enough. Petunia, I'd write to them if I were you. Make it clear that you approve the use of extreme force in this boy's case."

"Tell them whatever you like. But make it quick, Remus. I want to commit the murder I was imprisoned for. (Pg. 350)"

"If you made a better rat than a human Peter, that's not much to boast about."

"THEN YOU SHOULD HAVE DIED! DIED RATHER THAN BETRAY YOUR FRIENDS, AS WE WOULD HAVE DONE FOR YOU!"

"Oh, come now, Harry, the Ministry doesn't send people to Azkaban for blowing up their aunts."

"You should have realised, Peter, if Voldemort didn't kill you, we would."

"You think the dead we loved ever truly leave us? You think that we don't recall them more clearly than ever in times of great trouble?"

"The consequences of our actions are always so complicated, so diverse, that predicting the future is a very difficult business indeed."

"I'm not blamin' yeh … but I gotta tell yeh, I thought you two'd value yer friend more'n broomsticks or rats. Tha's all."

"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."

"What would we want to be prefects for? It'd take all the fun out of life."

"We tried to shut him [Percy] in a pyramid. But Mum spotted us."

"When a wizard goes over ter the Dark Side there's nothin' and no one matters to 'em anymore.…"

"Hermione's white face was sticking out from behind a tree."