The Count of Monte Cristo | Quotes

Happiness is like one of those palaces on an enchanted island, its gates guarded by dragons. One must fight to gain it.

As for me, when I see a bright spark of hatred shining in the eye of an accused man, I feel encouraged, I rejoice: it is no longer a trial, but a duel. I go for him, he ripostes, I press harder, and the fight ends, like all fights, in victory or defeat.

So all my opinions—I would not say political, but private opinions—are confined to three feelings: I love my father, I respect Monsieur Morrel and I adore Mercédès.

Danglars was alone, but neither troubled nor disturbed. Danglars was even happy, because he had taken revenge on an enemy and ensured himself the place on board the Pharaon that he had feared he might lose.

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.

The heart breaks when it has swelled too much in the warm breath of hope, then finds itself enclosed in cold reality.

"And now," said the stranger, "farewell, goodness, humanity, gratitude ... Farewell all those feelings that nourish and illuminate the heart! I have taken the place of Providence to reward the good; now let the avenging God make way for me to punish the wrongdoer!"

What I mean, my dear fellow, is that I shall do more by myself with my gold than you and all your people with their daggers, their pistols, their carbines and their blunderbusses. So let me do it.

The man often made me shudder; for example, one day when we were together watching an execution, I thought I would faint, much more from seeing him and hearing him discourse coldly about all the sufferings imaginable than from seeing the executioner carry out his task and hearing the cries of the condemned man.

"I have seen the man I loved preparing to become the murderer of my son!" She said these words with such overwhelming grief, in such a desperate voice, that when he heard it a sob rose in the count's throat. The lion was tamed, the avenging angel overcome.

"Monsieur," said Albert, in a voice that was unsteady at first, but which became more confident as he went on, "I reproached you for having divulged the conduct of Monsieur de Morcerf in Epirus because, however guilty the Count of Morcerf might have been, I did not think you had the right to punish him. Now, Monsieur, I realize that you do have that right. It is not Fernand Mondego's treachery towards Ali Pasha that makes me so willing to forgive you, it is the treachery of the fisherman Fernand towards you and the unimaginable misfortunes that followed on that treachery. So I say, and I proclaim it aloud: yes, Monsieur, you were right to take your revenge on my father; and I, his son, thank you for not having done more!"

"Fernand!" Monte Cristo cried. "Of my hundred names, I shall need to tell you only one to strike you down. But you can already guess that name, can't you? Or, rather, you can recall it. For in spite of all my woes, in spite of all my tortures, I can now show you a face rejuvenated by the joy of revenge, a face that you must have seen often in your dreams since your marriage ... your marriage to my fiancée, Mercédès!"

Monte Cristo shrank back in horror, exclaiming: "He is mad!" And, as if fearing that the walls of the accursed house might fall in on him, he rushed out into the street, wondering for the first time whether he had had the right to do what he had done. "Enough!" he said. "Let that be enough, and we will save the last one."

I am the one whom you sold, betrayed and dishonoured. I am the one whose fiancée you prostituted. I am the one on whom you trampled in order to attain a fortune. I am the one whose father you condemned to starvation, and the one who condemned you to starvation, but who none the less forgives you, because he himself needs forgiveness. I am Edmond Dantès!

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. Maximilien, you must needs have wished to die, to know how good it is to live. So, do live and be happy, children dear to my heart, and never forget that, until the day when God deigns to unveil the future to mankind, all human wisdom is contained in these two words: "wait" and "hope"!