"These groups followed some solitary passer-by, hurrying his steps; one after another the doors were closed, one after."

"I am not proud, but I am happy; and happiness blinds, I think, more than pride."

"As a general rule...people ask for advice only in order not to follow it; or if they do follow it, in order to have someone to blame for giving it."

"Besides we are men, and after all it is our business to risk our lives."

"So heavy is the chain of wedlock that it needs two to carry it and sometimes three."

"Pure love and suspicion cannot dwell together: at the door where the latter enters, the former makes its exit."

"I gave myself to you sooner than I ever did to any man, I swear to you; and do you know why? Because when you saw me spitting blood you took my hand; because you wept; because you are the only human being who has ever pitied me. I am going to say a mad thing to you: I once had a little dog who looked at me with a sad look when I coughed; that is the only creature I ever loved. When he died I cried more than when my mother died. It is true that for twelve years of her life she used to beat me. Well, I loved you all at once, as much as my dog. If men knew what they can have for a tear, they would be better loved and we should be less ruinous to them."

"Sometimes one has suffered enough to have the right to never say: I am too happy."

"Woman is sacred the woman one loves is holy."

"MY GOD!' read Monte Cristo, 'LET ME KEEP MY MEMORY!"

"Indeed, four men like them, four men devoted to each other from their money to their lives, four men always supporting each other, never retreating, performing singly or together the resolutions they had made in common; four arms threatening the four points of the compass or all turning to a single point, must inevitably, be it surreptitiously, be it openly, be it by mines, by entrenchments, by guile, or by force, open a way to the end they wanted to reach, however well defended or far off it might be."

"Everyone knows that God protects drunkards and lovers."

"Never be afraid of opportunities, always be on the lookout for adventures."

"I do as I please, Monsieur Beauchamp, and believe me, what I do is always well done."

"It is necessary ... to yield to the storm, purchase a peace, and wait patiently for better times."

"He was thinking alone, and seriously racking his brain to find a direction for this single force four times multiplied, with which he did not doubt, as with the lever for which Archimedes sought, they should succeed in moving the world, when some one tapped gently at his door."

"Enough,' said Mercedes, 'enough Edmond! Believe me that she who alone recognized you has been the only one to comprehend you. And had she crossed your path, and you had crushed her like a frail glass, still, Edmond, still she must have admired you! Like the gulf between me and the past, there is an abyss between you, Edmond, and the rest of mankind; and I tell you freely, that the comparison I drew between you and other men will be one of my greatest tortures. No! there is nothing in the world to resemble you in worth and goodness!"

"For the happy man prayer is only a jumble of words, until the day when sorrow comes to explain to him the sublime language by means of which he speaks to God."

"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!"

"There are some catastrophes that a poor writer's pen cannot describe and which he is obliged to leave to the imagination of his readers with a bald statement of the facts."

"I prefer rogues to imbeciles, because they sometimes take a rest."

"The truth is,' replied Dantes, 'that I am too happy for noisy mirth; ...joy takes a strange effect at times, it seems to oppress us almost the same as sorrow."

"You are young," replied Athos, "and your bitter memories have time to change into sweet ones."

"My friend, let us enjoy the present and give no thought to the evils of the future."

"But these first needs of the heart are so imperious, these outpourings of amorous melancholy in young people are at once so sweet and so bitter, that they have often all the real marks of the passion."

"No one is as brave, as adventurous or as skillful as D'Artagnan, without at the same time being inclined to be a dreamer."

"I cannot think that man is meant to find happiness so easily! Happiness is like one of those palaces on an enchanted island, its gates guarded by dragons. One must fight to gain it; and, in truth, I do not know what I have done to deserve the good fortune of becoming Mercedes’ husband."

"Nothing makes time pass or shortens the way like a thought that absorbs in itself all the faculties of the one who is thinking. External existence is then like a sleep of which this thought is the dream. Under its influence, time has no more measure, space has no more distance."

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

"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."

"So rapid is the flight of dreams upon the wings of imagination."

"It is quite rare for God to provide a great man at the necessary moment to carry out some great deep, which is why when this unusual combination of circumstance does occur, history at once records the name of the chosen one and recommends him to the admiration of posterity."

"How well I know you by your deeds and how invariably you succeed in living down to what one expects of you!"

"Infatuated, half through conceit, half through love of my art, I achieve the impossible working as no one else ever works."

"The dream of poor Bazin had always been to serve a man of the cloth."

"Unfortunates, who ought to begin with God, do not have any hope in him till they have exhausted all other means of deliverance."

"I began a poem in lines of one syllable. It's rather difficult, but the merit of all things lies in their difficulty. The subject matter is gallant. I'll read you the first canto; it's four hundred verses long and takes one minute."

"Death is the only serious preoccupation in life."

"Besides the pleasure, there is always remorse, from the indulgence of our passions; and, after all, what have you men to fear from all this; the world excuses, and notoriety ennobles you?"

"In politics, you know, as well as I do, there are no men, but ideas - no feelings, but interests."

"Why does a steward steal? He steals because he's not sure he'll always remain with his master and wants to make his future secure."

"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."

"Dite all'Angelo che veglierA sulla vostra vita, Morrel, di pregare qualche volta per un uomo che, simile a Satana, per un momento si A creduto simile a Dio e ha riconosciuto, con tutta l'umiltA di un cristiano, che nelle mani di Dio soltanto sta il supremo potere e la infinita sapienza."

"The kingdoms of kings are confined, either by mountains or rivers, or by a change in customs or by a difference of language; but my kingdom is as great as the world, because I am neither Italian, nor French, nor Hindu, nor American, nor a Spaniard; I am a cosmopolitan. No country can claim to be my birthplace, God alone knows in which region I shall die. I adopt every custom, I speak every tongue [... ] In this way, you see, being of no country, asking for the protection of no goverment and acknowledging no man as my brother, I am not restrained or hampered by a single one of the scruples that tie the hands of the powerful or the obstacles that block the path of the weak."

"Only a man who has felt ultimate despair is capable of feeling ultimate bliss."

"You are my son Dantès! You are the child of my captivity. My priestly office condemned me to celibacy: God sent you to me both to console the man who could not be a father and the prisoner who could not be free."

"We said we would be to each other as two voices, who shadows."

"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."

"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."

"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."