Alexandre Dumas

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

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

Never fear quarrels, but seek hazardous adventures.

Happiness is like those palaces in fairytales whose gates are guarded by dragons: We must fight in order to conquer it.

True love always makes a man better, no matter what woman inspires it.

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

Life is no more than the repeated fulfilling of a permanent desire.

Sometimes salvation is found in agony.

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

This sometimes happened: from time to time, Dantès, driven out of solitude into the world, felt an imperative need for solitude. And what solitude is more vast and more poetic than that of a ship sailing alone on the sea, in the darkness of night and the silence of infinity, under the eye of the Lord?

To wait at Monte Cristo for the purpose of watching like a dragon over the almost incalculable richs that had thus fallen into his possession satisfied not the cravings of his heart, which yearned to return to dwell among mankind, and to assume the rank, power, and influence which are always accorded to wealth _ that first and greatest of all the forces within the grasp of man.

There is something so awe-inspiring in great afflictions that even in the worst times the first emotion of a crowd has generally been to sympathise with the sufferer in a great catastrophe.

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

Athos was delighted to find he was going to fight an Englishman. We might say that was his dream.

In business, sir, one has no friends, only correspondents.

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

After which, satisfied with the way he had conducted himself at Meung, free of remorse for the past, confident in the present, and full of hope for the future, he went to bed and slept the sleep of the just.

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.