In this world, all--men, women, and kings--must live for the present. We can only live for the future for God

We must never expect discretion in first love: it is accompanied by such excessive joy that unless the joy is allowed to overflow, it will choke you.

Dantes passed through all the stages of torture natural to prisoners in suspense. He was sustained at first by that pride of conscious innocence which is the sequence to hope; then he began to doubt his own innocence, which justified in some measure the governor's belief in his mental alienation; and then, relaxing his sentiment of pride, he addressed his supplications, not to God, but to man. God is always the last resource. Unfortunates, who ought to begin with God, do not have any hope in him till they have exhausted all other means of deliverance.

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

One always hurries towards happiness, Monsieur Danglars, because when one has suffered much, one is at pains to believe in it.

Capricious and unfaithful, the king wished to be called Louis the Just and Louis the Chaste. Posterity will find a difficulty in understanding this character, which history explains only by facts and never by reason.

That is a dream also; only he has remained asleep, while you have awakened; and who knows which of you is the most fortunate?