“All human wisdom is contained in these two words: Wait and Hope.”

“It’s necessary to have wished for death in order to know how good it is to live.”

“Woman is sacred; the woman one loves is holy.”

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 that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life. Live, then, and be happy, … and never forget, that until the day God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words: Wait and Hope.

Life is a storm, my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes. I don’t think man was meant to attain happiness so easily. Happiness is like those palaces in fairy tales whose gates are guarded by dragons: we must fight in order to conquer it. The merit of all things lies in their difficulty. Yet man will never be perfect until he learns to create and destroy; he does know how to destroy, and that is half the battle.

For all evils there are two remedies: time and silence. When we have suffered a long time, we have great difficulty in believing in good fortune.

Those born to wealth, and who have the means of gratifying every wish, know not what is the real happiness of life, just as those who have been tossed on the stormy waters of the ocean on a few frail planks can alone realize the blessings of fair weather.

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.

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

Learning does not make one learned: there are those who have knowledge and those who have understanding. The first requires memory and the second philosophy. Philosophy cannot be taught; it is the application of the sciences to truth.

A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms against himself. He makes his failures certain by himself being the first person to be convinced of it.

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. In politics, there are no men, but ideas — no feelings, but interests; in politics we do not kill a man, we only remove an obstacle, that is all.

There are two ways of seeing: with the body and with the soul. The body’s sight can sometimes forget, but the soul remembers forever. One’s work may be finished someday, but one’s education never.

I hate this life of the fashionable world, always ordered, measured, ruled, like our music-paper. What I have always wished for, desired, and coveted, is the life of an artist, free and independent, relying only on my own resources, and accountable only to myself.

“Edmond Dantes: I don’t believe in God.

Abbe Faria: That doesn’t matter, He believes in you…”

***

~Alexandre Dumas was a French novelist and playwright. His works have been translated into many languages and he is one of the most widely read French authors.

Excerpts from Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

Excellence Reporter 2024