Has not some sage said, ‘Nothing too much’? and another, ‘I carry all my effects with me’? I have.
To a just Providence was necessary an instrument, at once penetrating, persevering, and convincing, to accomplish a great work.
Tell me,” replied Faria, “what has hindered you from knocking down your jailer with a piece of wood torn from your bedstead, dressing yourself in his clothes, and endeavoring to escape?” “Simply the fact that the idea never occurred to me,” answered Dantes.
You don’t write down every evening what has happened during the day: you don’t keep a diary?’ ‘No. Alas, my life is spent in frivolous trifles, which I even forget myself.
To forgive is not to forget.
I separated the fat from the meat served to me, melted it, and so made oil – here is my lamp.” So saying, the abbe exhibited a sort of torch very similar to those used in public illuminations.
Now, I’m ridiculously attached to my head, seeing that it seems to go rather well with my shoulders.
He was about to marry a young and charming woman, whom he loved, not passionately, but reasonably, as became a deputy attorney of the king.
It was a lovely starlight night – they had just reached the top of the hill Villejuif, from whence Paris appears like a sombre sea tossing its millions of phosphoric waves into light – waves indeed more noisy, more passionate, more changeable, more furious, more greedy, than those of the tempestuous ocean, – waves which never rest as those of the sea sometimes do, – waves ever dashing, ever foaming, ever ingulfing what falls within their grasp.
Seventeen months captivity to a sailor accustomed to the boundless ocean, is a worse punishment than human crime ever merited.
He was drawing in this circle geometrical lines, and seemed as much absorbed in his problem as Archimedes was when the soldier of Marcellus slew him.
I’ve worn that mask so long I don’t feel safe without it.
Death does not reckon by years; it is impartial; some die young, some reach old age.
It has been truly said, that a woman who has truly loved is always young, and that the bloom of the girl of twenty years ever lies concealed in some secret cloister of the heart.” 1.
Not a ripple could be noticed on the surface of the green waters; the swans themselves, even, reposing with folded wings like ships at anchor, seemed inspirations of the warmth of the air, the freshness of the water, and the silence of the beautiful evening.
He was a fine, tall, slim young fellow of eighteen or twenty, with black eyes, and hair as dark as a raven’s wing;.
Cornelius was stretched on his couch, with broken wrists and crushed fingers. He had not confessed a crime of which he was not guilty; and now, after three days of agony, he once more breathed freely, on being informed that the judges, from whom he had expected death, were only condemning him to exile.
I have lost all that bound me to life, death smiles and invites me to rest; I die after my own manner, I die exhausted and broken-spirited, as I fall asleep when I have paced three thousand times round my cell. No sooner had this idea taken possession of him than he became more composed, arranged his couch to the best of his power, ate little, and slept less, and found this existence almost supportable, because he felt he could throw it off at will, like a worn-out garment.
The rats are terrible fellows for gnawing whatever they come across; and I have heard unfortunate tuli-growers complain most bitterly of Noah for having put a couple of rats in the ark.
It was written,” thought poor Cornelius, “that I should not, in this world, give my name either to a child, to a flower, or to a book, the three things by which a man’s memory is perpetuated.