Ah,’ said I, after four hours’ work, ’since we are sinking, let us sink; we can die but once.
By degrees the sun disappeared behind the western horizon; but as though to prove the truth of the fanciful ideas in heathen mythology, its indiscreet rays reappeared on the summit of every wave, as if the god of fire had just sunk upon the bosom of Amphitrite, who in vain endeavored to hide her lover beneath her azure mantle.
Count, for me with Valentine there could be an infinite, immense, unknown happiness, a happiness too great, too complete and too divine for this world. Since this world has not given it to me, Count, that means that there is nothing for me on earth except despair and desolation.
He condemned these unknown persecutors to the most horrible tortures he could imagine, but found them all insufficient, because after the torture came death, and after death, if not repose, at least that insensibility that resembles it.
Your bitter recollections have time to change themselves into sweet remembrances.
Alas, mother, there are people who have suffered greatly, and who did not die, but raised a new fortune on the ruins of all those promises of happiness that heaven had made to them, and on the debris of all the hopes that God had given them!
Misfortune is sometimes needed to plumb certain understandings of the actions of man.
Alas, my life is spent in frivolous trifles, which I even forget myself.
We will escape, and if we cannot escape we will talk, you of those you love and I of those whom I love.
The movement of the arm, the sound of the voice, and the agility of the body were wanting, but the speaking eye sufficed for all.
The faults of a father cannot revert upon his children. Few have passed through this revolutionary period, into which we were born, without some stain of infamy or blood.
In every well-organized mind the dominant idea – and there always is a dominant idea – is the one which, being the last to go to sleep, is also the first to shine among the newly awakened thoughts.
He did the right thing,’ the count replied. ‘He has a noble heart. He realized that every man owes some debt to his country: some give their talents, others their hard work; some watch, others bleed. Had he stayed.
Ne craignez pas les occasions et cherchez les aventures.
You know, Edmond, I am no longer a thinking creature. I have no further resolve except that of never again being resolved about anything. God has so shaken me with storms that I have lost all willpower. I am in His hands, like a sparrow in the claws of an eagle. Since I am alive, He does not want me to die. If He sends me any succour, it will be because He wants it, and I shall accept.
One day, as I was going to the Prefecture for a passport, I saw in one of the neighbouring streets a poor girl who was being marched along by two policemen. I do not know what was the matter. All I know is that she was weeping bitterly as she kissed an infant only a few months old, from whom her arrest was to separate her. Since that day I have never dared to despise a woman at first sight.
Since “there is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety and nine just persons that need no repentance,” let us give joy to heaven. Heaven will render it back to us with usury.
I shall never be myself again until I have seen Marguerite. It is perhaps the thirst of the fever, a sleepless night’s dream, a moment’s delirium; but though I were to become a Trappist, like M. de Rance’, after having seen her, I will see her.
How many ways does the heart take, how many reasons does it invent for itself, in order to arrive at what it wants!
One finds pleasure in childish enough things, and it is too bad to destroy such a pleasure when, by simply leaving it alone, one can make somebody so happy.