One is not unoccupied because one is absorbed. There is visible labor and invisible labor. To contemplate is to labor, to think is to act.

Why not seize the pleasure at once?—How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!

There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart… Warmth and tenderness of heart… will beat all the clearness of head in the world, for attraction, I am sure it will.

Watch and pray, dear, never get tired of trying, and never think it is impossible to conquer your fault.

We learn from failure, not from success; and our failures have taught us to believe the strange evidence of our eyes, and to act together without delay. We have been blind, but now we must keep notes, keep watch, and keep faith, for there are no little things in great affairs.

Down, down, down. Would the fall never come to an end!

I have loved you long; I shall love you long: while I live and, if there is mercy, after.

All human wisdom is summed up in these two words,—‘Wait and hope.’

You will not believe in God, who requires but a prayer, a word, a tear, and he will forgive?

I am he whom you sold and dishonored—I am he whose betrothed you prostituted—I am he upon whom you trampled that you might raise yourself to fortune—I am he whose father you condemned to die of hunger—I am he whom you also condemned to starvation, and who yet forgives you, because he hopes to be forgiven—I am Edmond Dantès!

I divined then, Sonia, that power is only vouchsafed to the man who dares to stoop and pick it up… There is only one thing, one thing needful: one has only to dare! … I— I wanted to have the daring… and I killed her. I only wanted to have the daring, Sonia! That was the whole cause of it!

That is the beginning of a new story, the story of the gradual renewal of a man, of his gradual regeneration…