“In business, sir, one has no friends, only correspondents.”

Edmond Dantes: I don’t believe in God. Abbe Faria: That doesn’t matter, He believes in you.

Every individual, from the highest to the lowest degree, has his place in the ladder of social life, and around him swirls a little world of interests, composed of stormy passions and conflicting atoms.

I am not proud, but I am happy; and happiness blinds, I think, more than pride.

Ah, lips that say one thing, while the heart thinks another.

God orders a man to do all he can to save his life.

I prefer the wicked rather than the foolish. The wicked sometimes rest.

The custom and fashion of today will be the awkwardness and outrage of tomorrow – so arbitrary are these transient laws.

If it is ones lot to be cast among fools, one must learn foolishness.

To save a man and thereby to spare a father’s agony and a mother’s feelings is not to do a noble deed, it is but an act of humanity.

The merit of all things lies in their difficulty.

All for one, one for all, that is our device.

Are there not some places where we seem to breathe sadness? – why, we cannot tell. It is a chain of recollections – an idea which carries you back to other times, to other places – which, very likely, have no connection with the present time and place.

Life is a storm. One minute you will bathe under the sun and the next you will be shattered upon the rocks. That’s when you shout, “Do your worst, for I will do mine!” and you will be remembered forever.

Youth is a blossom whose fruit is love; happy is he who plucks it after watching it slowly ripen.

To learn is not to know; there are the learners and the learned. Memory makes the one, philosophy the others.

It is only the dead who do not return.

The lives of most men are patchwork quilts. Or at best one matching outfit with a closet and laundry bag full of incongruous accumulations. A lifetime of training for just ten seconds.

No law can possibly meet the convenience of every one: we must be satisfied if it be beneficial on the whole and to the majority.

One important key to success is self-confidence. An important key to self-confidence is preparation.

For in every ill-turn of fortune the most unhappy sort of unfortunate man is the one who has been happy

The entire world shall be populous with that action which saves one soul from despair.

But helpless Pieces of the Game He plays Upon this Checker-board of Nights and Days; Hither and thither moves, and checks, and slays, And one by one back in the Closet lays.

A female salmon lays three thousand eggs a year – and has yet to receive a Mother’s Day card from one of them.

The rich rob the poor and the poor rob one another.