I'm almost finished rereading The Count of Monte Cristo, one of my favorite books. It involves a prison escape, buried treasure, delicious revenge and a reversal of status. One thing I've noticed now is how egotistical the Count is: taking pleasure in others' misfortune, being convinced of his complete superiority over everyone else, believing that he is a messenger of God, sent to deliver justice for a crime committed twenty-five years hence. However the other characters are so evil that he's totally justified. I wanted to share some good quotes from the book. Abbe Faria, a priest locked up in prison for 15 years, is asked by Dantes, "What would you not have accomplished if you were free?" and replies,

"Possibly nothing at al; the overflow of my brain would probably, in a state of freedom, have evaporated into a thousand follies; misfortune is needed to bring to light the treasures of the human intellect. Compression is needed to explode gunpowder. Captivity has brought my mental faculties to a focus; and you are well aware that from the collision of clouds electricity is produced-from electricity, lightning, from lightning, illumination."

Here's another one, about the career-driven M. de Villefort and society:

Ordinarily M. de Villefort made and returned very few visits. His wife visited for him, and this was the received thing in the world, where the weighty and multifarious occupations of the magistrate were accepted as an excuse for what was really only calculated pride, a manifestation of professed superiority - in fact, the application of the axiom, "Pretend to think well of yourself, and the world will think well of you," an axiom a hundred times more useful in society nowadays than that of the Greeks, "Know thyself," a knowledge for which, in our days, we have substituted the less difficult and more advantageous science of knowing others

Liked what you read? I am available for hire.