“Pain anguish and suffering in human life are always in proportion to the strength with which a man is endowed. We will not pretend to say that Heaven always apportions to a man's capability of endurance the anguish with which he afflicts him...Suffering is in proportion to the strength which has been accorded in other words the weak suffer more where the trial is the same than the strong.”

“Does the open wound in another's breast soften the pain of the gaping wound in our own? Or does the blood which is welling from another man's side staunch that which is pouring from our own? Does the general anguish of our fellow creatures lessen our own private and particular anguish? No, no, each suffers on his own account, each struggles with his own grief, each sheds his own tears.”

“in prosperity prayers seem but a mere medley of words, until misfortune comes and the unhappy sufferer first understands the meaning of the sublime language in which he invokes the pity of heaven!”

“One always hurries towards happiness, Monsieur Danglars, because when one has suffered much, one is at pains to believe in it.”

“What I’ve loved most after you, is myself: that is, my dignity and that strength which made me superior to other men. That Strength was my life. You’ve broken it with a word, so I must die.”

“In every country where independence has taken the place of liberty, the first desire of a manly heart is to possess a weapon which at once renders him capable of defence or attack, and, by rendering its owner fearsome, makes him feared.”

“A man is bound to make for himself in this world, that fortune which heaven had refused him at his birth.”