Edmond Dantes Quotes in The Count of Monte Cristo (2002)

Abbe Faria: Here is your final lesson - do not commit the crime for which you now serve the sentence. God said, "Vengeance is mine."

Edmond Dantes: I don't believe in God.

Abbe Faria: It doesn't matter. He believes in you.

Fernand: What happened to your mercy?

Edmond Dantes: I'm a count, not a saint.

Edmond Dantes: God is no more real than your treasure, Priest.

Abbe Faria: Perhaps...

[last lines]

Albert de Mondego: [to Dantes and Mercedes who are up in the branches of a tree] Can we come up?

Edmond Dantes: Find your own tree.

Edmond Dantes: [to Mondego after defeating him in a duel] It was not my sword, Mondego, but your past that disarmed you!

Edmond Dantes: [referring to the now-insane Danglars] A mental suicide, doctor.

Doctor: Mental suicide?

Edmond Dantes: Yes. He destroyed his mind with an overdose of two deadly poisons.

Doctor: Poisons!

Edmond Dantes: Avarice and Greed

Edmond Dantes: [to Mondego upon realizing that he has been betrayed] Oh, I see! Danglas told you about Elba and the letter because he wanted to be captain! And you told the magistrate because... because of Mercedes! You appeared here as my friends!

Edmond Dantes: [after finding the treasure] My dear abbe... if you were only really here beside me to see. You were right. The world is mine.

Edmond Dantes: [Mercedes has just shown him the false death certificate] I thought there must be something like this somewhere.

Mercedes de Rosas: I've had it ever since... for many years.

Edmond Dantes: Well, it speaks the truth. Edmond Dantes is dead.

Mercedes de Rosas: Then who is this Count de Monte Cristo who closely resembles him?

Edmond Dantes: The resemblance has been noted by no one but you. He is, in fact, to answer your question, a person so utterly unlike a man named Dantes they might have been born of different parents. Even the soul is not the same.

Mercedes de Rosas: I can believe that.

Abbe Faria: Everyone has heard of the de Spada family fortune.

Edmond Dantes: I have, since boyhood. A buried treasure, wasn't it?

Abbe Faria: Dating from Ancient Rome. Well, for twenty years I was librarian and tutor to the Duke de Spada. He had no children and made me his sole heir. I planned to use it to ease suffering humanity, but this so enraged the old Duke's enemies, who planned after his death to seize the fortune for themselves, that they submitted me first to torture and then threw me into prison in an effort to force from me the secret hiding place which I alone know. Together, we will dig our way to freedom and one half of the treasure shall be yours.

Edmond Dantes: [viciously] I'll dig my fingers to the bone! I'll tear these rocks apart! Money... riches... power with which to strangle and curse three rotten rats!

Abbe Faria: Stop! Stop! Oh, what a miserable creature you are! Your eyes gleam with greed, your heart filled with revenge! In such a condition, you're not fit to have one sou! Patience. What a long road you have to travel. Be thankful your digging tools are but bits of crockery and iron. It will take time... pray for it to be a long time so that when you emerge into the light, it will not be as a revengeful Horseman of the Apocalypse but as an avenging angel doing the work of God.

Edmond Dantes: Please believe I've put my task above the mean level of personal vengeance. I am exposing criminals, not for their sins against myself but for their black injustices to others... not only for what they have done but for what they continue to do. They are the ones devoid of all humanity, the ones that profitted by the sufferings of others.

Mercedes de Rosas: Whom will it profit if you kill my son?

Edmond Dantes: Surely you don't think this duel part of my design!

Mercedes de Rosas: What else am I to think, knowing how skillfully you have destroyed the others?

[Monte Cristo turns away; she follows him]

Mercedes de Rosas: Let me tell you about Albert. He worships you. Never in his life has he felt such a strong affection for anyone but me. He never understood his father; there was no bond of sympathy between them. Why? Because that was a part of my design. I reared him in the image of the man I loved. He is the son Edmond Dantes would have had. I had hoped that he'd be claimed by Monte Cristo.

Edmond Dantes: [pause, then] I claimed him long ago, Mercedes.

Jacopo: [Albert has just challenged Monte Cristo to a duel] Something's happened?

Edmond Dantes: Yes. Something admirable and terrible... something I never planned.