Summer Classics

Over the summer, I have read a couple of classic novels for relaxation.

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo.

The Count of Monte Christo by Alexander Dumas

Both these novels are more than a thousand pages long, but they are really gripping stories.

They come from a different time. The striking thing is that everyone believes in God and that faith colours all human activies. The main character in each novel triumph over terrible adversity by allowing their life to be changed through encounters with men of faith.

Victor Hugo’s novel is known through the stage show and movie. The novel has much greater scope and provides much deeper insight in the the lives of the characters and the events and people that influenced them. Hugo also gives powerful descriptions of the effects of the grinding poverty of post-revolutionary France on the lives of women and children.

Each author offers great wisdom about life as they tell their story. Here are some quotes.

From Alexander Dumas:

God is always the last resource. Unfortunates, who ought to begin with God, do not have any hope in him until they have exhausted all other means of deliverance.

Moral wounds have this peculiarity – they may be hidden, but they never close: always painful, always ready to bleed when touched, they remain fresh and open in the heart.

From Victor Hugo.

M Myiel had to undergo the fate of every newcomer in a little town, where they are many mouths which talk, and very few heads that think.

Let us never fear robbers and murderers. These are dangers without. Let us fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers. Vices are the real murderers. The great danger lives within. What matters it what threatens our head or our purse. Let us think only of that which threatens our soul