There is one common analogy to maybe clearer show what is the difference between the concepts of class and object.
A class is like a recipe. An object is a cake. From one recipe you can build many cakes. A recipe can only contain hints (be abstract) and leave room for your own creation of a recipe (implementing class) from which you can then build cakes (objects).
So a class is not an object, it's the description of what objects of that class look like. Abstract classes contain methods and other information useful for the implementation of classes deriving from this abstract class. Objects cannot be created/instantiated from an abstract class (because it's definition is not complete).
