Alexandre Dumas Quotations

Business? It's quite simple; it's other people's money.

Only a man who has felt ultimate despair is capable of feeling ultimate bliss.

Happiness is like those palaces in fairy tales whose gates are guarded by dragons: we must fight in order to conquer it.

All for one, one for all, that is our device.

He was thinking alone, and seriously racking his brain to find a direction for this single force four times multiplied, with which he did not doubt, as with the lever for which Archimedes sought, they should succeed in moving the world, when some one tapped gently at his door.

It is rare that one can see in a little boy the promise of a man, but one can almost always see in a little girl the threat of a woman.

It is almost as difficult to keep a first class person in a fourth class job, as it is to keep a fourth class person in a first class job.

Truly generous men are always ready to become sympathetic when their enemy’s misfortune surpasses the limits of their hatred.

His fair landlady was in despair. She would most willingly have made M. d'Artagnan her husband--such a handsome man, and such a fierce mustache!

Well, father, in the shipwreck of life, for life is an eternal shipwreck of our hopes, I cast into the sea my useless encumbrance, that is all, and I remain with my own will, disposed to live perfectly alone, and, consequently, perfectly free. (Eugenie to her father)

Darling, replied Valentine, has not the count just told us that all human wisdom was contained in these two words,- "Wait and hope"?

I love the life you've always made so sweet for me and I'd regret it if I had to die.' 'Do you mean to say that if I left you---' 'I'd die, yes.' 'Then you love me?

I have no will, unless it be the will never to decide. I have been so overwhelmed by the many storms that have broken over my head, that I am become passive in the hands of the Almighty, like a sparrow in the talons of an eagle. I live, because it is not ordained for me to die.

Ah," said the jailer, "do not always brood over what is impossible, or you will be mad in a fortnight.

The wretched and the miserable should turn to their Savior first, yet they do not hope in Him until all other hope is exhausted.

And now...farewell to kindness, humanity and gratitude. I have substituted myself for Providence in rewarding the good; may the God of vengeance now yield me His place to punish the wicked.

I came to Paris with four écus in my pocket, and I’d have fought with anybody who told me I was in no condition to buy the Louvre.

Upon my word," said Dantes, "you make me shudder. Is the world filled with tigers and crocodiles?" "Yes; and remember that two legged tigers and crocodiles are more dangerous than the others.

Nothing makes time pass or shortens the way like a thought that absorbs in itself all the faculties of the one who is thinking. External existence is then like a sleep of which this thought is the dream. Under its influence, time has no more measure, space has no more distance.

There is no friendship that cares about an overheard secret.

Kitty: I thought your ladyship was ill. I wanted to help you. Lady deWinter: I ill? Do you take me for a weak woman? When I am insulted I do not feel ill - I avenge myself. Do you hear?

Joy to hearts which have suffered long is like the dew on the ground after a long drought; both the heart and the ground absorb that beneficent moisture falling on them, and nothing is outwardly apparant.

Yet man will never be perfect until he learns to create and destroy; he does know how to destroy, and that is half the battle.

There are some situations which men understand by instinct, by which reason is powerless to explain; in such cases the greatest poet is he who gives utterance to the most natural and vehement outburst of sorrow. Those who hear the bitter cry are as much impressed as if they listened to an entire poem, and when th sufferer is sincere they are right in regarding his outburst as sublime.

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!

God is always the last resource.

Dantes passed through all the stages of torture natural to prisoners in suspense. He was sustained at first by that pride of conscious innocence which is the sequence to hope; then he began to doubt his own innocence, which justified in some measure the governor's belief in his mental alienation; and then, relaxing his sentiment of pride, he addressed his supplications, not to God, but to man. God is always the last resource. Unfortunates, who ought to begin with God, do not have any hope in him till they have exhausted all other means of deliverance.

You are very amiable, no doubt, but you would be charming if you would only depart.

God is full of mercy for everyone, as He has been towards you. He is a father before He is a judge.

...does that not tell you that grief is like life and that there is always somethings unknown beyond it?

Mastery of language affords one remarkable opportunities.

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.

...for, however all other feelings may be withered in a woman's nature, there is always one bright smiling spot in the maternal breast, and that is where a dearly-beloved child is concerned.

Fool that I am," said he,"that I did not tear out my heart the day I resolved to revenge myself".

What would you not have accomplished if you had been free?" "Possibly nothing at all; the overflow of my brain would probably, in a state of freedom, have evaporated in 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.

...remember that what has once been done may be done again.

God orders a man to do all he can to save his life.

Every individual, from the highest to the lowest degree, has his place in the ladder of social life, and around him swirls a little world of interests, composed of stormy passions and conflicting atoms

The hungry men were seen, followed by their valets, roaming the quais and guards' quarters; gleaning from their outside friends all the dinners they could find; for, according to Aramis, in prosperity one should sow meals right and left, in order to harvest some in adversity.

(...) the tree forsakes not the flower: the flower falls from the tree.

You who are in power have only the means that money produces — we who are in expectation, have those which devotion prompts.

I am hungry, feed me; I am bored, amuse me.

I have been taken by Satan into the highest mountain in the earth, and when there he said he to me, ‘Child of earth, what wouldst thou have to make thee adore me?’ I replied, ‘Listen, I wish to be Providence myself, for I feel that the most beautiful, noblest, most sublime thing in the world, is to recompense and punish.

We are never quits with those who oblige us," was Dantes' reply; "for when we do not owe them money, we owe them gratitude.

In politics, my dear fellow, you know, as well as I do, there are no men, but ideas — no feelings, but interests; in politics we do not kill a man, we only remove an obstacle, that is all.

Love is the most selfish of all the passions.

We must never expect discretion in first love: it is accompanied by such excessive joy that unless the joy is allowed to overflow, it will choke you.

Great is truth. Fire cannot burn it nor water drown it.

Edmond Dantes: I don’t believe in God. Abbe Faria: That doesn’t matter, He believes in you…

The custom and fashion of today will be the awkwardness and outrage of tomorrow - so arbitrary are these transient laws.

Starvation!" exclaimed the abbe, springing from his seat. "Why, the vilest animals are not suffered to die by such a death as that. The very dogs that wander houseless and homeless in the streets find some pitying hand to cast them a mouthful of bread; and that a man, a Christian, should be allowed to perish of hunger in the midst of other men who call themselves Christians, is too horrible for belief. Oh, it is impossible - utterly impossible!

That is a dream also; only he has remained asleep, while you have awakened; and who knows which of you is the most fortunate?

Your bitter memories still have time to turn into sweet ones.

It is not the tree that forsakes the flower, but the flower that forsakes the tree.

I know what happiness and what despair are, and I never make a jest of such feelings. Take it, then, but in exchange —

The air in Provence is impregnated with the aroma of garlic, which makes it very healthful to breathe.

Are there not some places where we seem to breathe sadness? — why, we cannot tell. It is a chain of recollections — an idea which carries you back to other times, to other places — which, very likely, have no connection with the present time and place.

What a fool I was, not to tear my heart out on the day when I resolved to avenge myself!

...joy takes a strange effect at times, it seems to oppress us almost the same as sorrow.

If you wish to discover the guilty person, first find out to whom the crime might be useful.

God is merciful to all, as he has been to you; he is first a father, then a judge.

Oh! The good times when we were so unhappy.

The mother is only really the mistress of her daughter upon the condition of continually representing herself to her as a model of wisdom and type of perfection

In love, writing is dangerous, not to mention pointless.

Your life story is a novel; and people, though they love novels wound between two yellow paper covers, are oddly suspicious of those which come to them in living vellum.

To save a man and thereby to spare a father's agony and a mother's feelings is not to do a noble deed, it is but an act of humanity.

In business, sir, one has no friends, only correspondents.

To be a woman condemned to a wretched and disgraceful punishment is no impediment to beauty, but it is an insurmountable obstacle to power. Like all persons of real genius, her ladyship well knew what accorded with her nature and her means. Poverty disgusted her -subjection deprived her of two-thirds of her greatness. Her ladyship was only a queen amongst queens: the enjoyment of satisfied pride was essential to her sway. To command beings of an inferior nature, was, to her, rather a humiliation than a pleasure.

D'Artagnan, my friend, thou art brave, thou art prudent, thou hast excellent qualities, but- women will destroy thee!" -D'Artagnan

It is only the dead who do not return.

Through the ingenuousness of her age beamed an ardent mind, a mind not of the women but of the poet; she did not please, she intoxicated.

When a man resolves to avenge himself, he should first of all tear out the heart from his breast.

On what slender threads do life and fortune hang.

I do not often laugh, sir, as you may perceive by the air of my countenance; but nevertheless, I retain the privilege of laughing when I please.

Tell the angel who will watch over your life to pray now and then for a man who, like Satan, believed himself for an instant to be equal to God, but who realized in all humility that supreme power and wisdom are in the hands of God alone.

But that's not the name of a man, it's the name of a mountain! (...) "It is my name," Athos said calmly. "But you said your name was d'Artagnan." "I?" "Yes, you." "That is to say, someone said to me: 'You are M. d'Artagnan?' I replied: 'You think so?' My guards shouted that they were sure of it. I did not want to vex them. Besides, I might have been mistaken.

I am a Count, Not a Saint.

He's right: They have to put madmen with madmen.

A rogue does not laugh in the same way that an honest man does; a hypocrite does not shed the tears of a man of good faith. All falsehood is a mask; and however well made the mask may be, with a little attention we may always succeed in distinguishing it from the true face.

Order is the key to all problems.

So he went down, smiling sceptically and mutter the final word in human wisdom: 'Perhaps!

Within six months, if I am not dead, I shall have seen you again, madam--even if I have to overturn the world.

......When one loves, one is only too ready to believe one's love returned.

It is the infirmity of our nature always to believe ourselves much more unhappy than those who groan by our sides!

Perhaps what I am about to say will appear strange to you gentlemen, socialists, progressives, humanitarians as you are, but I never worry about my neighbor, I never try to protect society which does not protect me -- indeed, I might add, which generally takes no heed of me except to do me harm -- and, since I hold them low in my esteem and remain neutral towards them, I believe that society and my neighbor are in my debt.

It is the way of weakened minds to see everything through a black cloud. The soul forms its own horizons; your soul is darkened, and consequently the sky of the future appears stormy and unpromising

For the happy man prayer is only a jumble of words, until the day when sorrow comes to explain to him the sublime language by means of which he speaks to God.

Capricious and unfaithful, the king wished to be called Louis the Just and Louis the Chaste. Posterity will find a difficulty in understanding this character, which history explains only by facts and never by reason.

Haste is a poor counselor

True, I have raped history, but it has produced some beautiful offspring.

Now I'd like someone to tell me there is no drama in real life!

...but my friends call me Edmund Dantes.

Life is very tenacious in these lawyers.

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.

D’Artagnan: Why is Athos sitting by himself? Aramis: He takes his drinking very seriously. Not to worry, he’ll be his usual charming self by morning.

You scholars, you're in communication with the devil.

For there are two distinct sorts of ideas: Those that proceed from the head and those that emanate from the heart.

Misfortune does not help us to believe.

Sometimes one has suffered enough to have the right to never say: I am too happy.

It is quite rare for God to provide a great man at the necessary moment to carry out some great deep, which is why when this unusual combination of circumstance does occur, history at once records the name of the chosen one and recommends him to the admiration of posterity.