Alexandre Dumas Quotes

Alexandre Dumas presents witty, dramatic insights on work, hope, and truth, entertaining anyone who enjoys bold, timeless advice.

40 quotes

1. Rien ne reussit comme le succes.

2. Sleeping on a plank has one advantage - it encourages early rising.

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

4. Drunk, if you like; so much the worse for those who fear wine, for it is because they have bad thoughts which they are afraid the liquor will extract from their hearts.

5. Private misfortunes must never induce us to neglect public affairs.

6. There is ... a clever maxim which bears upon what I was saying to you some little while ago, and that is, that unless wicked ideas take root in a naturally depraved mind, human nature, in a right and wholesome state, revolts at crime. Still, from an artificial civilisation have originated wants, vices, and false tastes, which occasionally become so powerful as to stifle within us all good feelings, and ultimately to lead us into guilt and wickedness...

7. 'How strange,' continued the king, with some asperity; 'the police think that they have disposed of the whole matter when they say, 'A murder has been committed,' and especially so when they can add, 'And we are on the track of the guilty persons.''

8. 'You must teach me a small part of what you know,' said Dantes, 'if only to prevent your growing weary of me. I can well believe that so learned a person as yourself would prefer absolute solitude to being tormented with the company of one as ignorant and uninformed as myself. If you will only agree to my request, I promise you never to mention another word about escaping.' The abbe smiled. 'Alas, my boy,' said he, 'human knowledge is confined within very narrow limits; and when I have taught you mathematics, physics, history, and the three or four modern languages with which I am acquainted, you will know as much as I do myself. Now, it will scarcely require two years for me to communicate to you the stock of learning I possess.' 'Two years!' exclaimed Dantes; 'do you really believe I can acquire all these things in so short a time?' 'Not their application, certainly, but their principles you may; to learn is not to know; there are the learners and the learned. Memory makes the one, philosophy the other.'

9. Tell the angel who will watch over your future destiny, Morrel, to pray sometimes for a man who, like Satan, thought himself, for an instant, equal to God; but who now acknowledges, with Christian humility, that God alone possesses supreme power and infinite wisdom... There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, Morrel, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life.

10. Until the day when God shall deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in these two words,-'Wait and hope'.

11. There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more

12. 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.

13. Tous pour un, un pour tous, c'est notre devise

14. 'Eh, gentlemen, let us reckon upon accidents! Life is a chaplet of little miseries which the philosopher counts with a smile. Be philosophers, as I am, gentlemen; sit down at the table and let us drink. Nothing makes the future look so bright as surveying it through a glass of chambertin.'

15. 'Weep,' said Athos, 'weep, heart full of love, youth, and life! Alas, would I could weep like you!'

16. [L]earn ever to separate the king and the principle of royalty. The king is but man; royalty is the spirit of God. When you are in doubt as to which you should serve, forsake the material appearance for the invisible principle, for this is everything.

17. Eh! sire, that is the fate of truth; she is a stern companion; she bristles all over with steel; she wounds those whom she attacks, and sometimes him who speaks her.

18. My friend, the pleasures to which we are not accustomed oppress us more than the griefs with which we are familiar.

19. Il y a une femme dans toutes les affaires; aussitot qu'on me fait un rapport, je dis: 'Cherchez la femme'.

20. Les chaines du mariage sont si lourdes qu'il faut etre deux pour les porter; quelquefois trois.

21. Works by Alexandre Dumas, pere at Project Gutenberg

22. Alexandre Dumas ebooks

23. Woman is sacred; the woman one loves is holy.

24. There is no friendship that cares about an overheard secret.

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

26. I am not proud, but I am happy; and happiness blinds, I think, more than pride.

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

28. 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.

29. Infatuated, half through conceit, half through love of my art, I achieve the impossible working as no one else ever works.

30. 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.

31. 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.

32. As a general rule...people ask for advice only in order not to follow it; or if they do follow it, in order to have someone to blame for giving it.

33. Everyone knows that drunkards and lovers have a protecting diety.

34. Misfortune does not help us to believe.

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

36. Why, in truth, sir," was Monte Cristo's reply, "man is but an ugly caterpillar for him who studies him through a solar microscope; but you said, I think, that I had nothing else to do. Now, really, let me ask, sir, have you? — do you believe you have anything to do? or to speak in plain terms, do you really think that what you do deserves being called anything?

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

38. We are always in a hurry to be happy...; for when we have suffered a long time, we have great difficulty in believing in good fortune.

39. 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.

40. Often we pass beside happiness without seeing it, without looking at it, or even if we have seen and looked at it, without recognizing it.