Top 500 Alexandre Dumas Quotes (2025 Update)
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451. “One could guess that there was the delicate forethought of a mother behind this choice of the pavillon for Albert: while not wanting to be separated from her son, she nevertheless realized that a young man of the viscount’s age needed all his freedom. On the other hand, it must be said that one could also recognize in this the intelligent egoism of the young man, the son of wealthy parents, who enjoyed the benefits of a free and idle life, which was gilded for him like a birdcage.”

— Alexandre Dumas

452. “And without waiting for the answer of the newcomer to this proof of affection, M. de Treville seized his right hand and pressed it with all his might, without perceiving that Athos, whatever might be his self-command, allowed a slight murmur of pain to escape him, and if possible, grew paler than he was before.”

— Alexandre Dumas

453. “The poison employed by Sainte-Croix has been tried in all the ways, and can defy every experiment. This poison floats in water, it is the superior, and the water obeys it; it escapes in the trial by fire, leaving behind only innocent deposits; in animals it is so skilfully concealed that no one could detect it; all parts of the animal remain healthy and active; even while it is spreading the cause of death, this artificial poison leaves behind the marks and appearance of life.”

— Alexandre Dumas

454. “Why,’ said he, ’does not the emperor, who has devised so many clever and efficient modes of improving the art of war, organize a regiment of lawyers, judges and legal practitioners, sending them in the hottest fire the enemy could maintain, and using them to save better men?”

— Alexandre Dumas

455. “I had nearly five thousand volumes in my library at Rome; but after reading them over many times, I found out that with one hundred and fifty well-chosen books a man possesses, if not a complete summary of all human knowledge, at least all that a man need really know.”

— Alexandre Dumas

456. “He told himself that it was the hatred of men, not the vengeance of God, which had plunged him into the abyss where he now found himself.”

— Alexandre Dumas

457. “Trust me, do not try to cheapen things; great affairs are badly done with small means.”

— Alexandre Dumas

458. “We will escape, and if we cannot escape we will talk, you of those you love and I of those whom I love.”

— Alexandre Dumas

459. “Lucullus dines with Lucullus,’ that is quite sufficient.”

— Alexandre Dumas

460. “Your history is quite a romance, and the world, which delights in romances contained in two covers of yellow paper, strangely mistrusts those which are bound in living parchment, even thought they be gilded like yourself.”

— Alexandre Dumas

461. “Now, I cannot for one instant believe you so devoid of gallantry as to refuse a lady your escort when she even condescends to ask you for it.”

— Alexandre Dumas

462. “I acted hastily towards him. Haste is a poor counsellor: I acted wrongly.”

— Alexandre Dumas

463. “But he isn’t dead?’ ‘No, he isn’t, as you can very well see. Instead of striking him between the sixth and seventh left rib, as your compatriots usually do, you must have struck higher or lower; and these lawyers, you know, are not easy to kill off.”

— Alexandre Dumas

464. “To despise flowers is to offend God. “The more beautiful the flower is, the more does one offend God in despising it. “The tulip is the most beautiful of all flowers. “Therefore, he who despises the tulip offends God beyond measure.”

— Alexandre Dumas

465. “Nature subdued must yield in the combat, the dream must succeed to reality, and then the dream reigns supreme, then the dream becomes life, and life becomes the dream. But.”

— Alexandre Dumas

466. “Die! No, no!’ He cried. ‘It was not worth living so long, and suffering so much, to die now. Death was welcome previously when I made a resolution to meet it, many years ago. But now it would truly be conceding too much to my miserable fate. No, I want to live, I want to struggle to the end. No, I want to recover the happiness that has been taken away from me. I am forgetting that, before I die, I have my enemies to punish and, who knows? – perhaps a few friends to reward.”

— Alexandre Dumas

467. “Did you not hear what I said, sir? I told you there was fire in my sentence. And though it is only after death that my body is to be burnt, it will always be a terrible disgrace on my memory. I am saved the pain of being burnt alive, and thus, perhaps, saved from a death of despair, but the shamefulness is the same, and it is that I think of.”

— Alexandre Dumas

468. “If you want to find a culprit, first you find those who might gain a benefit from committed act.”

— Alexandre Dumas

469. “There is something so awe-inspiring in great afflictions that even in the worst times the first emotion of a crowd has generally been to sympathise with the sufferer in a great catastrophe.”

— Alexandre Dumas

470. “Sir, you are punctual, and I cannot complain that you have broken your promise; but oh, how the time has dragged, and how long it has seemed before the clock struck six!”

— Alexandre Dumas

471. “Oh Heaven! You sometimes bear with such injustice on earth, that I understand why there are wretches who doubt in your existence.”

— Alexandre Dumas

472. “My commands are ordinarily short, clear, and precise; and I would rather be obliged to repeat my words twice, or even three times, than they should be misunderstood.”

— Alexandre Dumas

473. “Death, according to the care we take to be on good or bad terms with it, is either a friend which will rock us as gently as a nursing mother or an enemy which will savagely tear apart body and soul.”

— Alexandre Dumas

474. “Tigers and crocodiles with two legs are more dangerous than the rest.”

— Alexandre Dumas

475. “Like all primitive natures, she adored everything that appealed to her eyes and her ears.”

— Alexandre Dumas

476. “Nineteen years of light to reflect upon in eternal darkness!”

— Alexandre Dumas

477. “D’Artagnan is right,” said Athos. “Behold our three leaves of absence, which come from M. de Treville; and here are three hundred pistoles, which come from I know not where. Let us go and be killed where we are told to go. Is life worth so many questions? D’Artagnan, I am ready to follow you.”

— Alexandre Dumas

478. “Commend me to the cardinal,′ said Milady. ‘Commend me to Satan,’ replied Rochefort.”

— Alexandre Dumas

479. “D’Artagnan looked for some tapestry behind which he might hide himself, and felt an immense inclination to crawl under the table.”

— Alexandre Dumas

480. “He leaned over the dying man and whispered in his ear, ‘I am – ’ And his lips uttered a name so softly that he himself seemed to be afraid to hear it.”

— Alexandre Dumas

481. “And then he gave himself over entirely to his feelings of happiness. He was certainly no longer going to be alone, he might perhaps even be free. The worst case, should he remain a prisoner, was to have a companion: captivity shared is only semi-captivity. Sighs united together are almost prayers; prayers coming from two hearts are almost acts of grace.”

— Alexandre Dumas

482. “Punctuality,” said Monte Cristo, “is the politeness of kings, according to one of your sovereigns, I think; but it is not the same with travellers. However, I hope you will excuse the two or three seconds I am behindhand; five hundred leagues are not to be accomplished without some trouble, and especially in France, where, it seems, it is forbidden to beat the postilions.”

— Alexandre Dumas

483. “Towards the beginning of the year 1838, two young men belonging to the first society of Paris, the Vicomte Albert de Morcerf and the Baron Franz d’Epinay, were at Florence.”

— Alexandre Dumas

484. “Maximilian,” said the count, “the friends that we have lost do not repose in the bosom of the earth, but are buried deep in our hearts, and it has been thus ordained that we may always be accompanied by them.”

— Alexandre Dumas

485. “Then, casting a glance on the handsome young man, who was scarcely twenty-five years of age, and whom he was leaving in his gore, deprived of sense and perhaps dead, he gave a sigh for that unaccountable destiny which leads men to destroy each other for the interests of people who are strangers to them and who often do not even know that they exist.”

— Alexandre Dumas

486. “Ci vuole la sciagura per scavare certe miniere misteriose nascoste nell’intelligenza umana; ci vuole la pressione per far esplodere la polvere.”

— Alexandre Dumas

487. “I should be much displeased at this, not because of any loss that it might occasion, but because I should no longer have the assurance that, whenever I wish, I can separate myself from the rest of the world.”

— Alexandre Dumas

488. “Death to the traitors! To the gallows with Cornelius de Witt! Death! death!”

— Alexandre Dumas

489. “And that you alone, among the men whom you do not recognize as your brothers- for you have said so,” observed Villefort, in a tone that faltered somewhat- “you alone are perfect.”

— Alexandre Dumas

490. “At the end of every prayer introduced the entreaty oftener addressed to man than to God: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us.” Yet in spite of his earnest prayers, Dantes remained a prisoner.”

— Alexandre Dumas

491. “Believe me, when a woman loves a man, you do not win her heart by crossing swords with him.”

— Alexandre Dumas

492. “Sainte-Croix, a strange mixture of qualities good and evil, had reached the supreme crisis of his life, when the powers of darkness or of light were to prevail. Maybe, if he had met some angelic soul at this point, he would have been led to God; he encountered a demon, who conducted him to Satan.”

— Alexandre Dumas

493. “There were nobles, who made war against each other; there was the king, who.”

— Alexandre Dumas

494. “When they opened the door, it was to reveal a wan sky in which the moon struggled in vain to hold its own against a sea of clouds which poured dark waves across it, waves which it lit for a moment before they raced on, still darker than before, to lose themselves in the depths of infinity.”

— Alexandre Dumas

495. “Speak on, madame, speak on, Queen,” said Buckingham; “the sweetness of your voice covers the harshness of your words.”

— Alexandre Dumas

496. “Well, monsieur, I am suffering at this moment something strange, and that is the satisfaction of despair. There is in certain souls – and I have just discovered that mine is of the number – a real satisfaction in the assurance that all is lost, and the time is come to yield.”

— Alexandre Dumas

497. “I never will leave you, for I am sure I could not exist without you.”

— Alexandre Dumas

498. “Paid the last debt of nature.”

— Alexandre Dumas

499. “She was in tears; and, strange as it was, in spite of the emotions he felt at the sight of these tears, he looked also at Madame de Villefort, and it appeared to him as if a slight gloomy smile had passed over her thin lips, like those meteors which are seen passing inauspiciously between two clouds in a stormy sky.”

— Alexandre Dumas

500. “A man is always endowed by Heaven with too much for his own happiness, and just enough to make him miserable.”

— Alexandre Dumas