Top 500 Alexandre Dumas Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “Danglars was one of those men born with a pen behind the ear, and an inkstand in place of a heart. Everything with him was multiplication or subtraction. The life of a man was to him of far less value than a numeral, especially when, by taking it away, he could increase the sum total of his own desires.”

— Alexandre Dumas

152. “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 living.”

— Alexandre Dumas

153. “Happiness is like one of those palaces on an enchanted island, its gates guarded by dragons. One must fight to gain in” -Edmond Dantes, Chapter 5.”

— Alexandre Dumas

154. “But excessive grief is like a storm at sea, where the frail bark is tossed from the depths to the top of the wave.”

— Alexandre Dumas

155. “Now I’d like someone to tell me there is no drama in real life!”

— Alexandre Dumas

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

— Alexandre Dumas

157. “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.”

— Alexandre Dumas

158. “Pain, anguish and suffering in human life are always in proportion to the strength with which a man is endowed.”

— Alexandre Dumas

159. “Oh! The good times when we were so unhappy.”

— Alexandre Dumas

160. “There are men who have suffered and who have not only gone on living, but even built a new fortune on the ruins of their former happiness. From the depths into which their enemies have plunged them, they have risen again with such vigor and glory that they have dominated their former conquerors and cast them down in their turn.”

— Alexandre Dumas

161. “We are often criminals in the eyes of the earth, not only for having committed crimes, but because we know that crimes have been committed.”

— Alexandre Dumas

162. “Danglars was one of those calculating men who are born with a pen behind their ear and an inkwell instead of a heart.”

— Alexandre Dumas

163. “I will follow him to hell, and that is saying not a little, as I believe him entirely capable of the descent.”

— Alexandre Dumas

164. “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.”

— Alexandre Dumas

165. “Rogues are preferable to imbeciles because sometimes they take a rest.”

— Alexandre Dumas

166. “Man does not appear to me to be intended to enjoy felicity so unmixed; happiness is like the enchanted palaces we read of in our childhood, where fierce, fiery dragons defend the entrance and approach; and monsters of all shapes and kinds, requiring to be overcome ere victory is ours.”

— Alexandre Dumas

167. “You talk like a noodle, my friend.”

— Alexandre Dumas

168. “Remember that two-legged tigers and crocodiles are more dangerous than those that walk on four.”

— Alexandre Dumas

169. “Joyful friends, mostly loyal, they hadn’t abandoned their protector before the gathering storm; and despite the threatening sky, despite the shuddering earth, they remained, smiling, considerate, and as devoted to misfortune as they had been to prosperity.”

— Alexandre Dumas

170. “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.”

— Alexandre Dumas

171. “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.”

— Alexandre Dumas

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

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

— Alexandre Dumas

173. “There is neither happiness nor misfortune in this world, there is merely a comparison between one state and another, nothing more. Only someone who has suffered the deepest misfortune is capable of experiencing the heights of felicity.”

— Alexandre Dumas

174. “Never did a man deeply in love allow the clocks to go on peacefully.”

— Alexandre Dumas

175. “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.”

— Alexandre Dumas

176. “If one’s lot is cast among fools it is necessary to study folly.”

— Alexandre Dumas

177. “For Milady was well aware that her most seductive power was in her voice, which could run skilfully through the whole scale of tones, from mortal speech, upwards to the language of heaven.”

— Alexandre Dumas

178. “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?”

— Alexandre Dumas

179. “I – drunk!” said Caderousse; “well that’s a good one! I could drink four more such bottles; they are no bigger than cologne flasks. Pere Pamphile, more wine!” and Caderousse rattled his glass upon the table.”

— Alexandre Dumas

180. “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?”

— Alexandre Dumas

181. “What is death? One step further into calm and two perhaps into silence.”

— Alexandre Dumas

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

— Alexandre Dumas

183. “Those who are born with a silver spoon,’ Emmanuel said, ’those who have never needed anything, do not understand what happiness is, any more than those who do not know the blessing of a clear sky and who have never entrusted their lives to four planks tossing on a raging sea.”

— Alexandre Dumas

184. “He who chases the eagle takes no heed of the sparrow.”

— Alexandre Dumas

185. “Les amis d’aujourd’hui sont les ennemis de demain.”

— Alexandre Dumas

186. “Unfortunates, who ought to begin with God, do not have any hope in him till they have exhausted all other means of deliverance.”

— Alexandre Dumas

187. “I shall reply that I really do look upon him as one of Byron’s heroes, whom misery has marked with a fatal brand; some Manfred, some Lara, some Werner, one of those wrecks, as it were, of some ancient family, who, disinherited of their patrimony, have achieved one by the force of their adventurous genius, which has placed them above the laws of society.” “You.”

— Alexandre Dumas

188. “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.”

— Alexandre Dumas

189. “There is a very profound axiom in law, which is consistent with what I told you a short time ago, and it is this: unless an evil thought is born in a twisted mind, human nature is repelled by crime. However, civilization has given us needs, vices and artificial appetites which sometimes cause us to repress our good instincts and lead us to wrongdoing.1 Hence the maxim: if you wish to find the guilty party, first discover whose interests the crime serves!”

— Alexandre Dumas

190. “The truth is,’ replied Dantes, ’that I am too happy for noisy mirth;... joy takes a strange effect at times, it seems to oppress us almost the same as sorrow.”

— Alexandre Dumas

191. “It is the privilege of youth to believe and hope, but old men see death more clearly.”

— Alexandre Dumas

192. “Now that I expect nothing, now that I no longer entertain the slightest hopes, the end of this adventure becomes simply a matter of curiosity.”

— Alexandre Dumas

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

— Alexandre Dumas

194. “Here’s a man ready to chop another man’s self-esteem to pieces with an axe, yet he cries out in pain when his own is pricked with a needle.”

— Alexandre Dumas

195. “How well I know you by your deeds and how invariably you succeed in living down to what one expects of you!”

— Alexandre Dumas

196. “Man upon this earth must expect everything, and ought to face everything.”

— Alexandre Dumas

197. “He pointed out to him the bearings of the coast, explained to him the variations of the compass, and taught him to read in that vast book opened over our heads which they call heaven, and where God writes in azure with letters of diamonds.”

— Alexandre Dumas

198. “Carry your sorrow inside you as the cloud conceals ruin and death like a deadly secret that is understood only when the storm breaks.”

— Alexandre Dumas

199. “Do not be deceived: I am suffering less, because I have less strength in me to suffer. At your age, you have faith in life; it is a privilege of youth to believe and to hope. But old men see death more clearly.”

— Alexandre Dumas

200. “All the pious ideas that had been so long forgotten, returned; he recollected the prayers his mother had taught him, and discovered a new meaning in every word; for 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!”

— Alexandre Dumas