Top 500 Alexandre Dumas Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “Rogues are preferable to imbeciles because sometimes they take a rest.”

— Alexandre Dumas

152. “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

153. “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

154. “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

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

— Alexandre Dumas

156. “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

157. “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

158. “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

159. “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

160. “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

161. “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

162. “Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget that until the day when God shall design to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in these two words – ‘Wait and hope’.”

— Alexandre Dumas

163. “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

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

— Alexandre Dumas

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

— Alexandre Dumas

166. “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

167. “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

168. “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

169. “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

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

— Alexandre Dumas

171. “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

172. “Forward! Still forward!” said he. “When it shall be time, God will tell me, as he has told the others.”

— Alexandre Dumas

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

— Alexandre Dumas

174. “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

175. “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

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

— Alexandre Dumas

177. “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

178. “You know as well as I do, my dear boy, that in politics there are no people, only ideas; no feelings, only interests. In politics, you don’t kill a man, you remove an obstacle, that’s all.”

— Alexandre Dumas

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

— Alexandre Dumas

180. “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

181. “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.”

— Alexandre Dumas

182. “Contempt for flowers is an offence against God. The lovelier the flower, the greater the offence in despising it. The tulip is the loveliest of all flowers. So whoever despised the tulip offends God immeasurably.”

— Alexandre Dumas

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

— Alexandre Dumas

184. “At the end of ten minutes fifty thousand lights glittered, descending from the Palazzo di Venezia to the Piazza del Popolo, and mounting from the Piazzo del Popolo to the Palazzo di Venezia. It seemed like the fete of jack-o’-lanterns. It is impossible to form any idea of it without having seen it. Suppose that all the stars had descended from the sky and mingled in a wild dance on the face of the earth; the whole accompanied by cries that were never heard in any other part of the world.”

— Alexandre Dumas

185. “Danaro e santita, Meta della meta.”

— Alexandre Dumas

186. “I have forgiven the world for the love of you;.”

— Alexandre Dumas

187. “The wicked do not die in that way: God seems to take them under his protection to use them as the instruments of his vengeance.”

— Alexandre Dumas

188. “Life is very tenacious in these lawyers.”

— Alexandre Dumas

189. “What difference is there between the figure of the conqueror and that of the pirate?” said the ancients. The difference only between the eagle and the vulture, – serenity or restlessness.”

— Alexandre Dumas

190. “When one thinks,” said Caderousse, letting his hand drop on the paper, “there is here wherewithal to kill a man more sure than if we waited at the corner of a wood to assassinate him! I have always had more dread of a pen, a bottle of ink, and a sheet of paper, than of a sword or pistol.”

— Alexandre Dumas

191. “Death is perhaps an ordeal, but it is not an expiation.”

— Alexandre Dumas

192. “We shine like those fires and those stars; we sigh like those waves; we suffer like those great ships, which are worn out in ploughing the waves, in obeying the wind which urges them towards an end, as the breath of God blows us towards a port. Everything likes to live, Raoul; and everything is beautiful in living things.”

— Alexandre Dumas

193. “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

194. “Chi ha compagno ha padrone – ‘He who has a partner has a master.”

— Alexandre Dumas

195. “Vengeance in bloom shone in her eyes and smiled on her lips.”

— Alexandre Dumas

196. “Misfortune is needed to plumb certain mysterious depths in the understanding of men.”

— Alexandre Dumas

197. “Besides, the storm which rages in her breast was increasing in its violence, and she would have burst her prison walls if her body could have enjoyed, for a single instant, the same proportions as her soul.”

— Alexandre Dumas

198. “On the first Monday of the month of April, 1625, the market town of Meung, in which the author of Romance of the Rose was born, appeared to be in as perfect a state of revolution as if the Huguenots had just made a second La Rochelle of it.”

— Alexandre Dumas

199. “The King! I thought him enough of a philosopher to realize that there is no such thing as murder in politics. You know as well as I do, my dear boy, that in politics there are no people, only ideas; no feelings, only interests. In politics, you don’t kill a man, you remove an obstacle, that’s all.”

— Alexandre Dumas

200. “This being understood, let us proceed with our history.”

— Alexandre Dumas