Top 500 Alexandre Dumas Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 4 of 10

151. “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

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

— Alexandre Dumas

153. “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

154. “Je vous souhaite une vie assez calme, assez heureuse, et assez remplie pour qu’il n’y ait place pour mon souvenir.”

— Alexandre Dumas

155. “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

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

— Alexandre Dumas

157. “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

158. “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

159. “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

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

— Alexandre Dumas

161. “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

162. “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

163. “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

164. “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

165. “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

166. “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

167. “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

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

— Alexandre Dumas

169. “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

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

— Alexandre Dumas

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

— Alexandre Dumas

172. “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

173. “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

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

— Alexandre Dumas

175. “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

176. “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

177. “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

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

— Alexandre Dumas

179. “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

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

— Alexandre Dumas

181. “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

182. “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

183. “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

184. “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

185. “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

186. “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

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

— Alexandre Dumas

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

— Alexandre Dumas

189. “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

190. “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

191. “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

192. “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

193. “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

194. “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

195. “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

196. “What commands the Count of Monte Cristo,’ the strange man interrupted, ’is the Count of Monte Cristo. So, not a word of all this, I beg you. I do what I wish, Monsieur Beauchamp, and believe me, it is always very well done.”

— Alexandre Dumas

197. “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

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

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

— Alexandre Dumas