Top 500 Alexandre Dumas Quotes (2024 Update)
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201. “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

202. “There are misfortunes in life that no one will accept; people would rather believe in the supernatural and the impossible.”

— Alexandre Dumas

203. “God may sometimes appear to forget, when his justice is resting; but the time always comes when he remembers...”

— Alexandre Dumas

204. “You scholars, you’re in communication with the devil.”

— Alexandre Dumas

205. “A man has carried off your mistress, a man has seduced your wife, a man has dishonored your daughter; he has rendered the whole life of one who had the right to expect from heaven that portion of happiness God has promised to every one of his creatures, an existence of misery and infamy; and you think you are avenged because you send a ball through the head, or pass a sword through the breast, of that man who has planted madness in your brain, and despair in your heart.”

— Alexandre Dumas

206. “That is a dream also; only he has remained asleep, while you have awakened; and who knows which of you is the most fortunate?”

— Alexandre Dumas

207. “One always hurries towards happiness, Monsieur Danglars, because when one has suffered much, one is at pains to believe in it.”

— Alexandre Dumas

208. “Monsieur Morcerf,” said Danglars, pale with anger and fear, “if I find a mad dog in my path I kill it and, far from feeling guilty about it, I feel that I have rendered a service to society. If you are mad and try to bite me, I warn you that I will kill you without pity. Is it my fault that your father is dishonored?”

— Alexandre Dumas

209. “It is almost as difficult to keep a first class person in a fourth class job, as it is to keep a fourth class person in a first class job.”

— Alexandre Dumas

210. “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

211. “The sea was calm with a fresh wind blowing from the south-east; they sailed under a sky of azure where God was also lighting up his lanterns, each one of which is a world.”

— Alexandre Dumas

212. “I have seen the heavens open, the sea rage and foam, the storm rise in a patch of sky and like a gigantic eagle beat the two horizons with its wings.”

— Alexandre Dumas

213. “He was a fine, tall, slim young fellow, with black eyes, and hair as dark as the raven’s wing; and his whole appearance bespoke that calmness and resolution peculiar to men accustomed from their cradle to contend with danger.”

— Alexandre Dumas

214. “O grande ville! c’ est dans ton sein palpitant que j’ai trouve ce que je cherchais; mineur patient, j’ai remue tes entrailles pour en faire sortir le mal; maintenant, mon oeuvre est accomplie, ma mission est terminee; maintenant tu ne peux plus m’ofrir ni joies ni douleurs. Adieu, Paris,! adieu!”

— Alexandre Dumas

215. “Take care, my worthy host,” said Albert, “better is a sure enemy to well.”

— Alexandre Dumas

216. “Son,’ Danglars replied.”

— Alexandre Dumas

217. “Tree forsakes not the flower – the flower falls from the tree.”

— Alexandre Dumas

218. “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

219. “And then, after the first blush of the admiration which he could not help feeling, he began to be tortured by the pangs of envy, by that slow fever which creeps over the heart and changes it into a nest of vipers, each devouring the other and ever born anew.”

— Alexandre Dumas

220. “One!” said the count mysteriously, his eyes fixed on the corpse, disfigured by so awful a death.”

— Alexandre Dumas

221. “We had forgotten to say that Jacopo was a Corsican.”

— Alexandre Dumas

222. “Those who are coerced by force become our enemies, those who succumb to reason become our allies.”

— Alexandre Dumas

223. “Yes, indeed, I have often thought with a bitter joy that these riches, which would make the wealth of a dozen families, will be forever lost to those men who persecute me. This idea was one of vengeance to me, and I tasted it slowly in the night of my dungeon and the despair of my captivity.”

— Alexandre Dumas

224. “Thank you; be easy.”

— Alexandre Dumas

225. “It was like the eve of a battle; the hearts beat, the eyes laughed, and they felft that the life they were perhaps going to lose, was after all, a good thing.”

— Alexandre Dumas

226. “In all well-organised brains, the predominating idea – and there always is one – is sure to be the last thought before sleeping, and the first upon waking in the morning. Andrea had scarcely opened his eyes when his predominating idea presented itself, and whispered in his ear that he had slept too long.”

— Alexandre Dumas

227. “In love, writing is dangerous, not to mention pointless.”

— Alexandre Dumas

228. “The cause was not in Dantes, but in providence, who, while limiting the power of man, has filled him with boundless desires.”

— Alexandre Dumas

229. “Where did I meet him before – this buckbasket of fat, this full-moon face of purple, and this carriage of a sacred elephant?”

— Alexandre Dumas

230. “I have lost all that bound me to life; now death smiles on me as a nurse smiles on the child she is about to rock to sleep; now welcome death!” No sooner had this idea taken possession of the unhappy young man than he became more calm and resigned;.”

— Alexandre Dumas

231. “For hearts which have long suffered, happiness is like dew on soil parched by the sun: both heart and earth absorb this beneficial rain as it falls on them, and nothing appears on the surface.”

— Alexandre Dumas

232. “And what solitude is more vast and more poetic than that of a ship sailing alone on the sea, in the darkness of night and the silence of infinity, under the eye of the Lord?”

— Alexandre Dumas

233. “Mankind will not be perfect until it can create and destroy like God. It can already destroy: that’s half the battle.”

— Alexandre Dumas

234. “Ei kukaan ole niin ahne vapaapaikoille kuin miljoonien omistajat.”

— Alexandre Dumas

235. “There is a sort of consolation at the contemplation of the yawning abyss, at the bottom of which lie darkness and obscurity. Edmond.”

— Alexandre Dumas

236. “Incertitude is still hope.”

— Alexandre Dumas

237. “I am he whom you sold and dishonored – I am he whose betrothed you prostituted – I am he upon whom you trampled that you might raise yourself to fortune – I am he whose father you condemned to die of hunger – I am he whom you also condemned to starvation, and who yet forgives you, because he hopes to be forgiven – I am Edmund Dantes!”

— Alexandre Dumas

238. “Everyone knows that drunkards and lovers have a protecting diety.”

— Alexandre Dumas

239. “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

240. “No man truly in love has ever let the hands of a clock go peacefully on their way.”

— Alexandre Dumas

241. “There are words which close a conversation as with an iron door.”

— Alexandre Dumas

242. “Every day he spoke of the immensity of the treasure, explaining to Dantes all the good a man could do for his friends in our modern times with such a fortune. At those moments Dantes’ face would darken, for he thought of how much harm a man could do to his enemies in our modern times with such a fortune.”

— Alexandre Dumas

243. “You live alone, then?” “I do.” “You have no sister, no son, no father?” “I have no one.” “How can you live thus, with no one to attach you to life?”

— Alexandre Dumas

244. “Without reflecting that this is the only moment in which you can study character,” said the count; “on the steps of the scaffold death tears off the mask that has been worn through life, and the real visage is disclosed.”

— Alexandre Dumas

245. “In politics, you know, as well as I do, there are no men, but ideas – no feelings, but interests.”

— Alexandre Dumas

246. “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

247. “Does this not tell you that grief, as well as in life, there is always something to look forward to beyond?”

— Alexandre Dumas

248. “Is the world filled with tigers and crocodiles?” “Yes; and remember that two-legged tigers and crocodiles are more dangerous than the others.” “Never.”

— Alexandre Dumas

249. “It was a stormy and dark night;.”

— Alexandre Dumas

250. “There are some situations which men understand by instinct, by which reason is powerless to explain; in such cases the greatest poet is he who gives utterance to the most natural and vehement outburst of sorrow. Those who hear the bitter cry are as much impressed as if they listened to an entire poem, and when th sufferer is sincere they are right in regarding his outburst as sublime.”

— Alexandre Dumas