Top 500 Alexandre Dumas Quotes (2026 Update)
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351. “Over a species of altar, and beneath a canopy of blue velvet, surmounted by white and red plumes, was a full-length portrait of Anne of Austria, so perfect in its resemblance that d’Artagnan uttered a cry of surprise on beholding it.”

— Alexandre Dumas

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

— Alexandre Dumas

353. “The most curious spectacle in life is that of death.”

— Alexandre Dumas

354. “As we have seen, Villefort belonged to the nobility of the town and M. Morrel to the plebeian part of it: the former was an extreme Royalist, the latter suspected of harbouring Bonapartist sympathies. Villefort looked contemptuously at Morrel and answered coldly: ‘You know, Monsieur, that one can be mild in one’s private life, honest in one’s business dealings and skilled in one’s work, yet at the same time, politically speaking, be guilty of great crimes.”

— Alexandre Dumas

355. “I always said that this cadet from Gascony was a well of wisdom,” murmured Athos;.”

— Alexandre Dumas

356. “This will do,” said he, “and from this letter, which might have ruined me, I will make my fortune. Now to the work I have in hand.” And after having assured himself that the prisoner was gone, the deputy procureur hastened to the house of his betrothed.”

— Alexandre Dumas

357. “The heart of the best woman is pitiless toward the sorrows of a rival.”

— Alexandre Dumas

358. “This commissary was a man of very repulsive mien, with a pointed nose, with yellow and salient cheek bones, with eyes small but keen and penetrating, and an expression of countenance resembling at one the polecat and the fox. His head, supported by a long and flexible neck, issued from his large black robe, balancing itself with a motion very much like that of the tortoise thrusting his head out of his shell.”

— Alexandre Dumas

359. “The ever-new passions which consumed her gave to her life the appearance of those clouds which float in the heavens, reflecting sometimes azure, sometimes fire, sometimes the opaque blackness of the tempest, and which leave no traces upon the earth behind them but devastation and death.”

— Alexandre Dumas

360. “I have only two adversaries – I will not say two conquerors, for with perseverance I subdue even them, – they are time and distance. There is a third, and the most terrible – that is my condition as a mortal being.”

— Alexandre Dumas

361. “However anxious one is to reach one’s goal, one can excuse delays on the route when these are caused by ovations.”

— Alexandre Dumas

362. “I never swear, Monseigneur. I say Yes or No, and as I am a gentleman, I keep my word.”

— Alexandre Dumas

363. “The marquise heard her sentence without showing any sign of fear or weakness. When it was finished, she said to the registrar, “Will you, sir, be so kind as to read it again? I had not expected the tumbril, and I was so much struck by that that I lost the thread of what followed.”

— Alexandre Dumas

364. “But, it is well known, what strikes the capricious mind of the poet is not always what affects the mass of readers.”

— Alexandre Dumas

365. “I think they are rising faster than they have any business, and that they would not be so black if they did not mean mischief.”

— Alexandre Dumas

366. “Delays only double grief when one has to part...”

— Alexandre Dumas

367. “It is necessary... to yield to the storm, purchase a peace, and wait patiently for better times.”

— Alexandre Dumas

368. “It was one of those events which decide the life of a man;.”

— Alexandre Dumas

369. “They would have too easy a conquest over four separate men; whilst four men united make a troop.”

— Alexandre Dumas

370. “My son, philosophy as I understand it, is reducible to no rules by which it can be learned; it is the amalgamation of all the sciences, the golden cloud which bears the soul to heaven.”

— Alexandre Dumas

371. “The pretty landlady was desolate. She would have taken D’Artagnan not only as her husband, but as her God, he was so handsome and had so fierce a mustache. Then.”

— Alexandre Dumas

372. “My friend, she is a woman.” “No, no, you are deceived – she is a queen.”

— Alexandre Dumas

373. “She will follow you to the end of the world, Athos, if she recognizes you.”

— Alexandre Dumas

374. “I have just paid twenty-five thousand francs for a discovery for which I would willingly have paid a hundred thousand.’ ‘What have you discovered?’ Maximilien asked. ‘I have just found out how to rescue a gardener from the dormice who are eating his peaches.”

— Alexandre Dumas

375. “God has preserved us hitherto, God will preserve us still.”

— Alexandre Dumas

376. “Besides, we feel always a sort of mental superiority over those whose lives we know better than they suppose.”

— Alexandre Dumas

377. “D’Artagnan was amazed to note by what fragile and unknown threads the destinies of nations and the lives of men are suspended. He.”

— Alexandre Dumas

378. “Does the open wound in another’s breast soften the pain of the gaping wound in our own? Or does the blood which is welling from another man’s side staunch that which is pouring from our own? Does the general anguish of our fellow creatures lessen our own private and particular anguish? No, no, each suffers on his own account, each struggles with his own grief, each sheds his own tears.”

— Alexandre Dumas

379. “Milady felt a consolation in seeing nature partake of the disorder of her heart. The thunder growled in the air like the passion and anger in her thoughts. It appeared to her that the blast as it swept along disheveled her brow, as it bowed the branches of the trees and bore away their leaves. She howled as the hurricane howled; and her voice was lost in the great voice of nature, which also seemed to groan with despair.”

— Alexandre Dumas

380. “Dantes was on the way he desired to follow, and was moving towards the end he wished to achieve; his heart was in a fair way of petrifying in his bosom.”

— Alexandre Dumas

381. “Athos was delighted to find he was going to fight an Englishman. We might say that was his dream.”

— Alexandre Dumas

382. “Have you no friends who could help you in these circumstances?’ Morrel smiled sadly and said: ‘In business, Monsieur, as you very well know, one has no friends, only associates.”

— Alexandre Dumas

383. “When you want to obtain something touching a man’s self-respect, you must spare his pride even the appearance of suffering.”

— Alexandre Dumas

384. “He was the friend of the king, who honored highly, as everyone knows, the memory of his father, Henry IV.”

— Alexandre Dumas

385. “She crammed so much knowledge into her head to alleviate the weight in her heart.”

— Alexandre Dumas

386. “However much a man is inured to taking risks, however well prepared he is for danger, the fluttering of his heart and the pricking of his skin will always let him know the vast difference that lies between dream and reality, planning and execution.”

— Alexandre Dumas

387. “Planchet, two hours before, had asked his master for some dinner, and he had answered him with the proverb, “He who sleeps, dines.” And Planchet dined by sleeping.”

— Alexandre Dumas

388. “There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another.”

— Alexandre Dumas

389. “As usual, the oldest women were the most decorated, and the ugliest the most conspicuous. If there was a beautiful lily, or a sweet rose, you had to search for it, concealed in some corner behind a mother with a turban, or an aunt with a bird of paradise.”

— Alexandre Dumas

390. “And now commenced the work of devastation upon the many good things with which the table was loaded.”

— Alexandre Dumas

391. “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

392. “Hold! I must have lost it,” said the young man maliciously, pretending to search for it. “But fortunately the world is a sepulcher; the men, and consequently the women, are but shadows, and love is a sentiment to which you cry, ‘Fie! Fie!”

— Alexandre Dumas

393. “Suffering is in proportion to the strength which has been accorded to a person; in other words, the weak suffer more, where the trial is the same, than the strong. And, what are the elementary principles, we may ask, which compose human strength? Is it not – more than anything else – exercise, habit, experience?”

— Alexandre Dumas

394. “No violence; violence is the proof of weakness.”

— Alexandre Dumas

395. “There is known to be a particular deity for drunkards and lovers.”

— Alexandre Dumas

396. “The feet of Raoul were over the edge of the cliff, bathed in that void which is peopled by vertigo, and provokes to self-annihilation.”

— Alexandre Dumas

397. “I have been told you have extreme political views,” said Villefort, who had never been told anything of the kind but was not sorry to put forward the statement in the form of an accusation.”

— Alexandre Dumas

398. “Oh,” said the count, “I only know two things which destroy the appetite, – grief – and as I am happy to see you very cheerful, it is not that – and love. Now after what you told me this morning of your heart, I may believe” –.”

— Alexandre Dumas

399. “Yes; but one gets out of prison,” said Caderousse, who, with what sense was left him, listened eagerly to the conversation, “and when one gets out and one’s name is Edmond Dantes, one seeks revenge.”

— Alexandre Dumas

400. “Be philosophers, like me, gentlemen: come around the table and let us drink.”

— Alexandre Dumas