Top 500 Alexandre Dumas Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 9 of 10

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

— Alexandre Dumas

402. “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

403. “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

404. “So far, then,” said Danglars, mentally, “all has gone as I would have it. I am, temporarily, commander of the Pharaon, with the certainty of being permanently so, if that fool of a Caderousse can be persuaded to hold his tongue. My only fear is the chance of Dantes being released. But, there, he is in the hands of Justice; and,” added he with a smile, “she will take her own.” So saying, he leaped into a boat, desiring to be rowed on board the Pharaon, where M. Morrel had agreed to meet him.”

— Alexandre Dumas

405. “Before we are alarmed, we see correctly; when we are alarmed, we see double; and when we have been alarmed, we see nothing but trouble.”

— Alexandre Dumas

406. “Excitement, like enthusiasm, sometimes renders us unconscious to the things of earth.”

— Alexandre Dumas

407. “My friend, let us enjoy the present and give no thought to the evils of the future.”

— Alexandre Dumas

408. “Some virtues, when taken to the extreme, become crimes.”

— Alexandre Dumas

409. “Fortune is a courtesan; favorable yesterday, she may turn her back tomorrow.”

— Alexandre Dumas

410. “This woman only became a criminal because she touched me. I am oozing with crime. She caught it off me as one may catch typhus, or cholera, or the plague!”

— Alexandre Dumas

411. “Misfortune is needed to plumb certain mysterious depths in the understanding of men; pressure is needed to explode the charge. My captivity concentrated all my faculties on a single point. They had previously been dispersed, now they clashed in a narrow space; and, as you know, the clash of clouds produces electricity, electricity produces lightning and lightning gives light.”

— Alexandre Dumas

412. “So it was that Dantes, during the Hundred Days and after Waterloo, remained under lock and key, forgotten, if not by men, at least by God.”

— Alexandre Dumas

413. “But I lay aside that pride before God, who has taken me from nothing to make me what I am.”

— Alexandre Dumas

414. “The reign of Mazarin is over, but that of the financiers is begun. They have the money; your majesty will not often see much of it. To live under the paw of these hungry wolves is hard for a man who reckoned upon independence.”

— Alexandre Dumas

415. “Edmond did not lose a word, but comprehended very little of what was said.”

— Alexandre Dumas

416. “But these first needs of the heart are so imperious, these outpourings of amorous melancholy in young people are at once so sweet and so bitter, that they have often all the real marks of the passion.”

— Alexandre Dumas

417. “Besides the pleasure, there is always remorse, from the indulgence of our passions; and, after all, what have you men to fear from all this; the world excuses, and notoriety ennobles you?”

— Alexandre Dumas

418. “Beneath passion and beyond pleasure, there is always a trace of remorse.”

— Alexandre Dumas

419. “God won’t give the devil the pleasure of receiving a priest.”

— Alexandre Dumas

420. “So it is true that every one of our actions leaves some trace on our past, either dark or bright. So it is true that every step we take is more like a reptile’s progress across the sand, leaving a track behind it. And often, alas, the track is the mark of our tears!”

— Alexandre Dumas

421. “Happiness or unhappiness is the secret known but to one’s self and the walls – walls have ears but no tongue;.”

— Alexandre Dumas

422. “To despise flowers is to offend God. “The more beautiful the flower is, the more does one offend God in despising it. “The tulip is the most beautiful of all flowers. “Therefore, he who despises the tulip offends God beyond measure.”

— Alexandre Dumas

423. “Oh, thank me again!” said the count; “tell me till you are weary, that I have restored you to happiness; you do not know how much I require this assurance.”

— Alexandre Dumas

424. “There are no creatures that walk the earth, not even those animals we have labelled cowards, which will not show courage when required to defend themselves.”

— Alexandre Dumas

425. “A love as tender as that of a lover for his mistress dwells, undoubtedly, in some paternal hearts toward a son.”

— Alexandre Dumas

426. “Then why not indulge yourself at once? Sleep, by all means, if such be your means of procuring the concord of celestial sounds. Pray do not hesitate; you will find every incentive to slumber, and for what else but to send people asleep was the opera invented?”

— Alexandre Dumas

427. “And this feeling had been more painfully perceived by young d’Artagnan – for so was the Don Quixote of this second Rosinante named – from his not being able to conceal from himself the ridiculous appearance that such a steed gave him, good horseman as he was. He had sighed deeply, therefore, when accepting the gift of the pony from M. d’Artagnan the elder. He was not ignorant that such a beast was worth at least twenty livres; and the words which had accompanied the present were above all price.”

— Alexandre Dumas

428. “I say that love is a lottery in which he who wins, wins death! You are very fortunate to have lost, believe me, my dear d’Artagnan. And if I have any counsel to give, it is, always lose!”

— Alexandre Dumas

429. “C’est que l’on a souvent pour ennemis des gens qu’on voudrait avoir pour amis.”

— Alexandre Dumas

430. “On my word, I think you are right, Lucien,” said Albert absently.”

— Alexandre Dumas

431. “The struggle had been going on same time, when suddenly one of the doors violently pushed open, and a young officer in the uniform of a cavalry captain jumped down, shutting the door as he did so though not too quickly for the nearest spectators to perceive a woman sitting at the back of the carriage. She was wrapped in cloak and veil, and judging by the precautions she, had taken to hide her face from every eye, she must have had her reasons for avoiding recognition.”

— Alexandre Dumas

432. “God orders a man to do all he can to save his life.”

— Alexandre Dumas

433. “My friend,’ said Maximilien, ‘the voice of my heart is sad indeed and promises only misfortune.’ ‘Only a weak spirit sees everything from behind a dark veil. The soul makes its own horizons; your soul is overcast, and that is why the sky seems stormy to you.”

— Alexandre Dumas

434. “The night was shining with stars. They were at the top of the Montee de Villedjuif, on the plateau from which Paris is a dark sea shimmering with millions of lights like phosphorescent waves; and waves they are, more thunderous, more passionate, more shifting, more furious and more greedy than those of the stormy ocean, waves which never experience the tranquility of a vast sea, but constantly pound together, ever foaming and engulfing everything!”

— Alexandre Dumas

435. “Not their application, certainly, but their principles you may; to learn is not to know; there are the learners and the learned. Memory makes the one, philosophy the other.” “But cannot one learn philosophy?” “Philosophy cannot be taught; it is the application of the sciences to truth; it is like the golden cloud in which the Messiah went up into heaven.”

— Alexandre Dumas

436. “Yes. You are pawning me for three million: am I right?’ ‘The larger the sum, the more flattering it is. It gives you some idea of your value.”

— Alexandre Dumas

437. “I had nearly five thousand volumes in my library at Rome; but after reading them over many times, I found out that with one hundred and fifty well-chosen books a man possesses, if not a complete summary of all human knowledge, at least all that a man need really know.”

— Alexandre Dumas

438. “Well, so much the better for him,’ said the inspector. ‘When he is altogether mad, he will suffer less.’ As you can see, this inspector was a man of the utmost humanity and altogether worthy of the philanthropic office with which he had been entrusted.”

— Alexandre Dumas

439. “Never fear quarrels, but seek adventures. I have taught you how to handle a sword; you have thews of iron, a wrist of steel. Fight on all occasions. Fight the more for duels being forbidden, since consequently there is twice as much courage in fighting. I have nothing to give you, my son, but fifteen crowns, my horse, and the counsels you have just heard.”

— Alexandre Dumas

440. “You will live for me, as I will live for you.”

— Alexandre Dumas

441. “Well, Monsieur Laporte placed her near her Majesty in order that our poor queen might at least have someone in whom she could place confidence, abandoned as she is by the king, watched as she is by the cardinal, betrayed as she is by everybody.” “Ah, ah!”

— Alexandre Dumas

442. “Believe me, when a woman loves a man, you do not win her heart by crossing swords with him.”

— Alexandre Dumas

443. “I have only two enemies: I shall not say two conquerors, because with persistence I can make them bow to my will: they are distance and time. The third and most awful is my condition as a mortal man. Only that can halt me on the path I have chosen before I have reached my appointed goal. Everything else is planned for.”

— Alexandre Dumas

444. “I then recollected you gave a breakfast this morning, and here I am. I am hungry, feed me; I am bored, amuse me.”

— Alexandre Dumas

445. “The judges then filed out, disclosing as they did so the various apparatus of the question. The marquise firmly gazed upon the racks and ghastly rings, on which so many had been stretched crying and screaming. She noticed the three buckets of water.”

— Alexandre Dumas

446. “You have suspicions, nevertheless?” “Yes, monseigneur; but these suspicions appeared to be disagreeable to Monsieur the Commissary, and I no longer have them.”

— Alexandre Dumas

447. “Maximilian,” said the count, “the friends that we have lost do not repose in the bosom of the earth, but are buried deep in our hearts, and it has been thus ordained that we may always be accompanied by them.”

— Alexandre Dumas

448. “Follow me, then,” said the abbe, as he re-entered the subterranean passage, in which he soon disappeared, followed by Dantes.”

— Alexandre Dumas

449. “I acted hastily towards him. Haste is a poor counsellor: I acted wrongly.”

— Alexandre Dumas

450. “We have said that Athos loved d’Artagnan like a child, and this somber and inflexible personage felt the anxiety of a parent for the young man.”

— Alexandre Dumas