Top 500 Alexandre Dumas Quotes (2024 Update)
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401. “Fortune is a courtesan; favorable yesterday, she may turn her back tomorrow.”

— Alexandre Dumas

402. “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

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

— Alexandre Dumas

404. “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

405. “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

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

— Alexandre Dumas

407. “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

408. “Oh, man,” murmured d’Avrigny, “the most selfish of all animals, the most personal of all creatures, who believes the earth turns, the sun shines, and death strikes for him alone, – an ant cursing God from the top of a blade of grass!”

— Alexandre Dumas

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

— Alexandre Dumas

410. “To despise flowers is to offend God.”

— Alexandre Dumas

411. “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

412. “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

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

— Alexandre Dumas

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

— Alexandre Dumas

415. “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

416. “One must take the world as one finds it.”

— Alexandre Dumas

417. “There is only one serious matter to be considered in life, and that is death.”

— Alexandre Dumas

418. “In presence of this ingenuous greatness of soul, Aramis felt himself little. It was the second time he had been compelled to bend before real superiority of heart, much more powerful than splendour of mind.”

— Alexandre Dumas

419. “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

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

— Alexandre Dumas

421. “A man was lying in the middle of the room, in a circle drawn on the ground with a piece of plaster from the wall, almost naked, his clothes having fallen into tatters. He was drawing very precise geometrical lines in the circle and appeared as absorbed in solving his problem as Archimedes when he was killed by one of Marcellus’ soldiers.”

— Alexandre Dumas

422. “And follow me wherever I go?’ – ‘To the world’s end.”

— Alexandre Dumas

423. “Let the rich man rediscover the poor one; the free man the pisoner; and the resurrected man the corpse.”

— Alexandre Dumas

424. “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

425. “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

426. “Why does not God, if he really hates the wicked, as he is said to do, send down brimstone and fire, and consume them altogether?” “You.”

— Alexandre Dumas

427. “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

428. “At bottom the character of M. Bonacieux was one of profound selfishness mixed with sordid avarice, the whole seasoned with extreme cowardice.”

— Alexandre Dumas

429. “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

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

— Alexandre Dumas

431. “He felt he had passed beyond the bounds of vengeance, and that he could no longer say, “God is for and with me.”

— Alexandre Dumas

432. “You cannot control circumstances, my dear sir; ’man proposes, and God disposes.”

— Alexandre Dumas

433. “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

434. “The subjects which he has chosen, however, are of both historic and dramatic importance, and they have the added value of giving the modern reader a clear picture of the state of semi-lawlessness which existed in Europe, during the middle ages.”

— Alexandre Dumas

435. “Oh Heaven! You sometimes bear with such injustice on earth, that I understand why there are wretches who doubt in your existence.”

— Alexandre Dumas

436. “My commands are ordinarily short, clear, and precise; and I would rather be obliged to repeat my words twice, or even three times, than they should be misunderstood.”

— Alexandre Dumas

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

— Alexandre Dumas

438. “Death, according to the care we take to be on good or bad terms with it, is either a friend which will rock us as gently as a nursing mother or an enemy which will savagely tear apart body and soul.”

— Alexandre Dumas

439. “Tigers and crocodiles with two legs are more dangerous than the rest.”

— Alexandre Dumas

440. “Madame,” said the doctor, “they are not your enemies, but you are the enemy of the human race: nobody can think without, horror of your crimes.”

— Alexandre Dumas

441. “Like all primitive natures, she adored everything that appealed to her eyes and her ears.”

— Alexandre Dumas

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

— Alexandre Dumas

443. “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

444. “One could guess that there was the delicate forethought of a mother behind this choice of the pavillon for Albert: while not wanting to be separated from her son, she nevertheless realized that a young man of the viscount’s age needed all his freedom. On the other hand, it must be said that one could also recognize in this the intelligent egoism of the young man, the son of wealthy parents, who enjoyed the benefits of a free and idle life, which was gilded for him like a birdcage.”

— Alexandre Dumas

445. “And without waiting for the answer of the newcomer to this proof of affection, M. de Treville seized his right hand and pressed it with all his might, without perceiving that Athos, whatever might be his self-command, allowed a slight murmur of pain to escape him, and if possible, grew paler than he was before.”

— Alexandre Dumas

446. “The poison employed by Sainte-Croix has been tried in all the ways, and can defy every experiment. This poison floats in water, it is the superior, and the water obeys it; it escapes in the trial by fire, leaving behind only innocent deposits; in animals it is so skilfully concealed that no one could detect it; all parts of the animal remain healthy and active; even while it is spreading the cause of death, this artificial poison leaves behind the marks and appearance of life.”

— Alexandre Dumas

447. “Why,’ said he, ’does not the emperor, who has devised so many clever and efficient modes of improving the art of war, organize a regiment of lawyers, judges and legal practitioners, sending them in the hottest fire the enemy could maintain, and using them to save better men?”

— Alexandre Dumas

448. “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

449. “He told himself that it was the hatred of men, not the vengeance of God, which had plunged him into the abyss where he now found himself.”

— Alexandre Dumas

450. “Trust me, do not try to cheapen things; great affairs are badly done with small means.”

— Alexandre Dumas