Top 500 Alexandre Dumas Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 9 of 10

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

— Alexandre Dumas

402. “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

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

— Alexandre Dumas

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

— Alexandre Dumas

405. “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

406. “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

407. “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

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

— Alexandre Dumas

409. “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

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

— Alexandre Dumas

411. “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

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

— Alexandre Dumas

413. “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

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

— Alexandre Dumas

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

— Alexandre Dumas

416. “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

417. “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

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

— Alexandre Dumas

419. “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

420. “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

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

— Alexandre Dumas

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

— Alexandre Dumas

423. “In any case, even the most corrupt of us finds it hard to believe in evil unless it is based on some interest. We reject the idea of harm done for no cause and without gain as anomalous.”

— Alexandre Dumas

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

— Alexandre Dumas

425. “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

426. “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

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

— Alexandre Dumas

428. “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

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

— Alexandre Dumas

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

— Alexandre Dumas

431. “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

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

— Alexandre Dumas

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

— Alexandre Dumas

434. “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

435. “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

436. “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

437. “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

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

— Alexandre Dumas

439. “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

440. “After which, satisfied with the way he had conducted himself at Meung, free of remorse for the past, confident in the present, and full of hope for the future, he went to bed and slept the sleep of the just.”

— Alexandre Dumas

441. “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

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

— Alexandre Dumas

443. “But why be discouraged? It would be asking too much of Providence if you were to expect to succeed at the first attempt.”

— Alexandre Dumas

444. “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

445. “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

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

— Alexandre Dumas

448. “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

449. “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

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

— Alexandre Dumas