Top 500 Alexandre Dumas Quotes (2026 Update)
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401. “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

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

— Alexandre Dumas

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

— Alexandre Dumas

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

— Alexandre Dumas

405. “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

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

— Alexandre Dumas

407. “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

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

— Alexandre Dumas

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

— Alexandre Dumas

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

— Alexandre Dumas

411. “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

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

— Alexandre Dumas

413. “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

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

— Alexandre Dumas

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

— Alexandre Dumas

416. “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

417. “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

418. “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

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

— Alexandre Dumas

420. “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

421. “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

422. “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

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. “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

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

— Alexandre Dumas

427. “Towards the beginning of the year 1838, two young men belonging to the first society of Paris, the Vicomte Albert de Morcerf and the Baron Franz d’Epinay, were at Florence.”

— Alexandre Dumas

428. “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

429. “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

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

— Alexandre Dumas

431. “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

432. “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

433. “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

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

— Alexandre Dumas

435. “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

436. “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

437. “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

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

— Alexandre Dumas

439. “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

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

— Alexandre Dumas

441. “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

442. “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

443. “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

444. “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

445. “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

446. “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

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

— Alexandre Dumas

448. “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

449. “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

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

— Alexandre Dumas