Alexander Dumas Quotes

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.

So all my opinions—I would not say political, but private opinions—are confined to three feelings: I love my father, I respect Monsieur Morrel and I adore Mercédès.

“Those born to wealth, and who have the means of gratifying every wish,” said Emmanuel, “know not what is the real happiness of life, just as those who have been tossed on the stormy waters of the ocean on a few frail planks can alone realize the blessings of fair weather.”

He decided it was human hatred and not divine vengeance that had plunged him into this abyss. He doomed these unknown men to every torment that his inflamed imagination could devise, while still considering that the most frightful were too mild and, above all, too brief for them: torture was followed by death, and death brought, if not repose, at least an insensibility that resembled it.

Moral wounds have this peculiarity - they may be hidden, but they never close; always painful, always ready to bleed when touched, they remain fresh and open in the heart.

“I regret now,” said he, “having helped you in your late inquiries, or having given you the information I did.” “Why so?” inquired Dantès. “Because it has instilled a new passion in your heart—that of vengeance.”

“Come now, “he said. Have you anything to fear? It seems to me, on the contrary, that everything is working out as you would wish.” “That is precisely what terrifies me,” said Dantès. “I cannot think that man is meant to find happiness so easily! Happiness is like one of those palaces on an enchanted island, its gates guarded by dragons. One must fight to gain it; and, in truth, I do not know what I have done to deserve the good fortune of becoming Mercédès’ husband.”

“I have seen the man I loved preparing to become the murderer of my son!” She said these words with such overwhelming grief, in such a desperate voice, that when he heard it a sob rose in the count’s throat. The lion was tamed, the avenging angel overcome.

Woman is sacred; the woman one loves is holy.

We are always in a hurry to be happy,... for when we have suffered a long time, we have great difficulty in believing in good fortune.

There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness.

[T]o learn is not to know; there are the learners and the learned. Memory makes the one, philosophy the other.

He decided it was human hatred and not divine vengeance that had plunged him into this abyss. He doomed these unknown men to every torment that his inflamed imagination could devise, while still considering that the most frightful were too mild and, above all, too brief for them: torture was followed by death, and death brought, if not repose, at least an insensibility that resembled it.

“Oh, God,” said Monte Cristo, “your vengeance may sometimes be slow in coming, but I think that then it is all the more complete.”

I am not proud, but I am happy; and happiness blinds, I think, more than pride.

I, who have also been betrayed, assassinated and cast into a tomb, I have emerged from that tomb by the grace of God and I owe it to God to take my revenge. He has sent me for that purpose. Here I am.

All human wisdom is contained in these two words - Wait and Hope.

“But, with such an outlook,” Franz told the count, “which makes you judge and executioner in your own case, it would be hard for you to confine yourself to actions that would leave you forever immune to the power of the law. Hatred is blind and anger deaf: the one who pours himself a cup of vengeance is likely to drink a bitter draught.” “Yes, if he is clumsy and poor; no, if he is a millionaire and adroit.”

I wish to be Providence myself, for I feel that the most beautiful, noblest, most sublime thing in the world, is to recompense and punish.

The heart breaks when it has swelled too much in the warm breath of hope, then finds itself enclosed in cold reality.

Happiness is like one of those palaces on an enchanted island, its gates guarded by dragons. One must fight to gain it.

[W]e frequently pass so near to happiness without seeing, without regarding it, or if we do see and regard it, yet without recognizing it.

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

You know, mother, Monsieur de Monte Cristo is almost a man of the East and an Oriental; in order not to interfere with his freedom to take revenge, he never eats or drinks in his enemy’s house.

“And now,” said the stranger, “farewell, goodness, humanity, gratitude ... Farewell all those feelings that nourish and illuminate the heart! I have taken the place of Providence to reward the good; now let the avenging God make way for me to punish the wrongdoer!”

For all evils there are two remedies - time and silence.

What is truly desirable? A possession that we cannot have. So, my life is devoted to seeing things that I cannot understand and obtaining things that are impossible to have. I succeed by two means: money and will. I am as persevering in the pursuit of my whims as, for example, you are, Monsieur Danglars, in building a railway; or you, Monsieur de Villefort, in condemning a man to death; or you, Monsieur Debray, pacifying a kingdom; you, Monsieur de Château-Renaud, in finding favour with a woman; or you, Monsieur Morrel, in breaking a horse that no one else can ride.

D’Artagnan had time to reflect that women - those gentle doves - treat one another more cruelly than bears and tigers.

No. I will remain because I have been accustomed for thirty years to go and take the orderly word of the King, and to have it said to me, ‘Good evening, d’Artagnan,’ with a smile I did not beg for!

But you are quite of opinion, are you not, that Heaven will avenge me, d’Artagnan?

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?

Does the general anguish of our fellow creatures lessen our own private and particular anguish?

A man is held to be criminal,sometimes, by the great ones of the earth,not because he has committed a crime himself but because he knows of one which has been committed.

Forward! Still forward! When it shall be time, God will tell me, as he has told the others.

There are misfortunes in life that no one will accept; people would rather believe in the supernatural and the impossible.

We shine like those fires and those stars; we sigh like those waves; we suffer like those great ships, which are worn out in ploughing the waves, in obeying the wind which urges them towards an end, as the breath of God blows us towards a port. Everything likes to live, Raoul; and everything is beautiful in living things.

I am strong against everything, except against the death of those I love. He who dies gains; he who sees others die loses.

That which is actually good never alters.

I have always heard it said that money is the rarest service, but the easiest to render. The remark struck me; I like to cite remarks that strike me.

What the deuce does the fellow mean by getting trap-doors made without first consulting you? Trap-doors!

Does the open wound in another’s breast soften the pain of the gaping wound in our own?

The voice of human nature is nothing but one prolonged cry.

Pain, anguish and suffering in human life are always in proportion to the strength with which a man is endowed.

Joyful friends, mostly loyal, they hadn’t abandoned their protector before the gathering storm; and despite the threatening sky, despite the shuddering earth, they remained, smiling, considerate, and as devoted to misfortune as they had been to prosperity.

We are often criminals in the eyes of the earth, not only for having committed crimes, but because we know that crimes have been committed.

We are often criminals in the eyes of the earth, not only for having committed crimes, but because we know that crimes have been committed.

Man upon this earth must expect everything, and ought to face everything.

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.

There are cancers so insidious in their nature that their very pulsation is invisible. Such cancers leave the ivory whiteness of the skin untouched, and marble not the firm, fair flesh, with their blue tints; the physician who bends over the patient’s chest hears not, through he listens, the insatiable teeth of the disease grinding its onward progress through the muscles, as the blood flows freely on; the knife has never been able to destroy, and rarely even, temporarily, to discern the rage of these mortal scourges; their home is in the mind, which they corrupt; they fill the whole heart until it breaks. Such, madame, are the cancers, fatal to queens; are you, too, free from their scourge?

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.