Top 183 Quotes & Sayings by Alexandre Dumas

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a French dramatist Alexandre Dumas.
Last updated on December 7, 2024.
Alexandre Dumas

Alexandre Dumas, also known as Alexandre Dumas père, was a French writer. His works have been translated into many languages and he is one of the most widely read French authors. Many of his historical novels of high adventure were originally published as serials, including The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After and The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later. His novels have been adapted since the early twentieth century into nearly 200 films.

Only a man who has felt ultimate despair is capable of feeling ultimate bliss.
How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it.
Nothing succeeds like success. — © Alexandre Dumas
Nothing succeeds like success.
It is rare that one can see in a little boy the promise of a man, but one can almost always see in a little girl the threat of a woman.
He was thinking alone, and seriously racking his brain to find a direction for this single force four times multiplied, with which he did not doubt, as with the lever for which Archimedes sought, they should succeed in moving the world, when some one tapped gently at his door.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles, because they sometimes take a rest.
A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms against himself. He makes his failure certain by himself being the first person to be convinced of it.
Happiness is like those palaces in fairy tales whose gates are guarded by dragons: we must fight in order to conquer it.
Business? It's quite simple; it's other people's money.
All for one, one for all, that is our device.
It is necessary to have wished for death in order to know how good it is to live.
Infatuated, half through conceit, half through love of my art, I achieve the impossible working as no one else ever works.
All human wisdom is summed up in two words; wait and hope.
If God were suddenly condemned to live the life which He has inflicted upon men, He would kill Himself. — © Alexandre Dumas
If God were suddenly condemned to live the life which He has inflicted upon men, He would kill Himself.
Pure love and suspicion cannot dwell together: at the door where the latter enters, the former makes its exit.
All generalizations are dangerous, even this one.
It is almost as difficult to keep a first class person in a fourth class job, as it is to keep a fourth class person in a first class job.
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.
Love is the most selfish of all the passions.
When you compare the sorrows of real life to the pleasures of the imaginary one, you will never want to live again, only to dream forever.
Edmond Dantes: I don't believe in God. Abbe Faria: That doesn't matter, He believes in you.
Be kind. Aim for my heart.
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.
Order is the key to all problems.
A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms against himself.
Mastery of language affords one remarkable opportunities.
There is neither happiness nor unhappiness in this world; there is only the comparison of one state with another. Only a man who has felt ultimate despair is capable of feeling ultimate bliss. It is necessary to have wished for death in order to know how good it is to live.....the sum of all human wisdom will be contained in these two words: Wait and Hope.
True, I have raped history, but it has produced some beautiful offspring.
...know you not that you are my sun by day, and my star by night? By my faith! I was in deepest darkness till you appeared and illuminated all.
Philosophy cannot be taught; it is the application of the sciences to truth.
Woman is sacred; the woman one loves is holy.
God is full of mercy for everyone, as He has been towards you. He is a father before He is a judge.
Happiness is egotistical.
As a general rule...people ask for advice only in order not to follow it; or if they do follow it, in order to have someone to blame for giving it.
All for one and one for all, united we stand divided we fall.
The difference between treason and patriotism is only a matter of dates.
Life is a storm, my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes.
Those born to wealth, and who have the means of gratifying every wish, 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.
I prefer the wicked rather than the foolish. The wicked sometimes rest. — © Alexandre Dumas
I prefer the wicked rather than the foolish. The wicked sometimes rest.
If you wish to discover the guilty person, first find out to whom the crime might be useful.
I do not cling to life sufficiently to fear death.
The merit of all things lies in their difficulty.
Nothing makes time pass or shortens the way like a thought that absorbs in itself all the faculties of the one who is thinking. External existence is then like a sleep of which this thought is the dream. Under its influence, time has no more measure, space has no more distance.
So heavy is the chain of wedlock that it needs two to carry it, and sometimes three.
God is always the last resource.
To learn is not to know; there are the learners and the learned. Memory makes the one, philosophy the others.
For there are two distinct sorts of ideas: Those that proceed from the head and those that emanate from the heart.
I am strong against everything, except against the death of those I love. He who dies gains; he who sees others die loses.
Learning does not make one learned: there are those who have knowledge and those who have understanding. The first requires memory and the second philosophy — © Alexandre Dumas
Learning does not make one learned: there are those who have knowledge and those who have understanding. The first requires memory and the second philosophy
There are two ways of seeing: with the body and with the soul. The body's sight can sometimes forget, but the soul remembers forever.
One's work may be finished someday, but one's education never.
I'm sure you're very nice, but you'd be even nicer if you went away.
I have always had more dread of a pen, a bottle of ink, and a sheet of paper than of a sword or pistol.
Great is truth. Fire cannot burn it nor water drown it.
A rogue does not laugh in the same way that an honest man does; a hypocrite does not shed the tears of a man of good faith. All falsehood is a mask; and however well made the mask may be, with a little attention we may always succeed in distinguishing it from the true face.
True love always makes a man better, no matter who the woman is that inspires it.
Often we pass beside happiness without seeing it, without looking at it, or even if we have seen and looked at it, without recognizing it.
For all evils there are two remedies - time and silence.
The friends we have lost do not repose under the ground...they are buried deep in our hearts. It has been thus ordained that they may always accompany us.
Life is a storm. One minute you will bathe under the sun and the next you will be shattered upon the rocks. That's when you shout, "Do your worst, for I will do mine!" and you will be remembered forever.
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