Top 183 Quotes & Sayings by Alexandre Dumas - Page 3

We must never expect discretion in first love: it is accompanied by such excessive joy that unless the joy is allowed to overflow, it will choke you.

Youth is a blossom whose fruit is love; happy is he who plucks it after watching it slowly ripen.

Are there not some places where we seem to breathe sadness? — why, we cannot tell. It is a chain of recollections — an idea which carries you back to other times, to other places — which, very likely, have no connection with the present time and place.

Your life story is a novel; and people, though they love novels wound between two yellow paper covers, are oddly suspicious of those which come to them in living vellum.

You who are in power have only the means that money produces — we who are in expectation, have those which devotion prompts.

There is no friendship that cares about an overheard secret.

Joy to hearts which have suffered long is like the dew on the ground after a long drought; both the heart and the ground absorb that beneficent moisture falling on them, and nothing is outwardly apparant.

Pain, thou art not an evil

Porthos: He thinks he can challenge the mighty Porthos with a sword... D'Artagnan: The mighty who? Porthos: Don't tell me you've never heard of me. D'Artagnan: The world's biggest windbag? Porthos: Little pimple... meet me behind the Luxembourg at 1 o'clock and bring a long wooden box. D'Artagnan: Bring your own... Porthos: [laughs]

What a fool I was, not to tear my heart out on the day when I resolved to revenge myself!

That is a dream also; only he has remained asleep, while you have awakened; and who knows which of you is the most fortunate?

And now, farewell to kindness, humanity and gratitude... I have substituted myself for Providence in rewarding the good; may the God of vengeance now yield me His place to punish the wicked.

There are some situations which men understand by instinct, by which reason is powerless to explain; in such cases the greatest poet is he who gives utterance to the most natural and vehement outburst of sorrow. Those who hear the bitter cry are as much impressed as if they listened to an entire poem, and when th sufferer is sincere they are right in regarding his outburst as sublime.

Athos liked every one to exercise his own free-will. He never gave his advice before it was demanded and even then it must be demanded twice. "In general, people only ask for advice," he said "that they may not follow it or if they should follow it that they may have somebody to blame for having given it".

Hatred is blind; rage carries you away; and he who pours out vengeance runs the risk of tasting a bitter draught.

It is not the tree that forsakes the flower, but the flower that forsakes the tree.

It was like the eve of a battle; the hearts beat, the eyes laughed, and they felft that the life they were perhaps going to lose, was after all, a good thing.

The custom and fashion of today will be the awkwardness and outrage of tomorrow - so arbitrary are these transient laws.

Fool that I am," said he,"that I did not tear out my heart the day I resolved to revenge myself".

Now I'd like someone to tell me there is no drama in real life!

......When one loves, one is only too ready to believe one's love returned.

But Valentine, why despair, why always paint the future in such sombre hues?" Maximilien asked. "Because, my friend, I judge it by the past.

I love the life you've always made so sweet for me and I'd regret it if I had to die.' 'Do you mean to say that if I left you---' 'I'd die, yes.' 'Then you love me?

His fair landlady was in despair. She would most willingly have made M. d'Artagnan her husband--such a handsome man, and such a fierce mustache!

The hungry men were seen, followed by their valets, roaming the quais and guards' quarters; gleaning from their outside friends all the dinners they could find; for, according to Aramis, in prosperity one should sow meals right and left, in order to harvest some in adversity.

Tell the angel who will watch over your life to pray now and then for a man who, like Satan, believed himself for an instant to be equal to God, but who realized in all humility that supreme power and wisdom are in the hands of God alone.

Ah," said the jailer, "do not always brood over what is impossible, or you will be mad in a fortnight.

You scholars, you're in communication with the devil.

To be a woman condemned to a wretched and disgraceful punishment is no impediment to beauty, but it is an insurmountable obstacle to power. Like all persons of real genius, her ladyship well knew what accorded with her nature and her means. Poverty disgusted her -subjection deprived her of two-thirds of her greatness. Her ladyship was only a queen amongst queens: the enjoyment of satisfied pride was essential to her sway. To command beings of an inferior nature, was, to her, rather a humiliation than a pleasure.

I came to Paris with four écus in my pocket, and I’d have fought with anybody who told me I was in no condition to buy the Louvre.

I have no will, unless it be the will never to decide. I have been so overwhelmed by the many storms that have broken over my head, that I am become passive in the hands of the Almighty, like a sparrow in the talons of an eagle. I live, because it is not ordained for me to die.

in prosperity prayers seem but a mere medley of words, until misfortune comes and the unhappy sufferer first understands the meaning of the sublime language in which he invokes the pity of heaven!

that Englishman who came to challenge me three or four months ago, and whom I killed to stop him bothering me

Darling, replied Valentine, has not the count just told us that all human wisdom was contained in these two words,- "Wait and hope"?

...for, however all other feelings may be withered in a woman's nature, there is always one bright smiling spot in the maternal breast, and that is where a dearly-beloved child is concerned.

Sometimes one has suffered enough to have the right to never say: I am too happy.

The air in Provence is impregnated with the aroma of garlic, which makes it very healthful to breathe.

D'Artagnan, my friend, thou art brave, thou art prudent, thou hast excellent qualities, but- women will destroy thee!" -D'Artagnan

It is the infirmity of our nature always to believe ourselves much more unhappy than those who groan by our sides!

Unfortunates, who ought to begin with God, do not have any hope in him till they have exhausted all other means of deliverance.

Why, in truth, sir," was Monte Cristo's reply, "man is but an ugly caterpillar for him who studies him through a solar microscope; but you said, I think, that I had nothing else to do. Now, really, let me ask, sir, have you? — do you believe you have anything to do? or to speak in plain terms, do you really think that what you do deserves being called anything?

So he went down, smiling sceptically and mutter the final word in human wisdom: 'Perhaps!

What I’ve loved most after you, is myself: that is, my dignity and that strength which made me superior to other men. That Strength was my life. You’ve broken it with a word, so I must die.

Kitty: I thought your ladyship was ill. I wanted to help you. Lady deWinter: I ill? Do you take me for a weak woman? When I am insulted I do not feel ill - I avenge myself. Do you hear?

God is merciful to all, as he has been to you; he is first a father, then a judge.

Within six months, if I am not dead, I shall have seen you again, madam--even if I have to overturn the world.

To save a man and thereby to spare a father's agony and a mother's feelings is not to do a noble deed, it is but an act of humanity.

You who weep for pleasures fled, While dragging on a life of care, All your woes will melt in air, If to god your tears are shed, You who Weap!

Well, father, in the shipwreck of life, for life is an eternal shipwreck of our hopes, I cast into the sea my useless encumbrance, that is all, and I remain with my own will, disposed to live perfectly alone, and, consequently, perfectly free. (Eugenie to her father)

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

Life is very tenacious in these lawyers.

It is the way of weakened minds to see everything through a black cloud. The soul forms its own horizons; your soul is darkened, and consequently the sky of the future appears stormy and unpromising

For in those tacit understandings which maintain the bond of family union, the mother is really the mistress of her daughter only upon the condition of continually presenting herself to her as a model of wisdom and type of perfection.

He's right: They have to put madmen with madmen.

...joy takes a strange effect at times, it seems to oppress us almost the same as sorrow.

I know what happiness and what despair are, and I never make a jest of such feelings. Take it, then, but in exchange —

...does that not tell you that grief is like life and that there is always somethings unknown beyond it?

D’Artagnan: Why is Athos sitting by himself? Aramis: He takes his drinking very seriously. Not to worry, he’ll be his usual charming self by morning.

It is quite rare for God to provide a great man at the necessary moment to carry out some great deep, which is why when this unusual combination of circumstance does occur, history at once records the name of the chosen one and recommends him to the admiration of posterity.

(...) the tree forsakes not the flower: the flower falls from the tree.