Alexandre dumas quotes

To learn is not to know; there are the learners and the learned. Memory makes the one, philosophy the others.

Perhaps what I am about to say will appear strange to you gentlemen, socialists, progressives, humanitarians as you are, but I never worry about my neighbor, I never try to protect society which does not protect me -- indeed, I might add, which generally takes no heed of me except to do me harm -- and, since I hold them low in my esteem and remain neutral towards them, I believe that society and my neighbor are in my debt.

Great is truth. Fire cannot burn it nor water drown it.

Ah, lips that say one thing, while the heart thinks another.

Upon my word," said Dantes, "you make me shudder. Is the world filled with tigers and crocodiles?" "Yes; and remember that two legged tigers and crocodiles are more dangerous than the others.

So much the worse for those who fear wine, for it is because they have some bad thoughts which they are afraid the liquor will extract from their hearts.

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.

Haste is a poor counselor

On what slender threads do life and fortune hang.

In every country where independence has taken the place of liberty, the first desire of a manly heart is to possess a weapon which at once renders him capable of defence or attack, and, by rendering its owner fearsome, makes him feared.

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

Without reflecting that this is the only moment in which you can study character," said the count; "on the steps of the scaffold death tears off the mask that has been worn through life, and the real visage is disclosed.

If God were suddenly condemned to live the life which He has inflicted upon men, He would kill Himself.

Order is the key to all problems.

There is no friendship that cares about an overheard secret.

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.

A weakened mind always sees everything through a black veil. The soul makes its own horizons; your soul is dark, which is why you see such a cloudy sky.

God is always the last resource.

So heavy is the chain of wedlock that it needs two to carry it, and sometimes three.

Woman is sacred; the woman one loves is holy.

The difference between treason and patriotism is only a matter of dates.

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

Philosophy cannot be taught; it is the application of the sciences to truth.

There are people who are willing to suffer and swallow their tears at leisure, and God will no doubt reward them in heaven for their resignation; but those who have the will to struggle strike back at fate in retaliation for the blows they receive.

No, I slept as I always do when I am bored and have not the courage to amuse myself, or when I am hungry and have not the desire to eat.--The Count of Monte Cristo

If you wish to discover the guilty person, first find out to whom the crime might be useful.

It is only the dead who do not return.

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.

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

Dantes passed through all the stages of torture natural to prisoners in suspense. He was sustained at first by that pride of conscious innocence which is the sequence to hope; then he began to doubt his own innocence, which justified in some measure the governor's belief in his mental alienation; and then, relaxing his sentiment of pride, he addressed his supplications, not to God, but to man. God is always the last resource. Unfortunates, who ought to begin with God, do not have any hope in him till they have exhausted all other means of deliverance.

I am a count, not a saint.

We are never quits with those who oblige us," was Dantes' reply; "for when we do not owe them money, we owe them gratitude.

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

One's work may be finished someday, but one's education never.

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.

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

Only a man who has felt ultimate despair is capable of feeling ultimate bliss.

Besides we are men, and after all it is our business to risk our lives.

I have always had more dread of a pen, a bottle of ink, and a sheet of paper than of a sword or pistol.

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.

So, preferring death to capture, I accomplished the most astonishing deeds, and which, more then once, showed me that the too great care we take of our bodies is the only obstacle to the sucess of those projects which require rapid decision, and vigorous and determined execution. In reality, when you have once devoted your life to your enterprises, you are no longer the equal of other men, or, rather, other men are no longer your equals, and whosoever has taken this resolution, feels his strength and resources doubled.

True, I have raped history, but it has produced some beautiful offspring.

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

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

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.

Your bitter memories still have time to turn into sweet ones.

Love is the most selfish of all the passions.

Every individual, from the highest to the lowest degree, has his place in the ladder of social life, and around him swirls a little world of interests, composed of stormy passions and conflicting atoms

What would you not have accomplished if you had been free?" "Possibly nothing at all; the overflow of my brain would probably, in a state of freedom, have evaporated in a thousand follies; misfortune is needed to bring to light the treasures of the human intellect. Compression is needed to explode gunpowder. Captivity has brought my mental faculties to a focus; and you are well aware that from the collision of clouds electricity is produced — from electricity, lightning, from lightning, illumination.

Mastery of language affords one remarkable opportunities.

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.

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.

I do not cling to life sufficiently to fear death.

Everyone knows that drunkards and lovers have a protecting diety.

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.

In love, writing is dangerous, not to mention pointless.

The merit of all things lies in their difficulty.

Through the ingenuousness of her age beamed an ardent mind, a mind not of the women but of the poet; she did not please, she intoxicated.

For there are two distinct sorts of ideas: Those that proceed from the head and those that emanate from the heart.

In politics, my dear fellow, you know, as well as I do, there are no men, but ideas — no feelings, but interests; in politics we do not kill a man, we only remove an obstacle, that is all.

I am hungry, feed me; I am bored, amuse me.

So rapid is the flight of our dreams upon the wings of imagination.

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.

Be happy, noble heart, be blessed for all the good thou hast done and wilt do hereafter, and let my gratitude remain in obscurity like your good deeds.

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.

True love always makes a man better, no matter who the woman is that inspires it.

Never fear quarrels, but seek hazardous adventures.

Starvation!" exclaimed the abbe, springing from his seat. "Why, the vilest animals are not suffered to die by such a death as that. The very dogs that wander houseless and homeless in the streets find some pitying hand to cast them a mouthful of bread; and that a man, a Christian, should be allowed to perish of hunger in the midst of other men who call themselves Christians, is too horrible for belief. Oh, it is impossible - utterly impossible!

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

In business, sir, one has no friends, only correspondents.

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

Misfortune does not help us to believe.

Yet man will never be perfect until he learns to create and destroy; he does know how to destroy, and that is half the battle.

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.

When a man resolves to avenge himself, he should first of all tear out the heart from his breast.

Oh! The good times when we were so unhappy.

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.

But that's not the name of a man, it's the name of a mountain! (...) "It is my name," Athos said calmly. "But you said your name was d'Artagnan." "I?" "Yes, you." "That is to say, someone said to me: 'You are M. d'Artagnan?' I replied: 'You think so?' My guards shouted that they were sure of it. I did not want to vex them. Besides, I might have been mistaken.

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

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.

Edmond Dantes: I don't believe in God. Abbe Faria: That doesn't matter, He believes in you.

Business? It's quite simple; it's other people's money.

Time, dear friend, time brings round opportunity; opportunity is the martingale of man. The more we have ventured the more we gain, when we know how to wait.

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.

I hate this life of the fashionable world, always ordered, measured, ruled, like our music-paper. What I have always wished for, desired, and coveted, is the life of an artist, free and independent, relying only on my own resources, and accountable only to myself.

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.

Truly generous men are always ready to become sympathetic when their enemy’s misfortune surpasses the limits of their hatred.

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. We must of felt what it is to die, Morrel, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life. " Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget, that until the day God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words, 'Wait and Hope.

He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness.

All for one, one for all, that is our device.

Be kind. Aim for my heart.

...remember that what has once been done may be done again.

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.

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.

You are very amiable, no doubt, but you would be charming if you would only depart.

Pure love and suspicion cannot dwell together: at the door where the latter enters, the former makes its exit.

Capricious and unfaithful, the king wished to be called Louis the Just and Louis the Chaste. Posterity will find a difficulty in understanding this character, which history explains only by facts and never by reason.

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.

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

We’ll go where the air is pure, where all sounds are soothing, where, no matter how proud one may be, one feels humble and finds oneself small- in short, we’ll go to the sea. I love the sea as one loves a mistress and I long for her when I haven’t seen her for some time

I have been taken by Satan into the highest mountain in the earth, and when there he said he to me, ‘Child of earth, what wouldst thou have to make thee adore me?’ I replied, ‘Listen, 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.

...but my friends call me Edmund Dantes.

Women are never so strong as after their defeat.

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

The wretched and miserable should turn to their Saviour first, yet they do not hope in Him until all other hope is exhausted.

I prefer the wicked rather than the foolish. The wicked sometimes rest.

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.

Happiness is egotistical.

I do not often laugh, sir, as you may perceive by the air of my countenance; but nevertheless, I retain the privilege of laughing when I please.

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

For the happy man prayer is only a jumble of words, until the day when sorrow comes to explain to him the sublime language by means of which he speaks to God.

How did I escape? With difficulty. How did I plan this moment? With pleasure!

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

How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it.

Here is your final lesson - do not commit the crime for which you now serve the sentence. God said, "Vengeance is mine." [...] He believes in you.

I'm sure you're very nice, but you'd be even nicer if you went away.

If it is ones lot to be cast among fools, one must learn foolishness.-The Count of Monte Cristo

Does the open wound in another's breast soften the pain of the gaping wound in our own? Or does the blood which is welling from another man's side staunch that which is pouring from our own? Does the general anguish of our fellow creatures lessen our own private and particular anguish? No, no, each suffers on his own account, each struggles with his own grief, each sheds his own tears.

Happiness is like those palaces in fairy tales whose gates are guarded by dragons: we must fight in order to conquer it.

...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.

Why do you mention my father?' screamed he; 'Why do you mingle a recollection of him with the affairs of today?' Because I am he who saved your father's life when he wished to destroy himself, as you do today-because I am the man who sent the purse to your young sister, and the Paraon to Old Morrel-because I am the Edmond Dantes who nursed you, a child, on my knees.

A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms against himself.

God is full of mercy for everyone, as He has been towards you. He is a father before He is a judge.

Wait and hope!