Alexandre Dumas Quotes
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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.
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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".
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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.
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You who are in power have only the means that money produces — we who are in expectation, have those which devotion prompts.
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Happiness is like those palaces in fairy tales whose gates are guarded by dragons: we must fight in order to conquer it.
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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.
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Truly generous men are always ready to become sympathetic when their enemy’s misfortune surpasses the limits of their hatred.
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The custom and fashion of today will be the awkwardness and outrage of tomorrow - so arbitrary are these transient laws.
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......When one loves, one is only too ready to believe one's love returned.
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One always hurries towards happiness, Monsieur Danglars, because when one has suffered much, one is at pains to believe in it.
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If God were suddenly condemned to live the life which He has inflicted upon men, He would kill Himself.
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Women are never so strong as after their defeat.
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So he went down, smiling sceptically and mutter the final word in human wisdom: 'Perhaps!
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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.
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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.
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Il y a une femme dans toutes les affaires; aussitôt qu'on me fait un rapport, je dis: «Cherchez la femme!»
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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.
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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.
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I am a count, not a saint.
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It is the infirmity of our nature always to believe ourselves much more unhappy than those who groan by our sides!
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...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.
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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.
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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.
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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.