Alexandre Dumas Quotes
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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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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.
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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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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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Ah," said the jailer, "do not always brood over what is impossible, or you will be mad in a fortnight.
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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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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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The custom and fashion of today will be the awkwardness and outrage of tomorrow - so arbitrary are these transient laws.
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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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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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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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I am strong against everything, except against the death of those I love. He who dies gains; he who sees others die loses.
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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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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!
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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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So he went down, smiling sceptically and mutter the final word in human wisdom: 'Perhaps!
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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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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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I am a count, not a saint.
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Women are never so strong as after their defeat.
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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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...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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Sometimes one has suffered enough to have the right to never say: I am too happy.