Alexandre Dumas Quotes
-
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.
-
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.
-
You who are in power have only the means that money produces — we who are in expectation, have those which devotion prompts.
-
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.
-
One always hurries towards happiness, Monsieur Danglars, because when one has suffered much, one is at pains to believe in it.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Happiness is like those palaces in fairy tales whose gates are guarded by dragons: we must fight in order to conquer it.
-
I have always had more dread of a pen, a bottle of ink, and a sheet of paper than of a sword or pistol.
-
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.
-
Il y a une femme dans toutes les affaires; aussitôt qu'on me fait un rapport, je dis: «Cherchez la femme!»
-
Mastery of language affords one remarkable opportunities.
-
There are misfortunes in life that no one will accept; people would rather believe in the supernatural and the impossible.
-
It is the infirmity of our nature always to believe ourselves much more unhappy than those who groan by our sides!
-
...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.
-
God is full of mercy for everyone, as He has been towards you. He is a father before He is a judge.
-
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.
-
......When one loves, one is only too ready to believe one's love returned.
-
So he went down, smiling sceptically and mutter the final word in human wisdom: 'Perhaps!
-
...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.
-
Sleeping on a plank has one advantage - it encourages early rising.
-
All for one, one for all, that is our device.
-
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.
-
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.