Quotes from Alexandre Dumas

Oh, Mercédès, I have spoken your name with sighs of melancholy, with groans of pain and with the croak of despair. I have spoken it frozen with cold, huddled on the straw of my dungeon. I have spoken it raging with heat and rolling around on the stone floor of my prison. Mercédès, I must have my revenge, because for fourteen years I suffered, fourteen years I wept and cursed. Now, I say to you, Mercédès, I must have my revenge!

Besides the pleasure, there is always remorse, from the indulgence of our passions; and, after all, what have you men to fear from all this; the world excuses, and notoriety ennobles you?

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!

Immediately, and according to custom, the ramparts of Fort Saint-Jean were covered with spectators; it is always an event at Marseilles for a ship to come into port, especially when this ship, like the Pharaon, has been built, rigged, and laden at the old Phocee docks, and belongs to an owner of the city.

I acted hastily towards him. Haste is a poor counsellor: I acted wrongly.

Never fear quarrels, but seek adventures. I have taught you how to handle a sword; you have thews of iron, a wrist of steel. Fight on all occasions. Fight the more for duels being forbidden, since consequently there is twice as much courage in fighting. I have nothing to give you, my son, but fifteen crowns, my horse, and the counsels you have just heard.

Hatred is blind and anger deaf: the one who pours himself a cup of vengeance is likely to drink a bitter draught.

What difference is there between the figure of the conqueror and that of the pirate? said the ancients. The difference only between the eagle and the vulture,—serenity or restlessness.

You know as well as I do, my dear boy, that in politics there are no people, only ideas; no feelings, only interests. In politics, you don't kill a man, you remove an obstacle, that's all.

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.

to seek a quarrel with a man is a bad method of pleasing the woman who loves that man.

Peut-être, dit Athos; mais, en tout cas, écoutez bien ceci: assassinez ou faites assassiner le duc de Buckingham, peut m'importe! je ne le connais pas, d'ailleurs c'est un Anglais; mais ne touchez pas du bout du doigt à un seul cheveux de d'Artagnan, qui est un fidèle ami qu j'aime et que je défends, ou je vous le jure sur la tête de mon père, le crime que vous aurez commis sera le dernier.

Oh, count, have pity upon me. I am so unhappy.' 'I have known a man much more unfortunate than you, Morrel.' Impossible! 'Alas,' said Monte Cristo, 'it is the infirmity of our nature always to believe ourselves much more unhappy than those who groan by our sides!

Ah, no difficulties can ever daunt me,' replied d'Artagnan: 'my only fear is, of impossibilities.' 'Nothing is impossible,' said the lady, 'to the one who truly loves.' 'Nothing, madame?' 'Nothing' she replied.

hearts inflamed by obstacles to their desire grew cold in time of security;

Danglars was one of those calculating men who are born with a pen behind their ear and an inkwell instead of a heart.

until the day when God shall deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in these two words, — `Wait and hope.

But he isn't dead?' 'No, he isn't, as you can very well see. Instead of striking him between the sixth and seventh left rib, as your compatriots usually do, you must have struck higher or lower; and these lawyers, you know, are not easy to kill off.

Too big for a youth, too small for a grown man

We are never quits towards those who have done us a favour,' said Dantès. 'Even when one ceases to owe them money, one owes them gratitude.

Women weep for the dead. Men avenge them.

d'Artagnan is right, said Athos; here are our three leaves of absence which came from Monsieur de Treville, and here are three hundred pistoles which came from I don't know where. So let us go and get killed where we are told to go. Is life worth the trouble of so many questions?

But these first needs of the heart are so imperious, these outpourings of amorous melancholy in young people are at once so sweet and so bitter, that they have often all the real marks of the passion.

Pooh! Women say those things, but never do them.