Quotes from Alexandre Dumas

My dearest,' said Valentine, 'has the count not just told us that all human wisdom was contained in these two words – "wait" and "hope"?

jailer is no man to a prisoner - he is a living door, a barrier of flesh and blood adding strength to restraints of oak and iron.

Those who are born with a silver spoon,' Emmanuel said, 'those who have never needed anything, do not understand what happiness is, any more than those who do not know the blessing of a clear sky and who have never entrusted their lives to four planks tossing on a raging sea.

This commissary was a man of very repulsive mien, with a pointed nose, with yellow and salient cheek bones, with eyes small but keen and penetrating, and an expression of countenance resembling at one the polecat and the fox. His head, supported by a long and flexible neck, issued from his large black robe, balancing itself with a motion very much like that of the tortoise thrusting his head out of his shell.

She crammed so much knowledge into her head to alleviate the weight in her heart

better is a sure enemy to well.

In all well-organised brains, the predominating idea—and there always is one—is sure to be the last thought before sleeping, and the first upon waking in the morning. Andrea had scarcely opened his eyes when his predominating idea presented itself, and whispered in his ear that he had slept too long.

The soul makes its own horizons; your soul is overcast, and that is why the sky seems stormy to you.

Danglars was one of those men born with a pen behind the ear, and an inkstand in place of a heart. Everything with him was multiplication or subtraction. The life of a man was to him of far less value than a numeral, especially when, by taking it away, he could increase the sum total of his own desires.

Trust me, do not try to cheapen things; great affairs are badly done with small means.

Tree forsakes not the flower—the flower falls from the tree.

parrying like a man who had the greatest respect for his own epidermis.

Never did a man deeply in love allow the clocks to go on peacefully.

All human wisdom is contained in these two words -- 'Wait and hope.

Death is either a friend who rocks us gently as a nurse, or an enemy who violently drags the soul from the body.

He who chases the eagle takes no heed of the sparrow.

We had forgotten to say that Jacopo was a Corsican.

passion can blind even those who are ordinarily the most clear-headed.

misfortune is needed to bring to light the treasures of the human intellect.

Be nice to people on your way up because you might meet 'em on your way down.

The distance was short, and at the end of ten minutes his carriage, or rather the count's, stopped before the Hotel de Londres.

Incertitude is still hope.

it is a law of nature; their fathers died before them, and they mourned their loss; they will die before their children, who will, in their turn, grieve for them.

And he at once determined on going to find Gilbert, who was residing at Versailles, but who, without having revisited the queen after the journey of the king to Paris, had become the right hand of Necker, who had been reappointed minister, and was endeavoring to organize prosperity by generalizing poverty.