Quotes from Alexandre Dumas

It is necessary ... to yield to the storm, purchase a peace, and wait patiently for better times.

Piazza del Popolo presented a spectacle of gay and noisy mirth and revelry. A crowd of masks flowed in from all sides, emerging from the doors, descending from the windows. From every street and every corner drove carriages filled with clowns, harlequins, dominoes, mummers, pantomimists, Transteverins, knights, and peasants, screaming, fighting, gesticulating, throwing eggs filled with flour, confetti, nosegays, attacking, with their sarcasms and their missiles, friends

Why, when a man has friends, they are not only to offer him a glass of wine, but, moreover, to prevent his swallowing three or four pints of water unnecessarily!

He rose in his turn, and seizing handfuls of confetti and sweetmeats, with which the carriage was filled, cast them with all the force and skill he was master of.

Oh, what is man!' d'Avrigny muttered. 'The most egoistical of all animals, the most personal of all creatures, who cannot believe otherwise than that the earth revolves, the sun shines and death reaps for him alone – an ant, cursing God from the summit of a blade of grass!

Here's a man ready to chop another man's self-esteem to pieces with an axe, yet he cries out in pain when his own is pricked with a needle.

My friend,' said Maximilien, 'the voice of my heart is sad indeed and promises only misfortune.' 'Only a weak spirit sees everything from behind a dark veil. The soul makes its own horizons; your soul is overcast, and that is why the sky seems stormy to you.

I never will leave you, for I am sure I could not exist without you.

That man made a deep impression on me; I shall never forget his countenance! The Englishman smiled imperceptibly.

Oh, man," murmured d'Avrigny, "the most selfish of all animals, the most personal of all creatures, who believes the earth turns, the sun shines, and death strikes for him alone,—an ant cursing God from the top of a blade of grass!

Thank you; be easy.

The wicked do not die in that way: God seems to take them under his protection to use them as the instruments of his vengeance.

He decided it was human hatred and not divine vengeance that had plunged him into this abyss. He doomed these unknown men to every torment that his inflamed imagination could devise, while still considering that the most frightful were too mild and, above all, too brief for them: torture was followed by death, and death brought, if not repose, at least an insensibility that resembled it.

the count left, murmuring these verses from Pindar: 'Youth is a flower of which love is the fruit … Happy the vintager who picks it after watching it slowly mature.

People ask for advice only in order not to follow it; or, if they follow it, in order to have someone to blame for giving it.

All the pious ideas that had been so long forgotten, returned; he recollected the prayers his mother had taught him, and discovered a new meaning in every word; for in prosperity prayers seem but a mere medley of words, until misfortune comes and the unhappy sufferer first understands the meaning of the sublime language in which he invokes the pity of heaven! He prayed, and prayed aloud, no longer terrified at the sound of his own voice, for he fell into a sort of ecstasy.

Francaise with our own proper pack. This permission, we feel bound to say, was graciously granted; which compels us here to give a public contradiction to the slanderers who pretend that we live

Yes. You are pawning me for three million: am I right?' 'The larger the sum, the more flattering it is. It gives you some idea of your value.

Really, Emmanuel,' said Julie, 'wouldn't you think that all these rich people, so happy only a short while ago, had built their fortunes, their happiness and their social position, while forgetting to allow for the wicked genie; and that this genie, like the wicked fairy in Perrault's stories1 who is not invited to some wedding or christening, had suddenly appeared to take revenge for that fatal omission?

I have seen the heavens open, the sea rage and foam, the storm rise in a patch of sky and like a gigantic eagle beat the two horizons with its wings.

Yes, said he, yes, Anne of Austria is my true queen. Upon a word from her, I would betray my country, I would betray my king, I would betray my God.

Unfortunates, who ought to begin with God, do not have any hope in him till they have exhausted all other means of deliverance. Dantes

Hold! I must have lost it, said the young man maliciously, pretending to search for it. But fortunately the world is a sepulcher; the men, and consequently the women, are but shadows, and love is a sentiment to which you cry, 'Fie! Fie!

could you have so little strength that you take pride in displaying your sorrow