Quotes from Alexandre Dumas

I am he whom you sold and dishonored — I am he whose betrothed you prostituted — I am he upon whom you trampled that you might raise yourself to fortune — I am he whose father you condemned to die of hunger — I am he whom you also condemned to starvation, and who yet forgives you, because he hopes to be forgiven - I am Edmund Dantes!

How well I know you by your deeds and how invariably you succeed in living down to what one expects of you!

Danglers alone was content and joyous, he had got rid of an enemy and preserved his situation on board the Pharaon; Danglers was one of those men born with a pen behind the ear, and an ink-stand in place of a heart. Everything with him was multiplication or subtraction, and he estimated the life of a man as less precious than a figure, when that figure could increase, and that life would diminish, the total of the amount.

I never play, because I am not rich enough to afford to lose or poor enough to want to win. Maximilien Morrel, The Count of Monte Cristo

It is the privilege of youth to believe and hope, but old men see death more clearly.

Political judgments are generally vain formalities, for the same passions which give rise to the accusation ordain the condemnation. Such is the atrocious logic of revolutions.

Sleeping on a plank has one advantage - it encourages early rising.

How strange, continued the king, with some asperity; the police think that they have disposed of the whole matter when they say, 'A murder has been committed,' and especially so when they can add, 'And we are on the track of the guilty persons.

it is a cruel thing to be forced to say, but, already used to misfortune, I must habituate myself to shame.

What tender threads do life and death hang

You posses a quality which can never belong to Mademoiselle Danglars. It is that indefinable charm which is to a woman what perfume is to the flower and flavor to the fruit, for beauty of either is not the only quality we seek.

Do you think that, if I did, I would lead you to the answer inch by inch, like a dramatist or a novelist?

There are two medicines for all ills: time and silence.

Sleep is a very capricious goddess, and it is precisely when she is invoked that she delays coming. - Page 184

Man does not appear to me to be intended to enjoy felicity so unmixed; happiness is like the enchanted palaces we read of in our childhood, where fierce, fiery dragons defend the entrance and approach; and monsters of all shapes and kinds, requiring to be overcome ere victory is ours.

I had nearly five thousand volumes in my library at Rome; but after reading them over many times, I found out that with one hundred and fifty well-chosen books a man possesses, if not a complete summary of all human knowledge, at least all that a man need really know.

Never be afraid of opportunities, always be on the lookout for adventures.

All human wisdom is summed up in these two words,— Wait and hope.

Pero soy de los que creen que en las cosas pequeñas está todo. El niño es pequeño, y contiene al hombre; el cerebro es estrecho, y alberga el pensamiento; el ojo es solo un punto, y abarca leguas.

When I think of you my heart beats fast, the blood burns in my veins and I can hardly breathe.

You are perfectly right in objecting to them [modern art], for this one great fault - that they have not yet had time to become old.

This sometimes happened: from time to time, Dantès, driven out of solitude into the world, felt an imperative need for solitude. And what solitude is more vast and more poetic than that of a ship sailing alone on the sea, in the darkness of night and the silence of infinity, under the eye of the Lord?

We are all mortal, and the old must make way for the young. If not, why, there would be no promotion.

There is a sort of consolation at the contemplation of the yawning abyss, at the bottom of which lie darkness and obscurity. Edmond