Alexandre Dumas

“Well, father, in the shipwreck of life, for life is an eternal shipwreck of our hopes, I cast into the sea my useless encumbrance, that is all, and I remain with my own will, disposed to live perfectly alone, and, consequently, perfectly free. (Eugenie to her father)”

“To learn is not to know; there are the learners and the learned. Memory makes the one, philosophy the others.”

“How did I escape? With difficulty. How did I plan this moment? With pleasure.”

“Those born to wealth, and who have the means of gratifying every wish, know not what is the real happiness of life, just as those who have been tossed on the stormy waters of the ocean on a few frail planks can alone realize the blessings of fair weather.”

“Does the open wound in another's breast soften the pain of the gaping wound in our own? Or does the blood which is welling from another man's side staunch that which is pouring from our own? Does the general anguish of our fellow creatures lessen our own private and particular anguish? No, no, each suffers on his own account, each struggles with his own grief, each sheds his own tears.”

“So rapid is the flight of dreams upon the wings of imagination.”

“His fair landlady was in despair. She would most willingly have made M. d'Artagnan her husband--such a handsome man, and such a fierce mustache!”

“A man is bound to make for himself in this world, that fortune which heaven had refused him at his birth.”

“Philosophy cannot be taught; it is the application of the sciences to truth.”

“If it is ones lot to be cast among fools, one must learn foolishness.”

“Happiness is like those palaces in fairytales whose gates are guarded by dragons: We must fight in order to conquer it.”

“True love always makes a man better, no matter what woman inspires it.”

“God is full of mercy for everyone, as He has been towards you. He is a father before He is a judge.”

“...does that not tell you that grief is like life and that there is always somethings unknown beyond it?”

“...The friends we have lost do not repose under the ground...they are buried deep in our hearts. It has been thus ordained that they may always accompany us...”

“There are two ways of seeing: with the body and with the soul. The body's sight can sometimes forget, but the soul remembers forever.”

“When you compare the sorrows of real life to the pleasures of the imaginary one, you will never want to live again, only to dream forever.”

“Often we pass beside happiness without seeing it, without looking at it, or even if we have seen and looked at it, without recognizing it.”

“that Englishman who came to challenge me three or four months ago, and whom I killed to stop him bothering me”

“You are very amiable, no doubt, but you would be charming if you would only depart.”

“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!”

“God is always the last resource.”

“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.”

“In politics, my dear fellow, you know, as well as I do, there are no men, but ideas — no feelings, but interests; in politics we do not kill a man, we only remove an obstacle, that is all.”

“He's right: They have to put madmen with madmen.”

“We are never quits with those who oblige us," was Dantes' reply; "for when we do not owe them money, we owe them gratitude.”

“Ah, lips that say one thing, while the heart thinks another,”

“Capricious and unfaithful, the king wished to be called Louis the Just and Louis the Chaste. Posterity will find a difficulty in understanding this character, which history explains only by facts and never by reason.”

“Abbe Faria: Here is your final lesson - do not commit the crime for which you now serve the sentence. God said, Vengeance is mine.Edmond Dantes: I don't believe in God.Abbe Faria: It doesn't matter. He believes in you. ”

“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 cost me more, but I have nothing to fear.”

“I have been taken by Satan into the highest mountain in the earth, and when there he said he to me, ‘Child of earth, what wouldst thou have to make thee adore me?’ I replied, ‘Listen, I wish to be Providence myself, for I feel that the most beautiful, noblest, most sublime thing in the world, is to recompense and punish.”

“There are people who are willing to suffer and swallow their tears at leisure, and God will not doubt reward them in heaven for their resignation; but those who have the will to struggle strike back at fate in retaliation for the blows they receive. Do you intend to fight back at fate, Valentine? That's what I came here to ask you.-Maximilien Morrel”

“How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it”

“Youth is a blossom whose fruit is love; happy is he who plucks it after watching it slowly ripen.”

“Voyager, c'est vivre dans toute la plénitude du mot; c'est oublier le passé et l'avenir pour le présent; c'est respirer à pleine poitrine, jouir de tout, s'emparer de la création comme d'une chose qui est sienne, c'est chercher dans la terre des mines d'or que personne n'a fouillées, dans l'air des merveilles que personne n'a vues, c'est passer après la foule et ramasser sous l'herbe les perles et les diamants qu'elle a pris, ignorante et insoucieuse qu'elle est, pour des flocons de neige et des gouttes de rosée. ”

“You who are in power have only the means that money produces — we who are in expectation, have those which devotion prompts.”

“Haste is a poor counselor”

“(...) the tree forsakes not the flower: the flower falls from the tree.”

“We are always in a hurry to be happy...; for when we have suffered a long time, we have great difficulty in believing in good fortune.”

“... il n'y a ni bonheur ne malheur en ce monde, il y a la comparaison d'un etat a un autre, voila tout.”

“Celui-la seul qui a eprouve l'extreme infortune est apte a ressentir l'extreme felicite. Il faut avoir voulu mourir pour savoir combien el est bon de vivre.”

“O grande ville! c' est dans ton sein palpitant que j'ai trouve ce que je cherchais; mineur patient, j'ai remue tes entrailles pour en faire sortir le mal; maintenant, mon oeuvre est accomplie, ma mission est terminee; maintenant tu ne peux plus m'ofrir ni joies ni douleurs. Adieu, Paris,! adieu!”

“Il y a les sachants et les savants: c'est la mémoire qui fait les uns, c'est la philosophie qui fait les autres. La philosophie ne s'apprend pas; la philosophie est la réunion des sciences acquises au génie qui les applique.”

“...apprendre n'est pas savoir; il y a les sachants et les savants: c'est la memoire qui fait les uns, c'est la philosophie qui fait les autres.”

“Моите мечти нямат граници - аз винаги искам невъзможното.”

“Forward! Still forward!" said he. "When it shall be time, God will tell me, as he has told the others.”

“No. I will remain because I have been accustomed for thirty years to go and take the orderly word of the King, and to have it said to me, 'Good evening, d'Artagnan,' with a smile I did not beg for!”

“Business? It's quite simple. It's other people's money.”

“In this world, all--men, women, and kings--must live for the present. We can only live for the future for God”