Alexandre Dumas
Alexandre Dumas
Alexandre Dumas, also known as Alexandre Dumas, père, was a French writer. His works have been translated into nearly 100 languages, and he is one of the most widely read French authors. Many of his historical novels of high adventure were originally published as serials, including The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After, and The Vicomte de Bragelonne: Ten Years Later. His novels have been adapted since the early twentieth century for nearly 200 films. Dumas'...
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth24 July 1802
CityVillers-Cotterets, France
Truly generous men are always ready to become sympathetic when their enemy’s misfortune surpasses the limits of their hatred.
I love the life you've always made so sweet for me and I'd regret it if I had to die.' 'Do you mean to say that if I left you---' 'I'd die, yes.' 'Then you love me?
Upon my word," said Dantes, "you make me shudder. Is the world filled with tigers and crocodiles?" "Yes; and remember that two legged tigers and crocodiles are more dangerous than the others.
What would you not have accomplished if you had been free?" "Possibly nothing at all; the overflow of my brain would probably, in a state of freedom, have evaporated in a thousand follies; misfortune is needed to bring to light the treasures of the human intellect. Compression is needed to explode gunpowder. Captivity has brought my mental faculties to a focus; and you are well aware that from the collision of clouds electricity is produced — from electricity, lightning, from lightning, illumination.
Every individual, from the highest to the lowest degree, has his place in the ladder of social life, and around him swirls a little world of interests, composed of stormy passions and conflicting atoms
(...) the tree forsakes not the flower: the flower falls from the tree.
Love is the most selfish of all the passions.
The custom and fashion of today will be the awkwardness and outrage of tomorrow - so arbitrary are these transient laws.
Starvation!" exclaimed the abbe, springing from his seat. "Why, the vilest animals are not suffered to die by such a death as that. The very dogs that wander houseless and homeless in the streets find some pitying hand to cast them a mouthful of bread; and that a man, a Christian, should be allowed to perish of hunger in the midst of other men who call themselves Christians, is too horrible for belief. Oh, it is impossible - utterly impossible!
I know what happiness and what despair are, and I never make a jest of such feelings. Take it, then, but in exchange —
Are there not some places where we seem to breathe sadness? — why, we cannot tell. It is a chain of recollections — an idea which carries you back to other times, to other places — which, very likely, have no connection with the present time and place.
...joy takes a strange effect at times, it seems to oppress us almost the same as sorrow.
All for one, one for all, that is our device.
If you wish to discover the guilty person, first find out to whom the crime might be useful.