Alexandre Dumas

Alexandre Dumas, père (24 July 1802 – 5 December 1870) was a French writer, best known for his numerous historical novels of high adventure which have made him the most widely read French author in the world.
See also: Alexandre Dumas, fils.

See also: The Count of Monte Cristo

Quotes

Rien ne réussit comme le succès.
- Nothing succeeds like success.
- Ange Pitou, Vol. 1 chapter 7 (1854).

Sleeping on a plank has one advantage — it encourages early rising.
- Adventures in Czarist Russia.

* My father was a mulatto, my grandfather was a Negro, and my great-grandfather a monkey. You see, Sir, my family starts where yours ends.
- In response to a racist comment directed at the author

Tous pour un, un pour tous, c'est notre devise
- All for one, one for all, that is our motto.
- Ch. 9: D'Artagnan Shows Himself.

"Eh, gentlemen, let us reckon upon accidents! Life is a chaplet of little miseries which the philosopher counts with a smile. Be philosophers, as I am, gentlemen; sit down at the table and let us drink. Nothing makes the future look so bright as surveying it through a glass of chambertin."
- Athos, Ch. 48: A Family Affair.

"Weep," said Athos, "weep, heart full of love, youth, and life! Alas, would I could weep like you!"
- Ch. 63: The Drop of Water.

You are young, and your bitter recollections have time to change themselves into sweet remembrances."
- Ch. 67: Conclusion.

Learn ever to separate the king and the principle of royalty. The king is but man; royalty is the spirit of God. When you are in doubt as to which you should serve, forsake the material appearance for the invisible principle, for this is everything.

Eh! sire, that is the fate of truth; she is a stern companion; she bristles all over with steel; she wounds those whom she attacks, and sometimes him who speaks her.

My friend, the pleasures to which we are not accustomed oppress us more than the griefs with which we are familiar.

Cherchez la femme, pardieu ! cherchez la femme !
- Look for the woman!
- Dumas, Alexandre (1871) (in French). Les Mohicans de Paris. I. Paris: Michel Lévy frères, éditeurs. p. 232. Retrieved on 2009-08-07.

Il y a une femme dans toutes les affaires ; aussitôt qu'on me fait un rapport, je dis : «Cherchez la femme !»
- There is a woman in every case; as soon as they bring me a report, I say, 'Look for the woman'.
  - Dumas, Alexandre (1889) (in French). Théâtre complet. XXIV. Paris: Michel Lévy frères, éditeurs. p. 103. Retrieved on 2009-08-07. , translation from The Penguin Dictionary of Quotations II.iii
- See wikipedia cherchez la femme on how this phrase has come to be used.
- Compare Juvenal satire VI.243 (circa 100 AD), "never yet was there a lawsuit which did not have a woman at the bottom of it" (translation by G. G. Ramsay), but in that case describing the litigiousness of Roman women.

Les chaînes du mariage sont si lourdes qu'il faut être deux pour les porter ; quelquefois trois.
- Translation: The chains of wedlock are so heavy that it takes two to carry them; sometimes three.
- Attributed to Dumas in: Elizabeth Abbott, Une histoire des maîtresses, Les Éditions Fides, 2004, p. 16.

I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color-line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out the caves of the evening that swing between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of the stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil. Is this the life you grudge us, O knightly America? Is this the life you long to change into the dull red hideousness of Georgia? Are you so afraid lest peering from this high Pisgah, between Philistine and Amalekite, we sight the Promised Land?
- W E B Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk

For many years, I used to take The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas with me anytime I traveled. I’ve probably read it 20 or more times.
- Celeste Ng interview (2022)

Although I work, and seldom cease,
At Dumas père and Dumas fils,
Alas, I cannot make me care
For Dumas fils and Dumas père.
- Dorothy Parker, "A Pig's-Eye View of Literature" from Sunset Gun (1927); reproduced in Not So Deep as a Well: Collected Poems (1937), p. 110.