Alexandre Dumas

We must never expect discretion in first love: it is accompanied by such excessive joy that unless the joy is allowed to overflow, it will choke you.

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.

I do not often laugh, sir, as you may perceive by the air of my countenance; but nevertheless, I retain the privilege of laughing when I please.

There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness.

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.

It is the way of weakened minds to see everything through a black cloud. The soul forms its own horizons; your soul is darkened, and consequently the sky of the future appears stormy and unpromising

Yet man will never be perfect until he learns to create and destroy; he does know how to destroy, and that is half the battle.

Time, dear friend, time brings round opportunity; opportunity is the martingale of man. The more we have ventured the more we gain, when we know how to wait.

The custom and fashion of today will be the awkwardness and outrage of tomorrow - so arbitrary are these transient laws.

He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness.

And now, farewell to kindness, humanity and gratitude... I have substituted myself for Providence in rewarding the good; may the God of vengeance now yield me His place to punish the wicked.

Through the ingenuousness of her age beamed an ardent mind, a mind not of the women but of the poet; she did not please, she intoxicated.

Pure love and suspicion cannot dwell together: at the door where the latter enters, the former makes its exit.

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

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

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.

Happiness is like those palaces in fairy tales whose gates are guarded by dragons: we must fight in order to conquer it.

If you wish to discover the guilty person, first find out to whom the crime might be useful.

When a man resolves to avenge himself, he should first of all tear out the heart from his breast.

That is a dream also; only he has remained asleep, while you have awakened; and who knows which of you is the most fortunate?

There are some situations which men understand by instinct, by which reason is powerless to explain; in such cases the greatest poet is he who gives utterance to the most natural and vehement outburst of sorrow. Those who hear the bitter cry are as much impressed as if they listened to an entire poem, and when th sufferer is sincere they are right in regarding his outburst as sublime.