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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' last novel, The Knight of Sainte-Hermine, unfinished at his death, was completed by a scholar Claude Schopp who was the leading authority on Dumas and published in 2005, becoming a best seller. It was published in English in 2008 as The Last Cavalier.

Prolific in several genres, Dumas began his career by writing plays, which were successfully produced from the first. He also wrote numerous magazine articles and travel books; his published works totalled 100,000 pages. In the 1840s, Dumas founded the Théâtre Historique in Paris.

His father, General Thomas-Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie, was born in the French colony of Saint-Domingue to a French nobleman and an enslaved African woman, Marie-Cesette. At age 14 Thomas-Alexandre was taken by his father to France, where he was educated in a military academy and entered the military for what became an illustrious career.

Dumas' father's aristocratic rank helped young Alexandre acquire work with Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orléans. He later began working as a writer, finding early success. Decades later, in the election of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte in 1851, Dumas fell from favour and left France for Belgium, where he stayed for several years. Upon leaving Belgium, Dumas moved to Russia for a few years before going to Italy. In 1861, he founded and published the newspaper L'Indipendente, which supported the Italian unification effort. In 1864, he returned to Paris.

Though married, in the tradition of Frenchmen of higher social class, Dumas had numerous affairs . In his lifetime, he was known to have at least four illegitimate or "natural" children; although twentieth-century scholars found that Dumas fathered another three "natural" children. He acknowledged and assisted his son, Alexandre Dumas, to become a successful novelist and playwright. They are known as Alexandre Dumas père and Alexandre Dumas fils . Among his affairs, in 1866, Dumas had one with Adah Isaacs Menken, an American actress then less than half his age and at the height of her career.

The English playwright Watts Phillips, who knew Dumas in his later life, described him as "the most generous, large-hearted being in the world. He also was the most delightfully amusing and egotistical creature on the face of the earth. His tongue was like a windmill – once set in motion, you never knew when he would stop, especially if the theme was himself."

✵ 24. July 1802 – 5. December 1870  •  Other names Alexandre Dumas star, Alexandre Dumas, st.
Alexandre Dumas photo
Alexandre Dumas: 123 quotes13 likes

Alexandre Dumas Quotes

“There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Chapter 117 http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Count_of_Monte_Cristo/Chapter_117 <br class="br">The Count of Monte Cristo (1845–1846)

“I'm sure you're very nice, but you'd be even nicer if you went away.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Three Musketeers

Source: The Three Musketeers

“All for one, one for all, that is our motto.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Three Musketeers

Tous pour un, un pour tous, c'est notre devise
Variant: All for one and one for all.
Source: The Three Musketeers (1844), Ch. 9: D'Artagnan Shows Himself.

“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.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

“But Valentine, why despair, why always paint the future in such sombre hues?" Maximilien asked.

"Because, my friend, I judge it by the past.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

“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.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

“Pain, thou art not an evil”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

“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.”

Alexandre Dumas

“Everyone knows that drunkards and lovers have a protecting diety.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Three Musketeers

Variant: Everyone knows that God protects drunkards and lovers.
Source: The Three Musketeers

“Order is the key to all problems.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

“The wretched and the miserable should turn to their Savior first, yet they do not hope in Him until all other hope is exhausted.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

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

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

“It is the infirmity of our nature always to believe ourselves much more unhappy than those who groan by our sides!”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

“I am a Count, Not a Saint.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

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

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

“Your life story is a novel; and people, though they love novels wound between two yellow paper covers, are oddly suspicious of those which come to them in living vellum.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

“Within six months, if I am not dead, I shall have seen you again, madam--even if I have to overturn the world.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Three Musketeers

Source: The Three Musketeers

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

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

“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.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

“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.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Three Musketeers

Source: The Three Musketeers

“In every country where independence has taken the place of liberty, the first desire of a manly heart is to possess a weapon which at once renders him capable of defence or attack, and, by rendering its owner fearsome, makes him feared.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

“It is only the dead who do not return.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Three Musketeers

Source: The Three Musketeers

“All falsehood is a mask; and however well made the mask may be, with a little attention we may always succeed in distinguishing it from the true face.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Three Musketeers

Source: The Three Musketeers

“It is not the tree that forsakes the flower, but the flower that forsakes the tree.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

“In general, people only ask for advice that they may not follow it; or, if they should follow it, that they may have somebody to blame for having given it.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Three Musketeers

Variant: As a general rule... people ask for advice only in order not to follow it; or if they do follow it, in order to have someone to blame for giving it.
Source: The Three Musketeers

“God is merciful to all, as he has been to you; he is first a father, then a judge.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Variant: God is full of mercy for everyone, as He has been towards you. He is a father before He is a judge.
Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

“We frequently pass so near to happiness without seeing, without regarding it, or if we do see and regard it, yet without recognizing it.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Variant: 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.
Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

“No, I slept as I always do when I am bored and have not the courage to amuse myself, or when I am hungry and have not the desire to eat.--The Count of Monte Cristo”

Alexandre Dumas

“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.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Three Musketeers

Source: The Three Musketeers

“In all times, and all countries especially in those countries which are divided within by religious faith, there are always fanatics who will be well contented to be regarded as martyrs.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Three Musketeers

Source: The Three Musketeers

“Ah," said the jailer, "do not always brood over what is impossible, or you will be mad in a fortnight.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

“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.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Three Musketeers

Source: The Three Musketeers

“Joy to hearts which have suffered long is like the dew on the ground after a long drought; both the heart and the ground absorb that beneficent moisture falling on them, and nothing is outwardly apparant.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

“Patience is not my dominant virtue.”

Alexandre Dumas

D'Artagnan

“Man does not steal, he conquers”

Alexandre Dumas

“Sleeping on a plank has one advantage — it encourages early rising.”

Alexandre Dumas

Adventures in Czarist Russia.

“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.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Three Musketeers

Athos, Ch. 48: A Family Affair.
The Three Musketeers (1844)

“Weep," said Athos, "weep, heart full of love, youth, and life! Alas, would I could weep like you!”

Alexandre Dumas book The Three Musketeers

Source: The Three Musketeers (1844), Ch. 63: The Drop of Water.

“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.”

Alexandre Dumas

Le Vicomte de Bragelonne ou Dix ans plus (The Vicomte de Bragelonne) (1847)

“There is a woman in every case; as soon as they bring me a report, I say, 'Look for the woman.”

Alexandre Dumas book Los mohicanos de París

Il y a une femme dans toutes les affaires; aussitôt qu'on me fait un rapport, je dis: «Cherchez la femme!»
[Dumas, Alexandre, Alexandre Dumas, père, Théâtre complet, http://www.archive.org/details/thtrecomplet24dumauoft, 2009-08-07, XXIV, 1889, Michel Lévy frères, éditeurs, Paris, French, 103], 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 Mohicans de Paris (The Mohicans of Paris) (1864 play)

“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.'”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Chapter 11 http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Count_of_Monte_Cristo/Chapter_11. <br class="br">The Count of Monte Cristo (1845–1846)

“There is … a clever maxim which bears upon what I was saying to you some little while ago, and that is, that unless wicked ideas take root in a naturally depraved mind, human nature, in a right] and wholesome state, revolts at [[crime. Still, from an artificial civilisation have originated wants, vices, and false tastes, which occasionally become so powerful as to stifle within us all good feelings, and ultimately to lead us into guilt and wickedness…”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Chapter 17 http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Count_of_Monte_Cristo/Chapter_17 <br class="br">The Count of Monte Cristo (1845–1846)

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

Alexandre Dumas

Le Vicomte de Bragelonne ou Dix ans plus (The Vicomte de Bragelonne) (1847)

“You are young, and your bitter recollections have time to change themselves into sweet remembrances.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Three Musketeers

Source: The Three Musketeers (1844), Ch. 67: Conclusion.

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

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Chapter 2 http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Count_of_Monte_Cristo/Chapter_2 <br class="br">The Count of Monte Cristo (1845–1846)

“The chains of wedlock are so heavy that it takes two to carry them; sometimes three.”

Alexandre Dumas

Les chaînes du mariage sont si lourdes qu&#x27;il faut être deux pour les porter; quelquefois trois. <br class="br">Attributed to Dumas in: Elizabeth Abbott, Une histoire des maîtresses http://books.google.gr/books?id=fEsPUICzDY4C&amp;dq=, Les Éditions Fides, 2004, p. 16. <br class="br">Attributed

“Nothing succeeds like success.”

Alexandre Dumas book Ange Pitou

Rien ne réussit comme le succès. <br class="br">Ange Pitou, Vol. 1 chapter 7 http://www.dumaspere.com/pages/biblio/chapitre.php?lid=r3&amp;cid=7 (1854).

“Private misfortunes must never induce us to neglect public affairs.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

chapter 5 http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Count_of_Monte_Cristo/Chapter_5 <br class="br">The Count of Monte Cristo (1845–1846)