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ADAlexandre Dumas

150 collected words

Alexandre Dumas

Life dates: 1802 AD — 1870 AD

Dantès explains how happiness can blind him, while the count’s final letter asks Morrel and Valentine to wait and hope. Their different moments connect expectation with the costly consequences of the story.

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Life and writing

The catalogue identifies Alexandre Dumas with lifetime years 1802–1870 and also credits Auguste Maquet, 1813–1888, as an author of this novel. That second creator is retained in the related book record. The catalogue does not specify the English translator. Anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteers, Dan Muller and David Widger receive digital credits. Its HTML ISBN belongs to the electronic edition; the underlying print publisher remains unspecified. These references support selected scenes, not every saying attributed to Dumas.

In Chapter 3, Dantès answers Caderousse’s accusation of pride by saying he is happy and that happiness can blind more than pride. The reply occurs before the plot against him takes effect. In Chapter 117, Morrel and Valentine read the count’s letter, ending with the injunction to wait and hope. The surrounding scene includes painful news and an acknowledgment that happiness has come at a cost. These words belong to a character and a letter within the novel, not a direct promise by either credited author that waiting guarantees reward. Both selected extracts match the linked English text.

Reading this voice

Read Dantès’s reply with Caderousse’s accusation and the nearby conspiracy, then the final letter with what Valentine learns. Keep the catalogue’s Maquet credit visible and avoid inventing a translator for this edition.

Subjects to explore

hopehappinessjudgement

Words to begin with

Quotations and sayings

08Undated
As it was a time of war between the Catholics and the Huguenots, and as he saw the Catholics exterminate the Huguenots and the Huguenots exterminate the Catholics--all in the name of religion--he adopted a mixed belief which permitted him to be sometimes Catholic, sometimes a Huguenot. Now, he was accustomed to walk with his fowling piece on his shoulder, behind the hedges which border the roads, and when he saw a Catholic coming alone, the Protestant religion immediately prevailed in his mind. He lowered his gun in the direction of the traveler; then, when he was within ten paces of him, he commenced a conversation which almost always ended by the traveler's abandoning his purse to save his life. It goes without saying that when he saw a Huguenot coming, he felt himself filled with such ardent Catholic zeal that he could not understand how, a quarter of an hour before, he had been able to have any doubts upon the superiority of our holy religion.
Alexandre Dumas / quote
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11Undated
The kingdoms of kings are confined, either by mountains or rivers, or by a change in customs or by a difference of language; but my kingdom is as great as the world, because I am neither Italian, nor French, nor Hindu, nor American, nor a Spaniard; I am a cosmopolitan. No country can claim to be my birthplace, God alone knows in which region I shall die. I adopt every custom, I speak every tongue [... ] In this way, you see, being of no country, asking for the protection of no goverment and acknowledging no man as my brother, I am not restrained or hampered by a single one of the scruples that tie the hands of the powerful or the obstacles that block the path of the weak.
Alexandre Dumas / quote
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17Undated
No, monsieur,” returned Monte Cristo “upon the simple condition that they should respect myself and my friends. Perhaps what I am about to say may seem strange to you, who are socialists, and vaunt humanity and your duty to your neighbor, but I never seek to protect a society which does not protect me, and which I will even say, generally occupies itself about me only to injure me; and thus by giving them a low place in my esteem, and preserving a neutrality towards them, it is society and my neighbor who are indebted to me.
Alexandre Dumas / quote
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20Undated
He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, Morrel, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life. Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget, that until the day when God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words, - ‘Wait and hope.’ – Your friend, Edmond Dantes, Count of Monte Cristo. The eyes of both were fixed on the spot indicated by the sailor, and on the blue-line separating the sky from the Mediterranean Sea, they perceived a large white sail.
Alexandre Dumas / quote
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24Undated
There are cancers so insidious in their nature that their very pulsation is invisible. Such cancers leave the ivory whiteness of the skin untouched, and marble not the firm, fair flesh, with their blue tints; the physician who bends over the patient's chest hears not, through he listens, the insatiable teeth of the disease grinding its onward progress through the muscles, as the blood flows freely on; the knife has never been able to destroy, and rarely even, temporarily, to discern the rage of these mortal scourges; their home is in the mind, which they corrupt; they fill the whole heart until it breaks. Such, madame, are the cancers, fatal to queens; are you, too, free from their scourge?
Alexandre Dumas / quote
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