Alexandre Dumas (1802–70,) fully Alexandre Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie, was a prolific French author of plays, popular romances, historical dramas, and adventure novels. He is known as Dumas the elder or Dumas père to distinguish him from his son Alexandre Dumas fils, who was also a distinguished French dramatist and novelist.
Born of colonial African French ancestry in Villers-Cotterêts, France, Dumas obtained only a limited education. In 1822, he traveled to Paris, where he met the actor François-Joseph Talma, who inspired Dumas to seek success in the theater.
At the age of 27, Dumas became famous for his play Henri III et sa cour (1829, ‘Henry III and his Court.’) Performed at the Théâtre-Français, it revolutionized historical drama. He did the same for domestic tragedy with Antony (1831) and scored a tremendous success with Richard Darlington (1831.)
The best known of Dumas’s works are Les Trois Mousquetaires (1844, The Three Musketeers,) Vingt ans après (1845, Twenty Years After,) Le Comte de Monte Cristo (1844–45; The Count of Monte Cristo,) Dix ans plus tard ou le Vicomte de Bragelonne (1848–50; Ten Years Later,) and La Tulipe noire (1850, The Black Tulip.)
Dumas was a prodigious worker, and his output was vast—he wrote plays, novels, serialized stories, and short stories. He wrote non-stop, mostly because he had substantial debts to repay and a constant stream of affairs and children to provide for. His works have been translated into more than a hundred languages. Over 50 movies have been made—from The Count of Monty Cristo and over 60 from The Three Musketeers.
Dumas’s last unfinished novel, The Knight of Sainte-Hermine, was published in 2005—it became a runaway bestseller. The Dumas scholar Claude Schopp put it together and wrote a conclusion from Dumas’s notes. Schopp also wrote the biography Alexandre Dumas: Genius of Life (1988.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Alexandre Dumas pere
The custom and fashion of today will be the awkwardness and outrage of tomorrow — so arbitrary are these transient laws.
—Alexandre Dumas pere
Topics: Fashion, Custom
In Paris today, millions of pounds of bread are sold daily, made during the previous night by those strange, half-naked beings one glimpses through cellar windows, whose wild-seeming cries floating out of those depths always makes a painful impression. In the morning, one sees these pale men, still white with flour, carrying a loaf under one arm, going off to rest and gather new strength to renew their hard and useful labor when night comes again. I have always highly esteemed the brave and humble workers who labor all night to produce those soft but crusty loaves that look more like cake than bread.
—Alexandre Dumas pere
All human wisdom is summed up in two words—wait and hope.
—Alexandre Dumas pere
Topics: Wisdom
Truth is very liable to be left-handed in history.
—Alexandre Dumas pere
Topics: History
The way to check slander is to despise it; attempt to overtake and refute it, and it will outrun you.
—Alexandre Dumas pere
There is no friendship that cares about an overheard secret.
—Alexandre Dumas pere
Topics: Gossip
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. We must have felt what it is to die, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life.
—Alexandre Dumas pere
We enjoy thoroughly only the pleasure that we give.
—Alexandre Dumas pere
Topics: Pleasure
Friendship consists in forgetting what one gives, and remembering what one receives.
—Alexandre Dumas pere
Topics: Friendship
Happiness is like those palaces in fairy tales whose gates are guarded by dragons: we must fight in order to conquer it.
—Alexandre Dumas pere
Topics: Happiness
A young girl must not be taken to the theatre, let us say it once for all. It is not only the drama which is immoral, but the place.
—Alexandre Dumas pere
Topics: Actors
A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms against himself. He makes his failure certain by himself being the first person to be convinced of it.
—Alexandre Dumas pere
Topics: Youth, Failure, Self-Discovery, Confidence, Doubt, Uncertainty
There is nothing more galling to angry people than the coolness of those on whom they wish to vent their spleen.
—Alexandre Dumas pere
Topics: Anger
It is only rarely that one can see in a little boy the promise of a man, but one can almost always see in a little girl the threat of a woman.
—Alexandre Dumas pere
Topics: Women
Business, that’s easily defined; it’s other people’s money.
—Alexandre Dumas pere
Topics: Business
I needed some real danger and some mortal risk to run, to tranquilize me.
—Alexandre Dumas pere
Topics: Danger
Infatuated, half through conceit, half through love of my art, I achieve the impossible working as no one else ever works.
—Alexandre Dumas pere
Topics: Effort
Pure love and suspicion cannot dwell together: at the door where the latter enters, the former makes its exit.
—Alexandre Dumas pere
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