The Three Musketeers

by Alexandre Dumas

I entertain a ridiculous partiality for my head, it seems to suit my shoulders so correctly.

In the meanwhile, he looked upon Athos as an Achilles, Porthos as an Ajax, and Aramis as a Joseph.

“People do not eat at once for all time, even when they eat a good deal.”

From this phrase, “D’Artagnan awakened Planchet,” the reader must not suppose it was night, or that day was hardly come. No, it had just struck four. Planchet, two hours before, had asked his master for some dinner, and he had answered him with the proverb, “He who sleeps, dines.” And Planchet dined by sleeping.

Woman was created for our destruction, and it is from her we inherit all our miseries.”

“All for one, one for all.”

“I will go myself and be caught in the mousetrap, but woe be to the cats that shall pounce upon such a mouse!”

Love is the most selfish of all the passions.

First love is accompanied by such excessive joy that unless the joy be allowed to overflow, it will stifle you.

“Ah, Monsieur Hypocrite, I understand how you study theology.”

“If you could see my heart,” said D’Artagnan, “you would there read so much curiosity that you would pity me and so much love that you would instantly satisfy my curiosity. We have nothing to fear from those who love us.”

“Ah! I wish I had never seen you!” cried D’Artagnan, with that ingenuous roughness which women often prefer to the affectations of politeness, because it betrays the depths of the thought and proves that feeling prevails over reason.

“D’Artagnan is right,” said Athos; “here are our three leaves of absence which came from Monsieur de Tréville, and here are three hundred pistoles which came from I don’t know where. So let us go and get killed where we are told to go. Is life worth the trouble of so many questions? D’Artagnan, I am ready to follow you.”

D’Artagnan was amazed to note by what fragile and unknown threads the destinies of nations and the lives of men are suspended.

A rogue does not laugh in the same way that an honest man does; a hypocrite does not shed the tears of a man of good faith. 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.

Nothing makes time pass more quickly or more shortens a journey than a thought which absorbs in itself all the faculties of the organization of him who thinks.

“But Monseigneur knows very well that justice never lets go that which it once lays hold of. If it were bad money, there might be some hopes; but unfortunately, those were all good pieces.”

“I say that love is a lottery in which he who wins, wins death! You are very fortunate to have lost, believe me, my dear D’Artagnan. And if I have any counsel to give, it is, always lose!”

“You child, why, there is not a man who has not believed, as you do, that his mistress loved him, and there lives not a man who has not been deceived by his mistress.”

“I was reflecting upon the rapidity with which the blessings of this world leave us. My English horse, which has just disappeared amid a cloud of dust, has furnished me with a living image of the fragility of the things of the earth. Life itself may be resolved into three words: Erat, est, fuit.”

As he said, he was ready to go to the end of the world to seek her; but the world, being round, has many ends, so that he did not know which way to turn.

He whose game is the eagle takes no heed of the sparrow.

Time passes quickly when it is passed in attacks and defenses.

“People, in general,” he said, “only ask advice not to follow it; or if they do follow it, it is for the sake of having someone to blame for having given it.”

“Fortune is a courtesan; favorable yesterday, she may turn her back tomorrow.”

Their anxiety about their outfits had all disappeared, and each countenance only preserved the expression of its own secret disquiet—for behind all present happiness is concealed a fear for the future.

“A gallant knight cannot decline a rendezvous with a lady; but a prudent gentleman may excuse himself from not waiting on his Eminence, particularly when he has reason to believe he is not invited to make his compliments.”

The safety of the horseman, you know, depends almost always upon the goodness of his horse.”

Athos upon a horse he owed to a woman, Aramis on a horse he owed to his mistress, Porthos on a horse he owed to his procurator’s wife, and D’Artagnan on a horse he owed to his good fortune—the best mistress possible.

“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.”

“I have induced you to take a charming promenade; here is a delicious breakfast; and yonder are five hundred persons, as you may see through the loopholes, taking us for heroes or madmen—two classes of imbeciles greatly resembling each other.”

“He is a bad priest,” said Porthos, “who has pity for heretics.”

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.”

By degrees the enchantress had clothed herself with that magic adornment which she assumed and threw aside at will; that is to say, beauty, meekness, and tears—and above all, the irresistible attraction of mystical voluptuousness, the most devouring of all voluptuousness.

Great criminals bear about them a kind of predestination which makes them surmount all obstacles, which makes them escape all dangers, up to the moment which a wearied Providence has marked as the rock of their impious fortunes.

It is said that we must not trust to the face; but in what, then, shall we place confidence, if not in the most beautiful work of the Lord?

“It is worth something, you see, to have been brought up somewhere.”

“Friend, be a man! Women weep for the dead; men avenge them!”

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