Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.
-Jules Verne
An energetic man will succeed where an indolent one would vegetate and inevitably perish.
-Jules Verne
We may brave human laws, but we cannot resist natural ones.
-Jules Verne
Reality provides us with facts so romantic that imagination itself could add nothing to them.
-Jules Verne
There are no impossible obstacles; there are just stronger and weaker wills, that’s all!
-Jules Verne
We are of opinion that instead of letting books grow moldy behind an iron grating, far from the vulgar gaze, it is better to let them wear out by being read.
-Jules Verne
Though sleep is called our best friend, it is a friend who often keeps us waiting!
-Jules Verne
Anything one man can imagine, other men can make real.
-Jules Verne
The Nautilus was piercing the water with its sharp spur, after having accomplished nearly ten thousand leagues in three months and a half, a distance greater than the great circle of the earth. Where were we going now, and what was reserved for the future?
-Jules Verne
We now know most things that can be measured in this world, except the bounds of human ambition!
-Jules Verne
Travel enables us to enrich our lives with new experiences, to enjoy and to be educated, to learn respect for foreign cultures, to establish friendships, and above all to contribute to international cooperation and peace throughout the world.
-Jules Verne
As long as the heart beats, as long as body and soul keep together, I cannot admit that any creature endowed with a will has need to despair of life.
-Jules Verne
In spite of the opinions of certain narrow-minded people who would shut up the human race upon this globe, we shall one day travel to the Moon, the planets, and the stars with the same facility, rapidity and certainty as we now make the ocean voyage from Liverpool to New York.
-Jules Verne
While there is life there is hope. I beg to assert…that as long as a man’s heart beats, as long as a man’s flesh quivers, I do not allow that a being gifted with thought and will can allow himself to despair.
-Jules Verne
We were alone. Where, I could not say, hardly imagine. All was black, and such a dense black that, after some minutes, my eyes had not been able to discern even the faintest glimmer.
-Jules Verne
It seems wisest to assume the worst from the beginning…and let anything better come as a surprise.
-Jules Verne
The sea is everything. It covers seven tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and healthy. It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely, for he feels life stirring on all sides.
-Jules Verne
I believe cats to be spirits come to earth. A cat, I am sure, could walk on a cloud without coming through.
-Jules Verne
Before all masters, necessity is the one most listened to, and who teaches the best.
-Jules Verne
Look with all your eyes, look.
-Jules Verne
The chance which now seems lost may present itself at the last moment.
-Jules Verne
The earth does not need new continents, but new men.
-Jules Verne
An English criminal, you know is always better concealed in London than anywhere else.
-Jules Verne
Better to put things at the worst at first and reserve the best for a surprise.
-Jules Verne
The sea is only the embodiment of a supernatural and wonderful existence. It is nothing but love and emotion; it is the ‘Living Infinite…
-Jules Verne
Oh, figures!’ answered Ned. ‘You can make figures do whatever you want.
-Jules Verne
Now when an American has an idea, he directly seeks a second American to share it. If there be three, they elect a president and two secretaries. Given four, they name a keeper of records, and the office is ready for work; five, they convene a general meeting, and the club is fully constituted.
-Jules Verne
Better to put things at the worst at first and reserve the best for a surprise.
-Jules Verne
I have always made a point in my romances of basing my so-called inventions upon a groundwork of actual fact, and of using in their construction methods and materials which are not entirely without the pale of contemporary engineering skill and knowledge.
-Jules Verne
Man is so constituted that health is a purely negative state. Hunger once satisfied, it is difficult for a man to imagine the horrors of starvation; they cannot be understood without being felt.
-Jules Verne
What I’d like to be above all is a writer…
-Jules Verne
The wisest man may be a blind father.
-Jules Verne
It is not new continents the earth needs, but new men.
-Jules Verne
Nothing can astound an American. It has often been asserted that the word “impossible” is not a French one. People have evidently been deceived by the dictionary. In America, all is easy, all is simple; and as for mechanical difficulties, they are overcome before they arise.
-Jules Verne
I am very bad at expressing tender sentiments. The very word ‘love’ frightens me.
-Jules Verne
An English criminal, you know is always better concealed in London than anywhere else.
-Jules Verne
….oysters are the only food that never causes indigestion. Indeed, a man would have to eat sixteen dozen of these acephalous molluscs in order to gain the 315 grammes of nitrogen he requires daily.
-Jules Verne
I believe that water will one day be employed as fuel, that hydrogen and oxygen which constitute it, used singly or together, will furnish an inexhaustible source of heat and light, of an intensity of which coal is not capable.
-Jules Verne
It is certain,” exclaimed my uncle in a tone of triumph. “But silence, do you hear me? silence upon the whole subject; and let no one get before us in this design of discovering the centre of the earth.
-Jules Verne
It was obvious that the matter had to be settled, and evasions were distasteful to me.
-Jules Verne
Is the Master out of his mind?’ she asked me. I nodded. ‘And he’s taking you with him?’ I nodded again. ‘Where?’ she asked. I pointed towards the centre of the earth. ‘Into the cellar?’ exclaimed the old servant. ‘No,’ I said, ‘farther down than that.
-Jules Verne
In presence of Nature’s grand convulsions man is powerless.
-Jules Verne
All great actions return to God, from whom they are derived.
-Jules Verne
He who is mistaken in an action which he sincerely believes to be right may be an enemy, but retains our esteem.
-Jules Verne
And whichsoever way thou goest, may fortune follow.
-Jules Verne
Dinner was ready. Professor Lidenbrock did full justice to it, for his compulsory fast on board had turned his stomach into an unfathomable gulf.
-Jules Verne
What pen can describe this scene of marvellous horror; what pencil can portray it?
-Jules Verne
What one man can think, another man can do.
-Jules Verne
I would have bartered a diamond mine for a glass of pure spring water!
-Jules Verne
A scholar has to know a little of everything.
-Jules Verne
I looked on, I thought, I reflected, I admired, in a state of stupefaction not altogether unmingled with fear!
-Jules Verne
Anything a man can imagine, another can create
-Jules Verne
External objects produce decided effects upon the brain. A man shut up between four walls soon loses the power to associate words and ideas together. How many prisoners in solitary confinement become idiots, if not mad, for want of exercise for the thinking faculty!
-Jules Verne
Hunger, prolonged, is temporary madness! The brain is at work without its required food, and the most fantastic notions fill the mind. Hitherto I had never known what hunger really meant. I was likely to understand it now.
-Jules Verne
In the memory of the dead all chronological differences are effaced.
-Jules Verne
Poets are like proverbs: you can always find one to contradict another.
-Jules Verne
The moon, by her comparative proximity, and the constantly varying appearances produced by her several phases, has always occupied a considerable share of the attention of the inhabitants of the earth.
-Jules Verne
In lighthearted countries, people joked about this phenomenon, but such serious, practical countries as England, America, and Germany were deeply concerned.
-Jules Verne
Nature’s creative power is far beyond man’s instinct of destruction.
-Jules Verne
An Englishman does not joke about such an important matter as a bet.
-Jules Verne
What darkness to you is light to me
-Jules Verne
It was all very well for an Englishman like Mr. Fogg to make the tour of the world with a carpet-bag; a lady could not be expected to travel comfortably under such conditions.
-Jules Verne
Man is never perfect nor contented.
-Jules Verne
Solitude, isolation, are painful things, and beyond human endurance.
-Jules Verne
However, everything has an end, everything passes away, even the hunger of people who have not eaten
-Jules Verne
But to find, all at once, right before your eyes, that the impossible had been mysteriously achieved by man himself: this staggers the mind!
-Jules Verne
My house is small, but may heaven grant that it is never full of friends.
-Jules Verne
Therever fortune clears a way, thither our ready footsteps stray.
-Jules Verne
A cow peacefully grazing fifty yards away received one of the bullets in her back. She had nothing to do with the quarrel all the same.
-Jules Verne
During the War of the Rebellion, a new and influential club was established in the city of Baltimore in the State of Maryland
-Jules Verne
Everything is possible for an eccentric, especially when he is English.
-Jules Verne
Nothing is more dreadful than private duels in America. The two adversaries attack each other like wild beasts. Then it is that they might well covet those wonderful properties of the Indians of the prairies – their quick intelligence, their ingenious cunning, their scent of the enemy.
-Jules Verne
I had no need of sails to drive me, nor oars nor wheels to push me, nor rails to give me a faster road. Air is what I wanted, that was all. Air surrounds me as water surrounds the submarine boat, and in it my propellers act like the screws of a steamer. That is how I solved the problem of aviation. That is what a balloon will never do, nor will any machine that is lighter than air.
-Jules Verne
There is hope for the future, and when the world is ready for a new and better life, all these things will some day come to pass, – in God’s good time
-Jules Verne
I have been, am, in his service; I have seen his generosity and goodness; and I will never betray him-not for all the gold in the world. I have come from a village where they don’t eat that kind of bread.
-Jules Verne
I say, you do have a heart!” “Sometimes,” he replied, “when I have the time.
-Jules Verne
On the earth, even in the darkest night, the light never wholly abandons his rule. It is diffused and subtle, but little as may remain, the retina of the eye is sensible of it.
-Jules Verne
[we see that] science is eminently perfectible, and that each theory has constantly to give way to a fresh one.
-Jules Verne
But Phileas Fogg, who was not traveling, but only describing a circumfrence,…
-Jules Verne
On the surface of the ocean, men wage war and destroy each other; but down here, just a few feet beneath the surface, there is a calm and peace, unmolested by man
-Jules Verne
Everybody knows that the great reversed triangle of land, with its base in the north and its apex in the south, which is called India, embraces fourteen hundred thousand square miles, upon which is spread unequally a population of one hundred and eighty millions of souls.
-Jules Verne
Well, gentlemen, do you believe in the possibility of aerial locomotion by machines heavier than air? … You ask yourselves doubtless if this apparatus, so marvellously adapted for aerial locomotion, is susceptible of receiving greater speed. It is not worth while to conquer space if we cannot devour it. I wanted the air to be a solid support to me, and it is. I saw that to struggle against the wind I must be stronger than the wind, and I am.
-Jules Verne
It’s really useful to travel, if you want to see new things.
-Jules Verne
One’s native land!?there should one live! there die!
-Jules Verne
Trains, like time and tide, stop for no one.
-Jules Verne
When the mind once allows a doubt to gain entrance, the value of deeds performed grow less, their character changes, we forget the past and dread the future.
-Jules Verne
The sea is the vast reservoir of Nature. The globe began with sea, so to speak; and who knows if it will not end with it?
-Jules Verne
The colonists had no library at their disposal; but the engineer was a book which was always at hand, always open at the page which one wanted, a book which answered all their questions, and which they often consulted.
-Jules Verne
What you do for money you do badly.
-Jules Verne
Savages!’ he echoed, ironically. ‘You set foot on one of the shores of this globe, professor, and you’re surprised to find savages? Where aren’t there savages? Besides, are they any worse than others, these whom you call savages?
-Jules Verne
Well, I thought I was so tranquil! I need to give up that illusion! There is decidedly no rest to be had in this world.
-Jules Verne
How tranquil is a coral tomb, and may the heavens grant that my companions and I be buried in no other!
-Jules Verne
The cold, increased by the tremendous speed, deprived them of the power of speech.
-Jules Verne
Powder is but a thing of yesterday, and war is as old as the human race–unhappily.
-Jules Verne
Captain Nemo pointed to this prodigious heap of shellfish, and I saw that these mines were genuinely inexhaustible, since nature’s creative powers are greater than man’s destructive instincts.
-Jules Verne
It may be taken for granted that, rash as the Americans are, when they are prudent there is good reason for it.
-Jules Verne
Science, my lad, has been built upon many errors; but they are errors which it was good to fall into, for they led to the truth.
-Jules Verne
I have always fancied that the end of the world will be when some enormous boiler, heated to three thousand millions of atmospheric pressure, shall explode and blow up the globe. … They [the Americans] are great boilermakers.
-Jules Verne
I believe cats to be spirits come to earth.
-Jules Verne
The Great Architect of the universe built it of good firm stuff.
-Jules Verne
Science, my boy, is composed of errors, but errors that it is right to make, for they lead step by step to the truth.
-Jules Verne
No sooner is the rage of hunger appeased than it becomes difficult to comprehend the meaning of starvation. It is only when you suffer that you really understand.
-Jules Verne
The sole precoccupation of this learned society was the destruction of humanity for philanthropic reasons and the perfection of weapons as instruments of civilization.
-Jules Verne
Whatever one man is capable of imagining, other men will prove themselves capable of realizing.
-Jules Verne
Ah!” I cried, springing up. “But no! no! My uncle shall never know it. He would insist upon doing it too. He would want to know all about it. Ropes could not hold him, such a determined geologist as he is! He would start, he would, in spite of everything and everybody, and he would take me with him, and we should never get back. No, never! never!” My over-excitement was beyond all description.
-Jules Verne
When I returned to partial life my face was wet with tears. How long that state of insensibility had lasted I cannot say. I had no means now of taking account of time. Never was solitude equal to this, never had any living being been so utterly forsaken.
-Jules Verne
There is no more sagacious animal than the Icelandic horse. He is stopped by neither snow, nor storm, nor impassable roads, nor rocks, glaciers, or anything. He is courageous, sober, and surefooted. He never makes a false step, never shies. If there is a river or fjord to cross (and we shall meet with many) you will see him plunge in at once, just as if he were amphibious, and gain the opposite bank.
-Jules Verne
I saw the world. I learnt of new cultures. I flew across an ocean. I wore women’s clothing. Made a friend. Fell in love. Who cares if I lost a wager? Queen Victoria: I do! I’ve got 20 quid riding on you
-Jules Verne
But what then? What had he really gained by all this trouble? What had he brought back from this long and weary journey? Nothing, you say? Perhaps so; nothing but a charming woman, who, strange as it may appear, made him the happiest of men! Truly, would you not for less than that make the tour around the world?
-Jules Verne
What a big book, captain, might be made with all that is known!” “And what a much bigger book still with all that is not known!
-Jules Verne
Ah, monsieur, to live in the bosom of the sea! Only there can independence be found! There I recognize no master! There I am free!
-Jules Verne
As for difficulties,” replied Ferguson, in a serious tone, “they were made to be overcome.
-Jules Verne
Until I dicover the meaning of this sentence, I will neither eat nor sleep. “My dear uncle-” I began. “Nor you either,” he added.
-Jules Verne
The human mind delights in grand conceptions of supernatural beings.
-Jules Verne
With time and thought, one can do a good job.
-Jules Verne
How many things have been denied one day, only to become realities the next!
-Jules Verne
Well, I feel that we should always put a little art into what we do. It’s better that way.
-Jules Verne
Your dead sleep quietly, at least, Captain, out of reach of sharks” “Yes, sir, of sharks and men.
-Jules Verne
Wherever he saw a hole he always wanted to know the depth of it. To him this was important.
-Jules Verne
I am nothing to you but Captain Nemo; and you and your companions are nothing to me but the passengers of the Nautilus.
-Jules Verne
A true Englishman doesn’t joke when he is talking about so serious a thing as a wager.
-Jules Verne
Why lower oneself to taking pride from being American or British, when you can boast of being man!
-Jules Verne
He believed in it, as certain good women believe in the leviathan-by faith, not by reason.
-Jules Verne
Yes, I could see these enormous elephants, whose trunks were tearing down large boughs, and working in and out the trees like a legion of serpents. I could hear the sounds of the mighty tusks uprooting huge trees!
-Jules Verne
All that is impossible remains to be accomplished.
-Jules Verne
At Kiel, as elsewhere, a day goes by somehow or other.
-Jules Verne
With its untold depths, couldn’t the sea keep alive such huge specimens of life from another age, this sea that never changes while the land masses undergo almost continuous alteration? Couldn’t the heart of the ocean hide the last–remaining varieties of these titanic species, for whom years are centuries and centuries millennia?
-Jules Verne
I can undertake and persevere even without hope of success.
-Jules Verne
I wanted to see what no one had yet observed, even if I had to pay for this curiosity with my life.
-Jules Verne
He must have travelled everywhere, at least in the spirit.
-Jules Verne
The distance between the earth and her satellite is a mere trifle, and undeserving of serious consideration. I am convinced that before twenty years are over one-half of our earth will have paid a visit to the moon.
-Jules Verne
Scent is the soul of flowers, and sea flowers, as splendid as they may be, have no soul!
-Jules Verne
Aures habent et non audient` – `They have ears but hear not
-Jules Verne
If there were no thunder, men would have little fear of lightning.
-Jules Verne
It swam crossways in the direction of the Nautilus with great speed, watching us with its enormous staring green eyes. Its eight arms, or rather feet, fixed to its head, that have given the name of cephalopod to these animals, were twice as long as its body, and were twisted like the furies’ hair.
-Jules Verne
Great robbers always resemble honest folk. Fellows who have rascally faces have only one course to take, and that is to remain honest; otherwise, they would be arrested off-hand.
-Jules Verne
Civilization never recedes; the law of necessity ever forces it onwards.
-Jules Verne
From the moment they had left the Earth, their own weight, and that of the Projectile and the objects therein contained, had been undergoing a progressive diminution. . . . Of course, it is quite clear, that this decrease could not be indicated by an ordinary scales, as the weight to balance the object would have lost precisely as much as the object itself. But a spring balance, for instance, in which the tension of the coil is independent of attraction, would have readily given the exact equivalent of the loss.
-Jules Verne
What use are the best of arguments when they can be destroyed by force?
-Jules Verne
On the morrow the horizon was covered with clouds- a thick and impenetrable curtain between earth and sky, which unhappily extended as far as the Rocky Mountains. It was a fatality!
-Jules Verne
I see that it is by no means useless to travel, if a man wants to see something new
-Jules Verne
Liberty is worth paying for.
-Jules Verne
You are going to visit the land of marvels.
-Jules Verne
As for Phileas Fogg, it seemed just as if the typhoon were a part of his programme
-Jules Verne
However, the balloon, lightened of heavy articles, such as ammunition, arms, and provisions, had risen into the higher layers of the atmosphere, to a height of 4,500 feet. The voyagers, after having discovered that the sea extended beneath them, and thinking the dangers above less dreadful than those below, did not hesitate to throw overboard even their most useful articles, while they endeavored to lose no more of that fluid, the life of their enterprise, which sustained them above the abyss.
-Jules Verne
It must be, for there is a logic to everything on this earth and nothing is done without a reason, that God sometimes lets scientists discover.
-Jules Verne
You will travel in a Land of Marvels
-Jules Verne
The human mind delights in grand conceptions of supernatural beings. And the sea is precisely their best vehicle, the only medium through which these giants (against which terrestrial animals, such as elephants or rhinoceroses, are as nothing) can be produced or developed
-Jules Verne
Steam seems to have killed all gratitude in the hearts of sailors.
-Jules Verne
He was the most deliberate person in the world, yet always reached his destination at the exact moment. As for Phileas Fogg, it seemed just as if the typhoon were a part of his programme. Around the world in eighty days
-Jules Verne