“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”
Source: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea / Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (Bilingual Edition: English - French / Édition bilingue: anglais - français)
“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.”
Source: From The Earth To The Moon / De la terre à la lune (Bilingual Edition: English - French / Édition bilingue: anglais - français)
“Though sleep is called our best friend, it is a friend who often keeps us waiting!”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Jules Verne (Illustrated)
“Everything is possible for an eccentric, especially when he is English.”
Source: A Floating City, and, the Blockade Runners
“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.”
Source: From The Earth To The Moon / De la terre à la lune (Bilingual Edition: English - French / Édition bilingue: anglais - français)
“Trains, like time and tide, stop for no one.”
Source: Around The World in 80 Days
“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.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Jules Verne (Illustrated)
“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?”
Source: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea / Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (Bilingual Edition: English - French / Édition bilingue: anglais - français)
“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.”
Source: The Mysterious Island (World Classics, Unabridged)
“What you do for money you do badly.”
Source: The Extraordinary Journeys: The Adventures of Captain Hatteras
“We now know most things that can be measured in this world, except the bounds of human ambition!”
Source: The Extraordinary Journeys: The Adventures of Captain Hatteras
“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.”
“Powder is but a thing of yesterday, and war is as old as the human race--unhappily.”
Source: The Mysterious Island (World Classics, Unabridged)
“The cold, increased by the tremendous speed, deprived them of the power of speech.”
Source: The best of Jules Verne: three complete, illustrated novels, with original illustrations
“One's native land!?there should one live! there die!”
Source: The Mysterious Island (World Classics, Unabridged)
“It's really useful to travel, if you want to see new things.”
Source: Around the World in Eighty Days
“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.”
“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.”
“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”
“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.”
Source: Abandoned
“....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.”
“An English criminal, you know is always better concealed in London than anywhere else.”
Source: Around the World in Eighty Days
“Better to put things at the worst at first and reserve the best for a surprise.”
Source: The Mysterious Island
“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.”
Source: Invasion of the Sea
“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.”
Source: Journey to the Interior of the Earth
“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.”
Source: From the Earth to the moon (low cost). Limited edition
“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.”
Source: From The Earth To The Moon / De la terre à la lune (Bilingual Edition: English - French / Édition bilingue: anglais - français)
“It is not new continents the earth needs, but new men.”
“The wisest man may be a blind father.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Jules Verne (Illustrated)
“What I'd like to be above all is a writer.”
Source: The Extraordinary Journeys: The Adventures of Captain Hatteras
“I am very bad at expressing tender sentiments. The very word 'love' frightens me.”
Source: Around the World in Eighty Days
“Anything capable of being imagined will one day be made reality.”
“Anything you can imagine you can make real.”
“I believe cats to be spirits come to earth. A cat, I am sure, could walk on a cloud without coming through.”
“We may brave human laws, but we cannot resist natural ones.”
Source: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea / Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (Bilingual Edition: English - French / Édition bilingue: anglais - français)
“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.”
“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.”
Source: Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea: Science Fiction Stories
“Liberty is worth paying for.”
Source: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea / Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (Bilingual Edition: English - French / Édition bilingue: anglais - français)
“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?”
Source: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea / Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (Bilingual Edition: English - French / Édition bilingue: anglais - français)
“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!”
Source: From the Earth to the Moon
“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.”
Source: Around the World in Eighty Days
“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”
“[we see that] science is eminently perfectible, and that each theory has constantly to give way to a fresh one.”
Source: Journey to the Center of the Earth
“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.”
Source: Journey to the Center of the Earth
“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.”
“I say, you do have a heart!" "Sometimes," he replied, "when I have the time.”
Source: Around the World in Eighty Days
“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.”
Source: Around the world in eighty days/Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours (bilingual edition/édition bilingue)
“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?”
“Reality provides us with facts so romantic that imagination itself could add nothing to them.”
“In lighthearted countries, people joked about this phenomenon, but such serious, practical countries as England, America, and Germany were deeply concerned.”
Source: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
