Jules Verne Quotations

We may brave human laws, but we cannot resist natural ones.

Though sleep is called our best friend, it is a friend who often keeps us waiting!

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.

Well, my friend, this earth will one day be that cold corpse; it will become uninhabitable and uninhabited like the moon, which has long since lost all its vital heat.

The sea is only the embodiment of a supernatural and wonderful existence.

With happiness as with health: to enjoy it, one should be deprived of it occasionally.

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.

The Yankees, the first mechanicians in the world, are engineers - just as the Italians are musicians and the Germans metaphysicians - by right of birth. Nothing is more natural, therefore, than to perceive them applying their audacious ingenuity to the science of gunnery.

However strong, however imposing a ship may appear, it is not 'disgraced' because it flies before the tempest. A commander ought always to remember that a man's life is worth more than the mere satisfaction of his own pride. In any case, to be obstinate is blameable, and to be wilful is dangerous.

It may be taken for granted that, rash as Americans usually are, when they are prudent, there is good reason for it.

I believe cats to be spirits come to earth. A cat, I am sure, could walk on a cloud without coming through.

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.

In spite of the opinions of certain narrow-minded people, who would shut up the human race upon this globe, as within some magic circle it must never outstep, 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 voyage from Liverpool to New York!

Imagine a society in which there were neither rich nor poor. What evils, afflictions, sorrows, disorders, catastrophes, disasters, tribulations, misfortunes, agonies, calamities, despair, desolation and ruin would be unknown to man!

Dost thou know what life is, my child? Hast thou comprehended the action of those springs which produce existence? Hast thou examined thyself?

Put two ships in the open sea, without wind or tide, and, at last, they will come together. Throw two planets into space, and they will fall one on the other. Place two enemies in the midst of a crowd, and they will inevitably meet; it is a fatality, a question of time; that is all.

Trains, like time and tide, stop for no one.

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?

When one has taken root, one puts out branches.

A man of merit owes himself to the homage of the rest of mankind who recognize his worth.

The possession of wealth leads almost inevitably to its abuse. It is the chief, if not the only, cause of evils which desolate this world below. The thirst for gold is responsible for the most regrettable lapses into sin.

Everything is possible for an eccentric, especially when he is English.

If Providence has created the stars and the planets, man has called the cannonball into existence.

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!

Solitude, isolation, are painful things, and beyond human endurance.

I have noticed that many who do not believe in God believe in everything else, even in the evil eye.

Man, a mere inhabitant of the earth, cannot overstep its boundaries! But though he is confined to its crust, he may penetrate into all its secrets.

It is certain that the inanimate objects by which you are surrounded have a direct action on the brain.

You're never rich enough if you can be richer.

Far better to be the simplest pedestrian, with knapsack on back, stick in hand, and gun on shoulder, than an Indian prince travelling with all the ceremonial which his rank requires.

Everything great in science and art is simple. What can be less complicated than the greatest discoveries of humanity - gravitation, the compass, the printing press, the steam engine, the electric telegraph?

He who is mistaken in an action which he sincerely believes to be right may be an enemy, but retains our esteem.

In presence of Nature's grand convulsions man is powerless.

Ah! Young people, travel if you can, and if you cannot - travel all the same!

The industrial stomach cannot live without coal; industry is a carbonivorous animal and must have its proper food.

An energetic man will succeed where an indolent one would vegetate and inevitably perish.

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.

Be it understood you are never rich when you get no advantage from it.

Dost thou not understand that there are two distinct forces in us, that of the soul and that of the body, that is, a movement and a regulator?

Everybody knows that England is the world of betting men, who are of a higher class than mere gamblers: to bet is in the English temperament.

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.

It is said that the night brings counsel, but it is not said that the counsel is necessarily good.

You cannot oppose reasoning to pride, the principal of all the vices, since, by its very nature, the proud man refuses to listen to it.

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?

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.

I seriously believed that my last hour was approaching, and yet, so strange is imagination, all I thought of was some childish hypothesis or other. In such circumstances, you do not choose your own thoughts. They overcome you.

Man's constitution is so peculiar that his health is purely a negative matter. 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.

Before all masters, necessity is the one most listened to, and who teaches the best.

The body regulates the soul, and, like the balance-wheel, it is submitted to regular oscillations.

Put two Yankees in a room together, and in an hour they will each have gained ten dollars from the other.

A true Englishman doesn't joke when he is talking about so serious a thing as a wager.

Fellows who have rascally faces have only one course to take, and that is to remain honest; otherwise, they would be arrested off-hand.

'Movement is life;' and it is well to be able to forget the past, and kill the present by continual change.

You seize sentiment better when you get clear of nature. You breathe it in every sense!

Civilization never recedes; the law of necessity ever forces it onwards.

One's native land! There should one live! There die!

When science has sent forth her fiat - it is only to hear and obey.

When you bring a man two millions of money, you need have but little fear that you will not be well received.

The sea does not belong to despots. Upon its surface men can still exercise unjust laws, fight, tear one another to pieces, and be carried away with terrestrial horrors. But at thirty feet below its level, their reign ceases, their influence is quenched, and their power disappears.

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.

I repeat that 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.

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.

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.

It is always a vulgar and often an unhealthy pastime, and it is a vice which does not go alone; the man who gambles will find himself capable of any evil.

Numerous observations made upon fevers, somnambulisms, and other human maladies, seem to prove that the moon does exercise some mysterious influence upon man.

So is man's heart. The desire to perform a work which will endure, which will survive him, is the origin of his superiority over all other living creatures here below. It is this which has established his dominion, and this it is which justifies it, over all the world.

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.

One has only to follow events, and you will be all right. The surest way is to take whatever comes as it comes.

The wisest man may be a blind father.

It must be that a man who shuts himself up between four walls must lose the faculty of associating ideas and words.

In consequence of inventing machines, men will be devoured by them.

In the United States, there is no project so audacious for which people cannot be found to guarantee the cost and find the working expenses.

It is for others one must learn to do everything; for there lies the secret of happiness.

What is there unreasonable in admitting the intervention of a supernatural power in the most ordinary circumstances of life?

The Chinaman has only a passive courage, but this courage he possesses in the highest degree. His indifference to death is truly extraordinary. When he is ill, he sees it approach, and does not falter. When condemned, and already in the hands of an officer, he manifests no fear.

The regions of the North Pole situated within the eighty-fourth degree of north latitude have not yet been utilized, for the very good reason that they have not yet been discovered.

To modify the conditions of the Earth's movement is beyond the powers of man. It is not given to mankind to change the order established by the Creator in the system of the Universe.

To put up with what you cannot avoid is a philosophical principle, that may not perhaps lead you to the accomplishment of great deeds, but is assuredly eminently practical.

On the 31st of October, at ten o'clock in the morning, the troop disembarked on the quays of Tampa Town; and one may imagine the activity which pervaded that little town, whose population was thus doubled in a single day.

He rose at thirteen minutes to one, and directed his steps towards the large hall, a sumptuous apartment adorned with lavishly-framed paintings. A flunkey handed him an uncut Times, which he proceeded to cut with a skill which betrayed familiarity with this delicate operation.

Whatever one man is capable of conceiving, other men will be able to achieve

Was I to believe him in earnest in his intention to penetrate to the centre of this massive globe? Had I been listening to the mad speculations of a lunatic, or to the scientific conclusions of a lofty genius? Where did truth stop? Where did error begin?

To those who were not familiar with the motions of the moon, they demonstrated that she possesses two distinct motions, the first being that of rotation upon her axis, the second being that of revolution round the earth, accomplishing both together in an equal period of time, that is to say, in twenty-seven and one-third days.

The way of describing this unlooked-for scene, the history of the patriot ship, told at first so coldly, and the emotion with which this strange man pronounced the last words, the name of the Avenger, the significance of which could not escape me, all impressed itself deeply on my mind. My eyes did not leave the Captain, who, with his hand stretched out to sea, was watching with a glowing eye the glorious wreck.

The resolutions passed at the last meeting produced a great effect out of doors. Timid people took fright at the idea of a shot weighing 20,000 pounds being launched into space; they asked what cannon could ever transmit a sufficient velocity to such a mighty mass.

This forcible abduction, so roughly carried out, was accomplished with the rapidity of lightning. I shivered all over. Whom had we to deal with? No doubt some new sort of pirates, who explored the sea in their own way. Hardly had the narrow panel closed upon me, when I was enveloped in darkness.

Ah, pierce me 100 times with your needles fine and I will thank you 100 times, Saint Morphine, you who Aeseulapus has made a God.

How much further can we go? What are the final frontiers in this quest for travel? Will humankind only be satisfied when journeys into space become readily available and affordable?

How many persons condemned to the horrors of solitary confinement have gone mad - simply because the thinking faculties have lain dormant!

He believed in it, as certain good women believe in the leviathan--by faith, not by reason.

How many things have been denied one day, only to become realities the next!

Anything one man can imagine, other men can make real.

Reality provides us with facts so romantic that imagination itself could add nothing to them.

The chance which now seems lost may present itself at the last moment.

There are no impossible obstacles; there are just stronger and weaker wills, that’s all!

Why lower oneself to taking pride from being American or British, when you can boast of being man!

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.

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.

The Great Architect of the universe built it of good firm stuff.

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.