Jules Verne

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.

Why, you are a man of heart!""Sometimes," replied Phileas Fogg, quietly. "When I have the time.

Still, for long the love of science triumphed over all other feelings. He became an artist deeply impressed by the marvels of art, a philosopher to whom no one of the higher sciences was unknown, a statesman versed in the policy of European courts. To the eyes of those who observed him superficially he might have passed for one of those cosmopolitans, curious of knowledge, but disdaining action; one of those opulent travelers, haughty and cynical, who move incessantly from place to place, and are of no country.

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?

Liberty is worth paying for.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

So, fatality will play me these terrible tricks. The elements themselves conspire to overwhelm me with mortification. Air, fire, and water combine their united efforts to oppose my passage. Well, they shall see what the earnest will of a determined man can do. I will not yield, I will not retreat even one inch; and we shall see who shall triumph in this great contest - man or nature.

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?