Jules Verne Quotes

Les ondulations de ces montagnes infinies, que leurs couches de neige semblaient rendre écumantes, rappelaient à mon souvenir la surface d'une mer agitée. Si je me retournais vers l'ouest, l'Océan s'y développait dans sa majestueuse étendue, comme une continuation de ces sommets moutonneux. Où finissait la terre, où commençaient les flots, mon oeil le distinguait à peine. Je me plongeais ainsi dans cette prestigieuse extase que donnent les hautes cimes, et cette fois, sans vertige, car je m'accoutumais enfin à ces sublimes contemplations. Mes regards éblouis se baignaient dans la transparente irradiation des rayons solaires, j'oubliais qui j'étais, où j'étais, pour vivre de la vie des elfes ou des sylphes, imaginaires habitants de la mythologie scandinave; je m'enivrais de la volupté des hauteurs, sans songer aux abîmes dans lesquels ma destinée allait me plonger avant peu.

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

"And this accident came about...?"Through nature's unpredictability not man's incapacity. No errors were committed in our maneuvers. Nevertheless, we can't prevent a loss of balance from taking its toll. One may defy human laws, but no one can withstand the laws of nature.

We must look upon what is to occur as having already occurred, and see nothing but the present in the future, for the future is but the present a little farther on.

Steam seems to have killed all gratitude in the hearts of sailors.

If some volcano in the Alleghanies threatens North Carolina with a disaster similar to that of Martinique, buried beneath the outpourings of Mont Pelee, then these people must leave their homes.

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

"May the judge disappear, and the philosopher continue the peaceful exploration of the sea! If his destiny be strange, it is also sublime. Have I not understood it myself? Have I not lived ten months of this unnatural life? And to the question asked by Ecclesiastes three thousand years ago, "That which is far off and exceeding deep, who can find it out?" two men alone of all now living have the right to give an answer — — CAPTAIN NEMO AND MYSELF."

to the poet, a pearl is a tear of the sea

"Curious anomaly, fantastic element!" said an ingenious naturalist, "in which the animal kingdom blossoms, and the vegetable does not!"

Thus were formed those immense coalfields, which nevertheless, are not inexhaustible, and which three centuries at the present accelerated rate of consumption will exhaust unless the industrial world will devise a remedy.

A well-used minimum suffices for everything.

Well, I feel that we should always put a little art into what we do. It's better that way.

Et tant que son coeur bat, tant que sa chair palpite, je n'admets pas qu'un être doué de volonté laisse en lui place au désespoir.

"You have plenty of time; it's only twelve o'clock."

Passepartout pulled out his big watch. "Twelve!" he exclaimed; "why, it's only eight minutes before ten."

"Your watch is slow."

"My watch? A family watch, monsieur, which has come down from my great-grandfather! It doesn't vary five minutes in the year. It's a perfect chronometer, look you."

"I see how it is," said Fix. "You have kept London time, which is two hours behind that of Suez. You ought to regulate your watch at noon in each country."

"I regulate my watch? Never!"

"Well, then, it will not agree with the sun."

"So much the worse for the sun, monsieur. The sun will be wrong, then!"