Jules Verne Quotes

129 Sourced Quotes

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 cannot prevent equilibrium from producing its effects. We may brave human laws, but we cannot resist natural ones.

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
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
Therever fortune clears a way, thither our ready footsteps stray.

Jules Verne
However, everything has an end, everything passes away, even the hunger of people who have not eaten

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

Jules Verne
My house is small, but may heaven grant that it is never full of friends.

Jules Verne
Fancy has depicted men without reflection, others without shadow. But here reality, by the neutralizations of attractive forces, produced men in whom nothing had any weight, and who weighed nothing themselves.

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
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
It is easily worked; it is widely spread in nature, alumina forming the bases of most rocks; it is three times lighter than iron; in short, it seems to have been created expressly to furnish material for our projectile!

Jules Verne
His imagination is a perfect volcano, and to make discoveries in the interest of geology he would sacrifice his life.

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
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
We now know most things that can be measured in this world, except the bounds of human ambition!

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

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
An English criminal, you know is always better concealed in London than anywhere else.

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

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. Between Barbicane's proposition and its realization no true Yankee would have allowed even the semblance of a difficulty to be possible. A thing with them is no sooner said than done.

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

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
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.

Jules Verne
What use are the best of arguments when they can be destroyed by force?

Jules Verne
Either my calculation is correct, or there is no truth in figures.

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

Jules Verne
I loved mineralogy, I loved geology. To me there was nothing like pebbles — and if my uncle had been in a little less of a fury, we should have been the happiest of families.

Jules Verne