Jules Verne - Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864)

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

Jules Verne
In truth, I was simply in the presence of a very ordinary product of the earth, of singular and gigantic proportions. My uncle unhesitatingly called them by their real names. "It is only," he said, in his coolest manner, "a forest of mushrooms."

Jules Verne
Descend into the crater of Yocul of Sneffels, which the shade of Scartaris caresses, before the kalends of July, audacious traveler, and you will reach the center of the earth. I did it.

Jules Verne
In the first place... you must keep the whole affair a profound secret. There is no more envious race of men than scientific discoverers. Many would start on the same journey. At all events, we will be the first in the field.

Jules Verne
In the cause of science men are expected to suffer.

Jules Verne
Science, great, mighty and in the end unerring... science has fallen into many errors — errors which have been fortunate and useful rather than otherwise, for they have been the stepping stones to truth.

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

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
But Heaven never sends unmixed grief, and for Professor Liedenbrock there was a satisfaction in store proportioned to his desperate anxieties.

Jules Verne
We see that science is eminently perfectible, and that each theory has constantly to give way to a fresh one.

Jules Verne
Hunger, prolonged, is temporary madness! The brain is at work without its required food, and the most fantastic notions fill the mind. Hitherto I had never known what hunger really meant. I was likely to understand it now.

Jules Verne
External objects produce decided effects upon the brain. A man shut up between four walls soon loses the power to associate words and ideas together. How many prisoners in solitary confinement become idiots, if not mad, for want of exercise for the thinking faculty!

Jules Verne
To describe my despair would be impossible. No words could tell it. I was buried alive, with the prospect before me of dying of hunger and thirst.

Jules Verne
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.

Jules Verne
While his heart still beats, while his flesh still moves, I cannot accept that a being endowed with will-power can give in to despair.

Jules Verne
We are of the opinion that instead of letting books grow mouldy behind an iron grating, far from the vulgar gaze, it is better to let them wear out by being read.

Jules Verne
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?

Jules Verne
Science, my lad, has been built upon many errors; but they are errors which it was good to fall into, for they led to the truth.

Jules Verne