Jules Verne - The Mysterious Island (1874)

16 Sourced Quotes

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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.

Jules Verne
"Better to put things at the worst at first," replied the engineer, "and reserve the best for a surprise."

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

Jules Verne
It swam crossways in the direction of the Nautilus with great speed, watching us with its enormous staring green eyes. Its eight arms, or rather feet, fixed to its head, that have given the name of cephalopod to these animals, were twice as long as its body, and were twisted like the furies' hair.

Jules Verne
It is a great misfortune to be alone, my friends; and it must be believed that solitude can quickly destroy reason.

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

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

Jules Verne
What a big book, captain, might be made with all that is known!" "And what a much bigger book still with all that is not known!

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

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

Jules Verne
What pen can describe this scene of marvellous horror; what pencil can portray it?

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
Powder is but a thing of yesterday, and war is as old as the human race--unhappily.

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
Captain Nemo pointed to this prodigious heap of shellfish, and I saw that these mines were genuinely inexhaustible, since nature's creative powers are greater than man's destructive instincts.

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

Jules Verne