Jules Verne - Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870)

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

Jules Verne
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
In the memory of the dead all chronological differences are effaced.

Jules Verne
You have carried your investigations as far as terrestrial science allowed you. But on board my vessel you will have an opportunity of seeing what no man has seen before. Thanks to me, our planet will give up her last secrets.

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
The sea is the vast reservoir of Nature. The globe began with sea, so to speak; and who knows if it will not end with it?

Jules Verne
He believed in it, as certain good women believe in the leviathan-by faith, not by reason.

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
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
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
Whoever calls himself Canadian calls himself French.

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

Jules Verne
Thus ends the voyage under the seas. What passed during that night — how the boat escaped from the eddies of the maelstrom — how Ned Land, Conseil, and myself ever came out of the gulf, I cannot tell.

Jules Verne
How tranquil is a coral tomb, and may the heavens grant that my companions and I be buried in no other!

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
The human mind delights in grand conceptions of supernatural beings. And the sea is precisely their best vehicle, the only medium through which these giants (against which terrestrial animals, such as elephants or rhinoceroses, are as nothing) can be produced or developed.

Jules Verne
Scent is the soul of flowers, and sea flowers, as splendid as they may be, have no soul!

Jules Verne
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.

Jules Verne
I am nothing to you but Captain Nemo; and you and your companions are nothing to me but the passengers of the Nautilus.

Jules Verne
The Earth does not want new continents, but new men.

Jules Verne
The sea is everything. It covers seven tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and healthy. It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely, for he feels life stirring on all sides. The sea is only the embodiment of a supernatural and wonderful existence. It is nothing but love and emotion.

Jules Verne
I wanted to see what no one had yet observed, even if I had to pay for this curiosity with my life.

Jules Verne
What good would it be to discuss such a proposition, when force could destroy the best arguments?

Jules Verne