Jules Verne

Novelist

1828-02-08 – 1905-03-24

Jules Verne was a French novelist and pioneer of adventure and science fiction literature. His works, including Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Around the World in Eighty Days, influenced modern speculative fiction.

Books by Jules Verne

Vingt mille lieues sous les mers
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De la terre à la lune
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Voyage au Centre de la Terre
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Quotes by Jules Verne

There is no more sagacious animal than the Icelandic horse. He is stopped by neither snow, nor storm, nor impassable roads, nor rocks, glaciers, or anything. He is courageous, sober, and surefooted. He never makes a false step, never shies. If there is a river or fjord to cross (and we shall meet with many) you will see him plunge in at once, just as if he were amphibious, and gain the opposite bank.
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The sea is everything. It covers seven-tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and life-giving. It is an immense desert place where man is never lonely, for he senses the weaving of Creation on every hand. It is the physical embodiment of a supernatural existence... For the sea is itself nothing but love and emotion. It is the Living Infinite, as one of your poets has said. Nature manifests herself in it, with her three kingdoms: mineral, vegetable, and animal. The ocean is the vast reservoir of Nature.
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Phileas Fogg, having shut the door of his house at half-past eleven, and having put his right foot before his left five hundred and seventy-five times, and his left foot before his right five hundred and seventy-six times, reached the Reform Club
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In the meantime, there is not an hour to lose. I am about to visit the public library.
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The sea is only the embodiment of asupernatural and wonderful existence.It is nothing but love and emotionit is the —Living Infinite...
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We are of opinion that instead of letting books grow moldy behind an iron grating, far from the vulgar gaze, it is better to let them wear out by being read.
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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 steppingstones to truth.
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I gazed at these marvels in profound silence. Words were utterly wanting to indicate the sensations of wonder I experienced. I seemed, as I stood upon that mysterious shore, as if I were some wandering inhabitant of a distant planet, present for the first time at the spectacle of some terrestrial phenomena belonging to another existence. To give body and existence to such new sensations would have required the coinage of new words - and here my feeble brain found itself wholly at fault. I looked on, I thought, I reflected, I admired, in a state of stupefaction not altogether unmingled with fear!
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But in the cause of science men are expected to suffer.
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[we see that] science is eminently perfectible, and that each theory has constantly to give way to a fresh one.
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Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.
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Why, you are a man of heart!Sometimes, replied Phileas Fogg, quietly. When I have the time.
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Still, for long the love of science triumphed over all other feelings. He became an artist deeply impressed by the marvels of art, a philosopher to whom no one of the higher sciences was unknown, a statesman versed in the policy of European courts. To the eyes of those who observed him superficially he might have passed for one of those cosmopolitans, curious of knowledge, but disdaining action; one of those opulent travelers, haughty and cynical, who move incessantly from place to place, and are of no country.
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Reality provides us with facts so romantic that imagination itself could add nothing to them.
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So, fatality will play me these terrible tricks. The elements themselves conspire to overwhelm me with mortification. Air, fire, and water combine their united efforts to oppose my passage. Well, they shall see what the earnest will of a determined man can do. I will not yield, I will not retreat even one inch; and we shall see who shall triumph in this great contest - man or nature.
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It seems wisest to assume the worst from the beginning...and let anything better come as a surprise.
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Science, my boy, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.
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There is no more sagacious animal than the Icelandic horse. He is stopped by neither snow, nor storm, nor impassable roads, nor rocks, glaciers, or anything. He is courageous, sober, and surefooted. He never makes a false step, never shies. If there is a river or fjord to cross (and we shall meet with many) you will see him plunge in at once, just as if he were amphibious, and gain the opposite bank.
Read quote
The sea is everything. It covers seven-tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and life-giving. It is an immense desert place where man is never lonely, for he senses the weaving of Creation on every hand. It is the physical embodiment of a supernatural existence... For the sea is itself nothing but love and emotion. It is the Living Infinite, as one of your poets has said. Nature manifests herself in it, with her three kingdoms: mineral, vegetable, and animal. The ocean is the vast reservoir of Nature.
Read quote
It seems wisest to assume the worst from the beginning...and let anything better come as a surprise.
Read quote