“In presence of Nature’s grand convulsions man is powerless.”

I am very bad at expressing tender sentiments. The very word ‘love’ frightens me.

The sea is only the embodiment of a supernatural and wonderful existence. It is nothing but love and emotion; it is the ‘Living Infinite.

Trains, like time and tide, stop for no one.

How many things have been denied one day, only to become realities the next!

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

And whichsoever way thou goest, may fortune follow.

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

A scholar has to know a little of everything.

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

Why lower oneself to taking pride from being American or British, when you can boast of being man!

Science, my boy, is composed of errors, but errors that it is right to make, for they lead step by step to the truth.

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

What I’d like to be above all is a writer.

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?

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

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.

I guess I was the son you didn’t want but I grew into a man every mother would love. In your rejection, I was forced to find acceptance I filled your absence with the strength to be better.

Let the season’s aroma soak into your bones as gingerbread men come to life.

A wise woman knows the importance of covering her man in prayer.

I fought my way through plastic men the woman in me learned how to show her teeth no matter how fucking unladylike they say it makes me.

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man

Women don’t need protection from men, they need men not to hurt them in the first place.

That Wisedome is acquired, not by reading of Books, but of Men.

I must confess that I am interested in leisure in the same way that a poor man is interested in money.