“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.”

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.

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!

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

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?

My weaknesses had become my strengths, my ugliness had become beauty, my apathy to the world had become a desire to save it.

All the evils that men cause to each other because of certain desires, or opinions or religious principles, are rooted in ignorance. [All hatred would come to an end] when the earth was flooded with the knowledge of God.

When did reason ever direct our desires or our fears?

He who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence.

And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds, And binding with briars, my joys & desires.

Sooner strangle an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.

Those who restrain desire do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.

For to desire is better than to possess, the finality of the end was dreaded as deeply as it was desired.