Quotes from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

Jules Verne ·  394 pages

Rating: (158.4K votes)


“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; it is the Living Infinite. ”
― Jules Verne, quote from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea


“We may brave human laws, but we cannot resist natural ones.”
― Jules Verne, quote from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea


“If there were no thunder, men would have little fear of lightning.”
― Jules Verne, quote from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea


“The human mind delights in grand conceptions of supernatural beings.”
― Jules Verne, quote from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea


“Aures habent et non audient` - `They have ears but hear not”
― Jules Verne, quote from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea



“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.”
― Jules Verne, quote from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea


“The earth does not want new continents, but new men.”
― Jules Verne, quote from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea


“Nature's creative power is far beyond man's instinct of destruction.”
― Jules Verne, quote from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea


“Steam seems to have killed all gratitude in the hearts of sailors.”
― Jules Verne, quote from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea


“Your dead sleep quietly, at least, Captain, out of reach of sharks" "Yes, sir, of sharks and men.”
― Jules Verne, quote from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea



“If his destiny be strange, it is also sublime.”
― Jules Verne, quote from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea


“What use are the best of arguments when they can be destroyed by force?”
― Jules Verne, quote from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea


“The sea is only the embodiment of a supernatural and wonderful existence. It is nothing but love and emotion; it is the 'Living Infinite'...The globe began with sea, so to speak; and who knows if it will not end with it? In it is supreme tranquility.”
― Jules Verne, quote from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea


“No sir, it is evidently a gigantic narwhal”
― Jules Verne, quote from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea


“Oh, figures!' answered Ned. 'You can make figures do whatever you want.”
― Jules Verne, quote from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea



“It was obvious that the matter had to be settled, and evasions were distasteful to me.”
― Jules Verne, quote from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea


“However, everything has an end, everything passes away, even the hunger of people who have not eaten”
― Jules Verne, quote from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea


“Perfume is the soul of the flower, and sea-flowers have no soul.”
― Jules Verne, quote from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea


“With its untold depths, couldn't the sea keep alive such huge specimens of life from another age, this sea that never changes while the land masses undergo almost continuous alteration? Couldn't the heart of the ocean hide the last–remaining varieties of these titanic species, for whom years are centuries and centuries millennia?”
― Jules Verne, quote from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea


“I ask no more than to live a hundred years longer, that I may have more time to dwell the longer on your memory.”
― Jules Verne, quote from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea



“I am not what you call a civilised man! I have done with society entirely, for reasons which I alone have the right of appreciating. I do not, therefore, obey its laws, and I desire you never to allude to them before me again!”
― Jules Verne, quote from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea


“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, quote from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea


“Conseil: If that is the case, this dugong may well be the last of its race, and perhaps it would be better to spare it, in the interest of science.
Ned Land: Perhaps it will be better to hunt it, in the interest of the kitchen.”
― Jules Verne, quote from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea


“God, if he believed in Him, and his conscience, if he had one, were the only judges to whom he was answerable.”
― Jules Verne, quote from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea


“There is the disadvantage of not knowing all languages," said Conseil, "or the disadvantage of not having one universal language.”
― Jules Verne, quote from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea



“It was marvellous, a feast for the eyes, this complication of coloured tints, a perfect kaleidoscope of green, yellow, orange, violet, indigo, and blue; in one word, the whole palette of an enthusiastic colourist!”
― Jules Verne, quote from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea


“Adieu, soleil ! s'écria-t-il. Disparais, astre radieux ! Couche-toi sous cette mer libre, et laisse une nuit de six mois étendre ses ombres sur mon nouveau domaine !”
― Jules Verne, quote from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea


“Sir," replied the commander, "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, quote from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea


About the author

Jules Verne
Born place: in Nantes, Kingdom of France
Born date February 8, 1828
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