- We may brave human laws, but we cannot resist natural ones.
- Solitude, isolation, are painful things and beyond human endurance.
- Ah! Young people, travel if you can, and if you cannot - travel all the same!
- Imagine a society in which there were neither rich nor poor. What evils, afflictions, sorrows, disorders, catastrophes, disasters, tribulations, misfortunes, agonies, calamities, despair, desolation and ruin would be unknown to man!
- If Providence has created the stars and the planets, man has called the cannonball into existence.
- The sea is only the embodiment of a supernatural and wonderful existence.
- I believe cats to be spirits come to earth. A cat, I am sure, could walk on a cloud without coming through.
- The Yankees, the first mechanicians in the world, are engineers - just as the Italians are musicians and the Germans metaphysicians - by right of birth. Nothing is more natural, therefore, than to perceive them applying their audacious ingenuity to the science of gunnery.
- Trains, like time and tide, stop for no one.
- It may be taken for granted that, rash as Americans usually are, when they are prudent, there is good reason for it.
- A man of merit owes himself to the homage of the rest of mankind who recognize his worth.
- In presence of Nature's grand convulsions, man is powerless.
- In spite of the opinions of certain narrow-minded people, who would shut up the human race upon this globe, as within some magic circle it must never outstep, we shall one day travel to the moon, the planets, and the stars, with the same facility, rapidity, and certainty as we now make the voyage from Liverpool to New York!
- Well, my friend, this earth will one day be that cold corpse; it will become uninhabitable and uninhabited like the moon, which has long since lost all its vital heat.
- Everything great in science and art is simple. What can be less complicated than the greatest discoveries of humanity - gravitation, the compass, the printing press, the steam engine, the electric telegraph?
- Nothing is more dreadful than private duels in America. The two adversaries attack each other like wild beasts. Then it is that they might well covet those wonderful properties of the Indians of the prairies - their quick intelligence, their ingenious cunning, their scent of the enemy.
- 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?
- 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.
- It is certain that the inanimate objects by which you are surrounded have a direct action on the brain.
- The possession of wealth leads almost inevitably to its abuse. It is the chief, if not the only, cause of evils which desolate this world below. The thirst for gold is responsible for the most regrettable lapses into sin.
- With happiness as with health: to enjoy it, one should be deprived of it occasionally.
- On the morrow the horizon was covered with clouds- a thick and impenetrable curtain between earth and sky, which unhappily extended as far as the Rocky Mountains. It was a fatality!
- However strong, however imposing a ship may appear, it is not 'disgraced' because it flies before the tempest. A commander ought always to remember that a man's life is worth more than the mere satisfaction of his own pride. In any case, to be obstinate is blameable, and to be wilful is dangerous.
- Put two ships in the open sea, without wind or tide, and, at last, they will come together. Throw two planets into space, and they will fall one on the other. Place two enemies in the midst of a crowd, and they will inevitably meet; it is a fatality, a question of time; that is all.
- Though sleep is called our best friend, it is a friend who often keeps us waiting!
- How many persons condemned to the horrors of solitary confinement have gone mad - simply because the thinking faculties have lain dormant!
- Before all masters, necessity is the one most listened to, and who teaches the best.
- Everybody knows that England is the world of betting men, who are of a higher class than mere gamblers: to bet is in the English temperament.
- Liberty is worth paying for.
- 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.
- Everything is possible for an eccentric, especially when he is English.
- Far better to be the simplest pedestrian, with knapsack on back, stick in hand, and gun on shoulder, than an Indian prince travelling with all the ceremonial which his rank requires.
- Man's constitution is so peculiar that his health is purely a negative matter. No sooner is the rage of hunger appeased than it becomes difficult to comprehend the meaning of starvation. It is only when you suffer that you really understand.
- Be it understood you are never rich when you get no advantage from it.
- You cannot oppose reasoning to pride, the principal of all the vices, since, by its very nature, the proud man refuses to listen to it.
- When one has taken root, one puts out branches.
- Dost thou not understand that there are two distinct forces in us, that of the soul and that of the body, that is, a movement and a regulator?
- Everybody knows that the great reversed triangle of land, with its base in the north and its apex in the south, which is called India, embraces fourteen hundred thousand square miles, upon which is spread unequally a population of one hundred and eighty millions of souls.
- It is said that the night brings counsel, but it is not said that the counsel is necessarily good.
- Dost thou know what life is, my child? Hast thou comprehended the action of those springs which produce existence? Hast thou examined thyself?
- While there is life, there is hope.
- I seriously believed that my last hour was approaching, and yet, so strange is imagination, all I thought of was some childish hypothesis or other. In such circumstances, you do not choose your own thoughts. They overcome you.
- Man is never perfect nor contented.
- I have noticed that many who do not believe in God believe in everything else, even in the evil eye.
- An energetic man will succeed where an indolent one would vegetate and inevitably perish.
- Put two Yankees in a room together, and in an hour they will each have gained ten dollars from the other.
- Man, a mere inhabitant of the earth, cannot overstep its boundaries! But though he is confined to its crust, he may penetrate into all its secrets.
- When the mind once allows a doubt to gain entrance, the value of deeds performed grow less, their character changes, we forget the past and dread the future.
- 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?
- You're never rich enough if you can be richer.
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