Axel Quotes

“This return of trust in God’s providence allayed the turbulence of my fears, and I was enabled to concentrate upon my situation all the force of my intelligence.”

″... I can hardly believe my eyes. Who would have ever imagined, under this terrestrial crust, an ocean with ebbing and flowing tides, with winds and storms?”

“As for me, my thoughts were made up of remembrances, and they carried me up to the surface of the globe which I ought never to have taken leave.”

″... since there was no indication whatever to guide our choice, we were obliged to trust to chance.”

“We were standing at the intersection of two roads, both dark and narrow. Which were we to take? This was a difficulty. Still my uncle refused to admit an appearance of hesitation, either before me or the guide...”

“But one concern, one might even say a torment, remained in the middle of this glory. One fact remained inexplicable, the one involving the compass; now for a scholar, such an unexplained phenomenon becomes torture for the intelligence.”

“This is the end of a story that even people who are not usually amazed at anything may refuse to believe. But I am armed in advance against human incredulity.”

“Then my uncle became a great man, and myself the nephew of a great man, which is at least something.”

“A sudden light burst in on me; these hints alone gave me the first glimpse of truth; I had discovered the key to the cipher.”

″... I no longer had any feeling other than the dark terror of the condemned tied to the mouth of a cannon, at the moment when the shot is fired and scatters their limbs into the air.”

“Well! Heaven had destined my uncle to become completely happy.”

“Where did truth stop? Where did error begin? I was all adrift among a thousand contradictory hypotheses, but I could not lay hold of one.”

“Science, my lad, has been built upon many errors; but they are errors which it was good to fall into, for they led to the truth.”

“Ah, women and young girls, how incomprehensible are your feminine hearts! When you are not the timidest, you are the bravest of creatures.”