Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea Quotes

The human mind delights in grand conceptions of supernatural beings.

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,′ as one of your poets has said.

We may brave human laws, but we cannot resist natural ones.

“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.”

“There remained one resource, to speak English. Perhaps they would know this almost universal language. I knew it—as well as the German language—well enough to read it fluently, but not to speak it correctly. But, anyhow, we must make ourselves understood.”

“I discovered it, ventured into it, and before long, sir, you too will have passed through my Arabian tunnel!”

“From a caprice of nature, not from the ignorance of man. Not a mistake has been made in the working. But we cannot prevent equilibrium from producing its effects. We may brave human laws, but we cannot resist natural ones.”

We will die together, friend Ned.

“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!”

Nature’s creative power is far beyond man’s instinct of destruction.

“God, if he believed in one—his conscience, if he had one—were the sole judges to whom he was answerable.”

Wait a few minutes, our lantern will be lit, and, if you like light places, you will be satisfied.

“As to classing it in the list of fables, the idea was out of the question.”

“His countenance had resumed its habitual imperturbability.”

The earth does not want new continents, but new men.

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!

If his destiny be strange, it is also sublime.

Where others have failed, I will not fail.

“There is the disadvantage of not knowing all languages,” said Conseil, “or the disadvantage of not having one universal language.”

[S]team seems to have killed all gratitude in the hearts of sailors.

I thanked Captain Nemo, and went up to the shelves of the library. Works on science, morals, and literature abounded in every language; but I did not see one single work on political economy; that subject appeared to be strictly proscribed. Strange to say, all these books were irregularly arranged, in whatever language they were written; and this medley proved that the Captain of the Nautilus must have read indiscriminately the books which he took up by chance.

However, everything has an end, everything passes away, even the hunger of people who have not eaten for fifteen hours. Our appetites satisfied, we felt overcome with sleep.

[I]t is evidently a gigantic narwhal, and an electric one.

“Perfume is the soul of the flower, and sea-flowers have no soul.”

May the judge disappear, and the philosopher continue the peaceful exploration of the sea!