Leagues Under The Sea Quotes

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.

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

If there were no thunder, men would have little fear of lightning.

The human mind delights in grand conceptions of supernatural beings.

Aures habent et non audient` - `They have ears but hear not

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

Mobilis in Mobile

If his destiny be strange, it is also sublime.

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

What use are the best of arguments when they can be destroyed by force?

Your dead sleep quietly, at least, Captain, out of reach of sharks" "Yes, sir, of sharks and men.

However, everything has an end, everything passes away, even the hunger of people who have not eaten

Steam seems to have killed all gratitude in the hearts of sailors.

I read library books as fast as I could go, rushing them home in the basket of my bicycle. From the minute I reached our house, I started to read. Every book I seized on, from “Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Camp Rest-a-While” to “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,” stood for the devouring wish to read being instantly granted. I knew this was bliss, knew it at the time. Taste isn’t nearly so important; it comes in its own time.

I ask no more than to live a hundred years longer, that I may have more time to dwell the longer on your memory.

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.

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. —Jules Verne, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

No sir, it is evidently a gigantic narwhal

It was obvious that the matter had to be settled, and evasions were distasteful to me.

Sailing to an island unknown Failing to find your way home you walk under a sea leagues beneath us

I have been, am, in his service; I have seen his generosity and goodness; and I will never betray him-not for all the gold in the world. I have come from a village where they don't eat that kind of bread.

Oh, figures!' answered Ned. 'You can make figures do whatever you want.

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.

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

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.

God, if he believed in Him, and his conscience, if he had one, were the only judges to whom he was answerable.

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

What!You know German?

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.

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 !

Walls were invented simply to frustrate scientists. All walls should be banned.

Like snails, we were fixed to our shells, and I declare it is easy to lead a snail's life.

I declare it is easy to lead a snail's life.

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!

That terrible avenger, a perfect archangel of hatred.

That Indian, sir, is an inhabitant of an oppressed country; and I am still, and shall be, to my last breath, one of them!

to the poet, a pearl is a tear of the sea

Where others have failed, I will not fail.

the human imagination soon got caught up in the most ridiculous ichthyological fantasies.

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea," translated Florent. "By Jules Verne. This book I have not read in many years." "We're reading it in French class," Joseph said. "It's hard to understand, but I found a line that Uncle Albert would love." Florent opened to a dog-eared page where Joseph had underlined a sentence and written the translation in the margin. Florent read it out loud. "'Let me tell you, Professor, that you will not regret the time spent on board. You are going to travel in a a land of marvels.

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?

I looked at his intelligent forehead, furrowed with premature wrinkles, produced probably by misfortune and sorrow. I tried to learn the secret of his life from the last words that escaped his lips.

The human mind delights in grand conceptions of supernatural beings. And the sea is precisely their best vehicle, the only medium through which these giants (against which terrestrial animals, such as elephants or rhinoceroses, are as nothing) can be produced or developed.

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.

The thunderbolt without the reverberations of thunder would frighten man but little, though the danger lies in the lightning, not in the noise.

I wanted to protect my professorial dignity and not lay myself open to laughter from the Americans, who when they do laugh, laugh raucously

to the poet a pearl is a tear of the sea

However strange his destiny may be, it is also sublime! I myself have understood that much. Did I not also live this unnatural life for ten months? Thus, to that question asked six thousand years ago by Ecclesiastes, 'That which is far off, and exceedingly deep, who can find it out?' only two men now have the right to answer: Captain Nemo and myself.

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

I felt that my true vocation, the sole end of my life, was to chase this disturbing monster and purge it from the world.

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.

Almighty God! enough! enough!

Yes, forgotten by all else, but not by us.

Now we are seeing the disadvantage of not knowing every language," said Conseil "or is it the disadvantage of not having a universal language?

these words of wisdom, so rarely understood: "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill towards men.

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

I am the law, and I am the judge!

No one has ever seen anything like it; but the sight may cost us dear. And, if I must say all, I think we are seeing here things which God never intended man to see.

The earth doesn't need new continents, but new men!

These composers," Captain Nemo answered me, "are the contemporaries of Orpheus, because in the annals of the dead, all chronological differences fade; and

Adieu, sun! Disappear, thou radiant orb! rest beneath this open sea, and let a night of six months spread its shadows over my new domains!

Curious anomaly, fantastic element!" said an ingenious naturalist, "in which the animal kingdom blossoms, and the vegetable does not!

And then what?” she says, pulling her hand from Grom’s grasp. “Then Grom will mate with Mom and live happily ever after twenty thousand leagues under the sea?

If his destiny be strange, it is also sublime. Jules Verne, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

May the judge disappear, and the philosopher continue the peaceful exploration of the sea! If his destiny be strange, it is also sublime. Have I not understood it myself? Have I not lived ten months of this unnatural life? And to the question asked by Ecclesiastes three thousand years ago, "That which is far off and exceeding deep, who can find it out?" two men alone of all now living have the right to give an answer—— CAPTAIN NEMO AND MYSELF.

I suppose that, after visiting the curious coasts of Arabia and Egypt, the Nautilus will go down the Indian Ocean again, perhaps cross the Channel of Mozambique, perhaps off the Mascarenhas, so as to gain the Cape of Good Hope.

His countenance had resumed its habitual imperturbability.

Your arguments at rotten at the foundation. You speak in the future, ' We shall be there! We shall be here!' I speak in the present,'We are here, and we must profit by it.

Some of these tusks have been found buried in the bodies of whales, which the unicorn always attacks with success.

Ah! sir, live—live in the bosom of the waters! There only is independence! There I recognise no masters! There I am free!

you must never make snap judgments about your fellow man.

if the seas were cleaned of whales and seals. Then, infested with poulps, medusae, and cuttle-fish, they would become immense centres of infection, since

The devil!" exclaimed Ned.

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.

Help!" This was my last cry. My mouth filled with water, I struggled against being drawn the abyss. Suddenly my clothes were seized by a strong hand, and I felt myself quickly drawn up to the surface of the sea; and I heard, yes, I heard these words pronounced in my ear: "If master would be so good as to lean on my shoulder, master would swim with much greater ease." I seized with one hand my faithful Conseil's arm. "Is it you?" said I, "you?" "Myself," answered Conseil; "and waiting master's orders." "That shock threw you as well as me in the sea?" "No; but, being in my master's service, I followed him." The worthy fellow thought that was but natural.

is this man, all things considered, to be hated or admired? Is he a victim or a killer?

The latter seemed to be a victim to some emotion that he tried in vain to repress.

11,340 miles, or 5,250 French leagues,

Nautron respoc lorni virch.

The year 1866 was signalised by a remarkable incident, a mysterious and puzzling phenomenon, which doubtless no one has yet forgotten.

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

that before long chance would betray the captain's secrets. The next day, the 1st of June, the Nautilus continued the same

I wouldn’t be at all surprised; but I will not be eaten without protest!

There’s an island over there. On that island there are trees. Under those trees there are animals carrying around chops and roast beefs, and I wouldn’t mind a bit sinking my teeth into a little good meat.

to catch it called for harpooning it—which was Ned Land’s business; to harpoon it called for sighting it—which was the crew’s business; and to sight it called for encountering it—which was a chancy business.

I learned to read at the age of five, in Brother Justiniano's class at the De la Salle Academy in Cochabamba, Bolivia. It is the most important thing that has ever happened to me. Almost seventy years later I remember clearly how the magic of translating the words in books into images enriched my life, breaking the barriers of time and space and allowing me to travel with Captain Nemo twenty thousand leagues under the sea, fight with d'Artagnan, Athos, Portos, and Aramis against the intrigues threatening the Queen in the days of the secretive Richelieu, or stumble through the sewers of Paris, transformed into Jean Valjean carrying Marius's inert body on my back.

An oyster has even been cited, although I permit myself to doubt this, which contained no less than 150 sharks.’ ‘A hundred and fifty sharks!’ exclaimed Ned. ‘Did I say sharks!’ I said quickly. ‘I mean 150 pearls. Sharks would make no sense.

Il mare è tutto. Copre i sette decimi del globo terrestre. Il suo respiro è puro e sano. È l'immenso deserto dove l'uomo non è mai solo, poiché sente fremere la vita accanto a sé. Il mare non è altro che il veicolo di un'esistenza soprannaturale e prodigiosa; non è che movimento e amore, è l'infinito vivente...

Old books that we have known but not possessed cross our path and invite themselves over. New books try to seduce us daily with tempting titles and tantalizing covers. Families beg to be united: volume XVIII of the Complete Works of Lope de Vega is announced in a catalogue, calling to the other seventeen that sit, barely leafed through, on my shelf. How fortunate for Captain Nemo to be able to say, during his twenty-thousand-league journey under the sea, that ‘the world ended for me the day when my Nautilus sank underwater for the first time. On that day I bought my last volumes, my last pamphlets, my last periodicals, and since then, it is for me as if humanity no longer thought nor wrote a single word.’ But for readers like myself, there are no ‘last’ purchases this side of the grave.

The year 1866 was signalised by a remarkable incident, a mysterious and puzzling phenomenon, which doubtless no one has yet forgotten. Not to mention rumours which agitated the maritime population and excited the public mind, even in the interior of continents, seafaring men were particularly excited. Merchants, common sailors, captains of vessels, skippers, both of Europe and America, naval officers of all countries, and the Governments of several States on the two continents, were deeply interested in the matter. For some time past vessels had been met by "an enormous thing," a long object, spindle-shaped, occasionally phosphorescent, and infinitely larger and more rapid in its movements than a whale. The facts relating to this apparition (entered in various log-books) agreed in most respects as to the shape of the object or creature in question, the untiring rapidity of its movements, its surprising power of locomotion, and the peculiar life with which it seemed endowed. If it was a whale, it surpassed in size all those hitherto classified in science. Taking into consideration the mean of observations made at divers times—rejecting the timid estimate of those who assigned to this object a length of two hundred feet, equally with the exaggerated opinions which set it down as a mile

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago--never mind how long precisely--having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me. There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs--commerce surrounds it with her surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme downtown is the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of land. Look at the crowds of water-gazers there. Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What do you see?--Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some looking over the bulwarks of ships from China; some high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep. But these are all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath and plaster--tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. How then is this? Are the green fields gone? What do they here? But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and seemingly bound for a dive. Strange! Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee of yonder warehouses will not suffice. No. They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling in. And there they stand--miles of them--leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets and avenues--north, east, south, and west. Yet here they all unite. Tell me, does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses of all those ships attract them thither? Once more. Say you are in the country; in some high land of lakes. Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries--stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.

been so much talked of, even through the Atlantic cable, that jesters pretended that this slender fly had stopped a telegram on its passage and was making the most of it. So when the frigate had been armed for a long campaign, and provided with formidable fishing apparatus, no one could tell what course to pursue. Impatience grew apace, when,

In Conseil I had a seasoned specialist in biological classification, an enthusiast who could run with acrobatic agility up and down the whole ladder of branches, groups, classes, subclasses, orders, families, genera, subgenera, species, and varieties. But there his science came to a halt. Classifying was everything to him, so he knew nothing else.

These are coral islands, slowly raised, but continuous, created by the daily work of polypi. Then this new island will be joined later on to the neighboring groups, and a fifth continent will stretch from New Zealand and New Caledonia, and from thence to the Marquesas. One day, when I was suggesting this theory to Captain Nemo, he replied coldly: "The earth does not want new continents, but new men.

THE DEEPEST PARTS OF THE ocean are totally unknown to us,” admits Professor Aronnax early in this novel. “What goes on in those distant depths? What creatures inhabit, or could inhabit, those regions twelve or fifteen miles beneath the surface of the water? It’s almost beyond conjecture.” Jules Verne (1828–1905) published the French equivalents of these words in 1869, and little has changed since. 126 years later, a Time cover story on deep–sea exploration made much the same admission: “We know more about Mars than we know about the oceans.

The soul which fathoms every league of the celestial arc--knows, as a mariner the sea, the distant latitudes where comets flame, and worlds career, and constellations shake their awful clusters--wanders amid the spectral nebula, and makes suns and systems to be but glittering beads upon the aspiring thread of its induction, cannot perish. There is a future life. In a universe so spherical and whole as this, reason argues that its own incompleteness and capacity for more are suggestive--are prophetical. Under-shadows and cross-lights of mystery, these filmy depths of present being, shudder in sympathy with something beyond.

question. On the 20th of July, 1866, the steamer Governor Higginson, of the Calcutta and Burnach Steam Navigation Company, had met this moving mass five miles off the east coast of Australia. Captain Baker thought at first that he was in the presence of an unknown sandbank; he even prepared to determine its exact position when two columns of water, projected by the mysterious object, shot with a hissing noise a hundred and fifty feet up into the air. Now, unless the sandbank had been submitted to the intermittent eruption of a geyser, the Governor Higginson had to do neither more nor less than with an aquatic mammal, unknown till then, which threw up from

An indisputable event, my gallant Ned. Accordingly, people have proposed naming this devil fish Bouguer's Squid. And how long was it? the Canadian asked. Didn't it measure about six metres? said Conseil, who was stationed at the window and examining anew the crevices in the cliff. Precisely, I replied Wasn't its head, Conseil went on, crowned by eight tentacles that quivered in the water like a nest of snakes? Precisely. Weren't its eyes prominently placed and considerably enlarged? Yes, Conseil. And wasn't its mouth a real parrot's beak but of fearsome size? Correct, Conseil. Well, with all due respect to master, Conseil replied serenely, if this isn't Bouguers Squid, it's at least one of his close relatives!

hold of people’s minds and actually control them. View a corporate stronghold like the giant squid that attacked Captain Nemo’s Nautilus in Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, waiting for people to swim near so it could wrap its tentacles about them. Whenever people begin to think in certain ways, principalities can maneuver appropriate corporate strongholds into position to clamp about them and actually rob them of the freedom to think. While individual strongholds serve as lodgings for local ruling demons, corporate strongholds offer a home to what Paul referred to: Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Ephesians 6:11–12, italics mine Corporate strongholds are wielded by principalities, rulers, demonic archangels that use them to imprison the minds and control the thoughts of entire peoples—nations, cities, denominations, local churches, political parties, even philanthropic groups. If you have ever asked, “How could principalities become world rulers of this present darkness?” the foremost answer lies here—by means of corporate strongholds. The function of a corporate stronghold is to imprison the minds of a people or group, to take away their freedom to think anything— including cold, hard facts and logic—contrary to the mindset of the stronghold. It hypnotizes whomever its spell overshadows, so that they cannot see portions of the Word of God (or even secular truths) that might set them free from its delusive grip. But their minds were hardened; for until this very day at the reading of the old covenant the same veil remains unlifted, because it is removed in Christ. But to this day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their heart; but whenever a person turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. 2 Corinthians 3:14–16, italics mine That veil, to me, is a corporate stronghold of