Three fishers went sailing away to the west,/ Away to the west as the sun went down.

This is the feeling that gives a man true courage-the feeling that he has a work to do at all costs; the sense of duty.

If you wish to be like a little child, study what a little child could understand — nature; and do what a little child could do — love.

It is only the great hearted who can be true friends. The mean and cowardly, Can never know what true friendship means.

Did not learned men, too, hold, till within the last twenty-five years, that a flying dragon was an impossible monster? And do we not now know that there are hundreds of them found fossil up and down the world? People call them Pterodactyles: but that is only because they are ashamed to call them flying dragons, after denying so long that flying dragons could exist.

For science is ... like virtue, its own exceeding great reward.

[At the end of the story, its main character, Tom] is now a great man of science, and can plan railroads, and steam-engines, and electric telegraphs, and rifled guns, and so forth; and knows everything about everything, except why a hen's egg don't turn into a crocodile, and two or three other little things that no one will know till the coming of the Cocqcigrues.