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.

A true Englishman doesn't joke when he is talking about so serious a thing as a wager.

Hunger, prolonged, is temporary madness! The brain is at work without its required food, and the most fantastic notions fill the mind. Hitherto I had never known what hunger really meant. I was likely to understand it now.

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

Scent is the soul of flowers, and sea flowers, as splendid as they may be, have no soul!

I have always made a point in my romances of basing my so-called inventions upon a groundwork of actual fact, and of using in their construction methods and materials which are not entirely without the pale of contemporary engineering skill and knowledge.

It may be taken for granted that, rash as the Americans are, when they are prudent there is good reason for it.