The wisest man may be a blind father.

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.

So is man's heart. The desire to perform a work which will endure, which will survive him, is the origin of his superiority over all other living creatures here below. It is this which has established his dominion, and this it is which justifies it, over all the world.

I am very bad at expressing tender sentiments. The very word 'love' frightens me.

Poets are like proverbs: you can always find one to contradict another.

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

But to find, all at once, right before your eyes, that the impossible had been mysteriously achieved by man himself: this staggers the mind!