I wanted to see what no one had yet observed, even if I had to pay for this curiosity with my life.

What a big book, captain, might be made with all that is known!" "And what a much bigger book still with all that is not known!

The wisest man may be a blind father.

In lighthearted countries, people joked about this phenomenon, but such serious, practical countries as England, America, and Germany were deeply concerned.

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

In spite of the opinions of certain narrow-minded people who would shut up the human race upon this globe, we shall one day travel to the Moon, the planets, and the stars with the same facility, rapidity and certainty as we now make the ocean voyage from Liverpool to New York.

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