The colonists had no library at their disposal; but the engineer was a book which was always at hand, always open at the page which one wanted, a book which answered all their questions, and which they often consulted.

External objects produce decided effects upon the brain. A man shut up between four walls soon loses the power to associate words and ideas together. How many prisoners in solitary confinement become idiots, if not mad, for want of exercise for the thinking faculty!

I have always fancied that the end of the world will be when some enormous boiler, heated to three thousand millions of atmospheric pressure, shall explode and blow up the globe. ... They [the Americans] are great boilermakers.

You will travel in a Land of Marvels

How tranquil is a coral tomb, and may the heavens grant that my companions and I be buried in no other!

Powder is but a thing of yesterday, and war is as old as the human race--unhappily.

Science, my boy, is composed of errors, but errors that it is right to make, for they lead step by step to the truth.