When the mind once allows a doubt to gain entrance, the value of deeds performed grow less, their character changes, we forget the past and dread the future.

My house is small, but may heaven grant that it is never full of friends.

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!

Dinner was ready. Professor Lidenbrock did full justice to it, for his compulsory fast on board had turned his stomach into an unfathomable gulf.

With time and thought, one can do a good job.

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!

Solitude, isolation, are painful things, and beyond human endurance.