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

The sole precoccupation of this learned society was the destruction of humanity for philanthropic reasons and the perfection of weapons as instruments of civilization.

It must be, for there is a logic to everything on this earth and nothing is done without a reason, that God sometimes lets scientists discover.

Nature's creative power is far beyond man's instinct of destruction.

What use are the best of arguments when they can be destroyed by force?

When I returned to partial life my face was wet with tears. How long that state of insensibility had lasted I cannot say. I had no means now of taking account of time. Never was solitude equal to this, never had any living being been so utterly forsaken.

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