Before all masters, necessity is the one most listened to, and who teaches the best.
The earth does not need new continents, but new men.
It was obvious that the matter had to be settled, and evasions were distasteful to me.
An energetic man will succeed where an indolent one would vegetate and inevitably perish.
The moon, by her comparative proximity, and the constantly varying appearances produced by her several phases, has always occupied a considerable share of the attention of the inhabitants of the earth.
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