Now when an American has an idea, he directly seeks a second American to share it. If there be three, they elect a president and two secretaries. Given four, they name a keeper of records, and the office is ready for work; five, they convene a general meeting, and the club is fully constituted.

Captain Nemo pointed to this prodigious heap of shellfish, and I saw that these mines were genuinely inexhaustible, since nature's creative powers are greater than man's destructive instincts.

It was obvious that the matter had to be settled, and evasions were distasteful to me.

Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.

As for Phileas Fogg, it seemed just as if the typhoon were a part of his programme

What I'd like to be above all is a writer.

Why lower oneself to taking pride from being American or British, when you can boast of being man!