Better to put things at the worst at first and reserve the best for a surprise.

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!

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.

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

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!

Ah!" I cried, springing up. "But no! no! My uncle shall never know it. He would insist upon doing it too. He would want to know all about it. Ropes could not hold him, such a determined geologist as he is! He would start, he would, in spite of everything and everybody, and he would take me with him, and we should never get back. No, never! never!" My over-excitement was beyond all description.

Though sleep is called our best friend, it is a friend who often keeps us waiting!