Jules Verne Quotes: Sources, Meanings & Themes
Browse quotations by Jules Verne with named works, context notes, meanings and recurring themes.
Source identified1
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“Science, my lad, has been built upon many errors; but they are errors which it was good to fall into, for they led to the truth.”
Meaning & context
Professor Lidenbrock argues that mistaken hypotheses can still advance inquiry when testing them exposes better explanations.
Source details
A Journey into the Interior of the Earth, Chapter XXXI, ‘Preparations for a Voyage of Discovery,’ represented by Project Gutenberg #3748 in F. A. Malleson's 1877 English translation. Professor Lidenbrock says that science has been built upon many errors after underground observations conflict with accepted heat theory. It remains translated speculative-adventure dialogue and a character's philosophy of scientific error, not a methodological rule supplied by Quote Atlas or a current scientific finding.
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“Nothing, say you? Perhaps so; nothing but a charming woman, who, strange as it may appear, made him the happiest of men!”
Meaning & context
The narrator undercuts a purely material accounting of Fogg’s journey by suggesting that the relationship he found matters more than the wager or possessions he brought home.
Source details
Around the World in Eighty Days, final chapter, Project Gutenberg #103, in the represented public-domain English translation. This is the narrator’s comic-romantic conclusion after Phileas Fogg completes the journey; the English wording is translation-specific.
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“The sea is everything. It covers seven-tenths of the terrestrial globe.”
Meaning & context
Captain Nemo begins an expansive defense of ocean life by presenting the sea as the dominant physical environment of the planet and the realm in which he seeks freedom.
Source details
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, Part I, Chapter X, “The Man of the Seas,” represented by Project Gutenberg #164 in English translation. Captain Nemo tells Professor Aronnax that the sea is everything and covers seven-tenths of the globe inside a longer speech mixing geography, Romantic nature language and his desire for independence from terrestrial power. It is translated fictional dialogue, not a current scientific source.