He was a learned egotist. He was a well of science, and the pulleys worked uneasily when you wanted to draw anything out of it. In a word, he was a learned miser.
Book 1864
Journey to the Center of the Earth quotes
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About the book
A hot-tempered Hamburg professor deciphers an old coded note claiming that a volcano in Iceland leads down to the centre of the Earth, and he sets out to prove it. His nervous nephew Axel and a calm Icelandic guide, Hans, go with him into the dark. It is one of the founding adventures of science fiction, full of arguing, geology and awe.
7 quotes
Axel: What! do you think there is any chance of safety left? Liedenbrock: Yes, I do; as long as the heart beats, as long as body and soul keep together, I cannot admit that any creature endowed with a will has need to despair of life.
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.
Neither you nor anybody else knows with any certainty what is going on in the interior of this globe, since not the twelve thousandth part of its radius is known; science is eminently perfectible; and every new theory is soon routed by a newer.
No more; that is sufficient. When science has uttered her voice, let babblers hold their peace.
But the man had no notion how to wait; nature herself was too slow for him. In April, after he had planted in the terra-cotta pots outside his window seedling plants of mignonette and convolvulus, he would go and give them a little pull by their leaves to…
Axel: All the theories of science demonstrate such a feat to be impracticable. Liedenbrock: The theories say that, do they? … Oh! unpleasant theories! How the theories will hinder us, won't they?