Journey to the Center of the Earth

by Jules Verne

It was conceived in the following terms: In Sneffels Joculis craterem quem delibat Umbra Scartaris Julii intra calendas descende, Audax viator, et terrestre centrum attinges. Quod feci, Arne Saknussemm. Which bad Latin may be translated thus: “Descend, bold traveler, into the crater of the jokul of Sneffels, which the shadow of Scartaris touches before the calends of July, and you will attain the center of the earth. Which I have done, Arne Saknussemm.”

“Your library! why there is nothing but a few tattered books upon almost deserted shelves.” “Indeed!” replied Mr. Fridrikssen, “why we possess eight thousand volumes, many of them valuable and scarce, works in the old Scandinavian language, and we have all the novelties that Copenhagen sends us every year.” “Where do you keep your eight thousand volumes? For my part—” “Oh, Mr. Liedenbrock, they are all over the country. In this icy region we are fond of study. There is not a farmer nor a fisherman that cannot read and does not read. Our principle is, that books, instead of growing moldy behind an iron grating, should be worn out under the eyes of many readers. Therefore, these volumes are passed from one to another, read over and over, referred to again and again; and it often happens that they find their way back to their shelves only after an absence of a year or two.”

“No more; that is sufficient. When science has uttered her voice, let babblers hold their peace.”

I was thus steeped in the marvelous ecstasy that all high summits develop in the mind; and now without giddiness, for I was beginning to be accustomed to these sublime aspects of nature. My dazzled eyes were bathed in the bright flood of the solar rays. I was forgetting where and who I was, to live the life of elves and sylphs, the fanciful creation of Scandinavian superstitions. I felt intoxicated with the sublime pleasure of lofty elevations without thinking of the profound abysses into which I was shortly to be plunged.

“Yes,” said I, “if we have any strength left.” “Why not?” “Because tomorrow we shall have no water.” “Nor courage either?” asked my uncle severely. I dared make no answer.

What one man has done, another may do.”

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 of the thinking faculty!

“Science, my lad, has been built upon many errors; but they are errors that it was good to fall into, for they led to the truth.”

“Ambition must have a limit somewhere; we cannot perform impossibilities;