Jules Gabriel Verne, 1828 - 1905
Born: 8 February 1828, Nantes, France
Died: 24 March 1905, Amiens, France
The eldest child in a wealthy family at the bustling port of Nantes, Verne spent summers at a country house on the Loire. His inquisitive and adventuresome character surfaced early, he and brother Paul often rented a boat to explore the river. He and Paul were sent to boarding school at age nine, at twelve he stowed away on ship bound for India although he was caught before she left port. After completing studies at the lycée he was sent to Paris to study law but he was spending much of his time writing, when his father learned this he lost his living allowance and supported himself as a stockbroker, a job he hated but was good at. He met Alexandre Dumas, père and Victor Hugo who provided writing advice. More significantly, after much of his work had been turned down by other publishers, he met Pierre-Jules Hetzel, an important French publisher. Hetzel insisted on more humor and happier endings, urged Verne to temper his political messages, and published Five Weeks in a Balloon in 1963. Hetzel's firm maintained a biweekly publication in which Verne's novels were frequently serialized tp promote the books, and Hetzel released two or more volumes every year until Verne's death. In 1887 Hetzel died and Verne's work became much darker, largely because Hetzel's son was not as good an editor as his father had been. Despite the success of his many books, most of his income came from stage adaptations of Around the World in Eighty Days and Michel Strogoff. Of all individual authors, only Agatha Christie's work has been more often translated into other languages. Alas, not all of the translations were done well, Verne's reputation in the US suffered due to particularly poor translations of his measurements, the translators converted metric measures to English without converting the numbers, rending many of them absurd. Verne predicted many elements of modern life, arguably including air conditioning, automobiles, and electricity. Although his From the Earth to the Moon used a mammoth gun to propel his voyagers into space, he sited that gun at Tampa, Florida, only 130 miles from the launch pads at Cape Canaveral. In his final year Verne suffered from diabetes and died at home. In 2008 efforts were begun to move his remains from Amien to the Panthéon at Paris, where his friends Dumas and Hugo rest along with France's other major literary lights.
Biography from Wikipedia and obituaries at JulesVerne.ca
Additional quotes from Wikiquote. Wikiquote entries are often "sourced" and may include items longer than those included here, particularly for poets, lyricists, and dramatists.
Jules Verne quotes:
Quotes found : 43 — (15 per page, this is page 1 of 3) 1 2 3 Next
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- Ah, pierce me 100 times with your needles fine and I will thank you 100 times, Saint Morphine, you who Aeseulapus has made a God. permalink
Jules Verne - An energetic man will succeed where an indolent one would vegetate and inevitably perish. permalink
Jules Verne - The Mysterious Island (1874) - An English criminal, you know is always better concealed in London than anywhere else. permalink
Jules Verne - Around the World in Eighty Days (1873) - Anything one man can imagine, other men can make real. permalink
Jules Verne - 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. permalink
Jules Verne - Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864) - Before all masters, necessity is the one most listened to, and who teaches the best. permalink
Jules Verne - The Mysterious Island (1874) - Better to put things at the worst at first and reserve the best for a surprise. permalink
Jules Verne - The Mysterious Island (1874) - Civilization never recedes; the law of necessity ever forces it onwards. permalink
Jules Verne - The Mysterious Island (1874) - 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! permalink
Jules Verne - Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864) - He who is mistaken in an action which he sincerely believes to be right may be an enemy, but retains our esteem. permalink
Jules Verne - The Mysterious Island (1874) - How much further can we go? What are the final frontiers in this quest for travel? Will humankind only be satisfied when journeys into space become readily available and affordable? permalink
Jules Verne - How tranquil is a coral tomb, and may the heavens grant that my companions and I be buried in no other! permalink
Jules Verne - Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870) - Hunger, prolonged, is temporary madness! The brain is at work without its required food, and the most fantastic notions fill the mind. Hitherto I had never known what hunger really meant. I was likely to understand it now. permalink
Jules Verne - Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864) - I believe cats to be spirits come to earth. A cat, I am sure, could walk on a cloud without coming through. permalink
Jules Verne - I have always fancied that the end of the world will be when some enormous boiler, heated to three thousand millions of atmospheric pressure, shall explode and blow up the globe.... [The Americans] are great boilermakers. permalink
Jules Verne - Five Weeks in a Balloon (1863)
Quotes found : 43 — (15 per page, this is page 1 of 3) 1 2 3 Next
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