Scent is the soul of flowers, and sea flowers, as splendid as they may be, have no soul!
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the intrinsic beauty and essence of flowers, suggesting that their scent is what gives them life and meaning.
In this quote, Jules Verne reflects on the concept that the true essence of flowers is found in their scent, likening it to the soul of the flowers. He contrasts this with sea flowers, which, despite their beauty, lack the soul that comes from a captivating fragrance, emphasizing the importance of sensory experiences in our appreciation of nature's beauty.
In practice
During a discussion about gardening and the importance of fragrance in plants.
Travel enables us to enrich our lives with new experiences, to enjoy and to be educated, to learn respect for foreign cultures, to establish friendships, and above all to contribute to international cooperation and peace throughout the world.
It is always a vulgar and often an unhealthy pastime, and it is a vice which does not go alone; the man who gambles will find himself capable of any evil.
Nothing can astound an American. It has often been asserted that the word 'impossible' is not a French one. People have evidently been deceived by the dictionary. In America, all is easy, all is simple; and as for mechanical difficulties, they are overcome before they arise.
However strong, however imposing a ship may appear, it is not 'disgraced' because it flies before the tempest. A commander ought always to remember that a man's life is worth more than the mere satisfaction of his own pride. In any case, to be obstinate is blameable, and to be wilful is dangerous.
The Yankees, the first mechanicians in the world, are engineers - just as the Italians are musicians and the Germans metaphysicians - by right of birth. Nothing is more natural, therefore, than to perceive them applying their audacious ingenuity to the science of gunnery.
Nothing is more dreadful than private duels in America. The two adversaries attack each other like wild beasts. Then it is that they might well covet those wonderful properties of the Indians of the prairies - their quick intelligence, their ingenious cunning, their scent of the enemy.
A little child paddles a little boat, Drifting about, and picking white lotuses. He does not know how to hide his tracks, And duckweed's opened up along his path.
White in the moon the long road lies.
There can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of Nature and has his senses still.
It would be better if there were but one inhabitant to a square mile, as where I live.
I'll tell you how the sun rose, a ribbon at a time. The steeples swam in amethyst, The news like squirrels ran. The hills untied their bonnets, The bobolinks begun. Then I said softly to myself, "That must have been the sun!
There is not a flower that opens, not a seed that falls into the ground, and not an ear of wheat that nods on the end of its stalk in the wind that does not preach and proclaim the greatness and the mercy of God to the whole world.
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