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.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the American can-do spirit and a belief in overcoming challenges.
Jules Verne's quote captures the essence of American optimism and the belief that challenges can be easily tackled. It suggests that in America, people have a mindset that dismisses the notion of impossibility, implying a cultural inclination towards innovation and perseverance, as if obstacles are just minor inconveniences that can swiftly be resolved before they even present themselves.
In practice
In a motivational speech about overcoming adversity, one might include this quote to illustrate American determination.
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.
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.
Man, a mere inhabitant of the earth, cannot overstep its boundaries! But though he is confined to its crust, he may penetrate into all its secrets.
Tragedy is restful: and the reason is that hope, that foul, deceitful thing, has no part in it.
Sex is the ersatz or substitute religion of the 20th Century.
If the universe were just electrons and selfish genes, meaningless tragedies ... are exactly what we should expect, along with equally meaningless good fortune. Such a universe would be neither evil nor good in intention ... The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.
The adult is the enemy of the child because of the awful process of civilizing this thing that, when it is born, is an animal with no manners, no moral sense at all.
What else can matter to us, other than how our lives feel from the inside?
Having a clear faith, based on the creed of the church is often labeled today as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and swept along by every wind of teaching, look like the only attitude acceptable to today's standards.
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