"It was the Lord who put into my mind (I could feel His hand upon me) the fact that it would be possible to sail from here to the Indies. All who heard of my project rejected it with laughter, ridiculi…"

"I vow that I will never again set foot on land unless it is to return to Spain."

"They are so simple, that they believe that all the world and all the people are in heaven, and that they come from there, and that they are the first that ever came from there, and that they are the f…"

"I found very many islands filled with people innumerable, and of them all I have taken possession."

"The earth is not round as a ball, but pear-shaped."