Quotes about the Sea

There's a lot of foolish romanticism about the sea, and the quotes I've come up with that had most meaning to me were ones that dash that romanticism or show the majesty and excitement, mystery and glory, out there. Neptune is a cold mo'fo'. He doesn't really care whether you're out there or not. You can't take it personally.

As he looked, it seemed to him that a kind of sympathy was going forth from the big hulks to him; they had a message for him, but at first he did not know what it was. Then he found the word; it was superficiality. The ships were superficial, and kept to the surface. Therein lay their power, to ships the danger is to get to the bottom of things, to run aground. They were even hollow, and hollowness was the secret of their being; the great depths slaved for them as long as they remained hollow . . . You beautiful, superficial wanderers, gallant, swimming conquerors of the deep! You heavy, hollow angels. . ."
Isak Dinesen, The Young Man with the Carnation

There is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.
Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows, Ch. 1

He that will learn to pray, let him go to the sea.
George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum, 1640

Let him who knows not how to pray, go to the sea.
John Ray, English Proverbs, 4th edn 1768

The sea is at its best at London, near midnight, when you are within the arms of a capacious chair, before a glowing fire, selecting phases of the voyages you will never make. It is wiser not to try to realize your dreams. There are no real dreams. For as to the sea itself, love it you cannot. Why should you? I will never believe again the sea was ever loved by anyone whose life was married to it. It is the creation of Omnipotence, which is not of human kind and understandable, and so the springs of its behavior are hidden. The sea does not assume its royal blue to please you. Its brute and dark desolation is not raised to overwhelm you; you disappear then because you happen to be there. It carries the lucky foolish to fortune, and drags the calculating wise to the strewn bones.
HM Tomlinson, The Sea and The Jungle, 1912

I loathe the sea. The sea is formless.
WH Auden, quoted by Christopher Isherwood, Lions and Shadows, 1938

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean - roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin - his control
Stops with the shore.
George Gordon, Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, IV. 179

God made the land and filled it with His music, Blessed it with blossom, gave it spring and fall, Gave to it life and love, tears and laughter, But to the sea He gave no thought at all.
From a poem in a Sunday paper, quoted by James Agate, Ego 8, 1946.

What shall we do with the drunken sailor?
Early in the morning?
Anonymous, Shanty

Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.
Publilius Syrus

The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea.
Matthew Arnold, To Marguerite, Isolation

They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.
Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, I. vii. 5

They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters. These see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep.
Bible, Psalms 107:23

These are wise men. They know what they are talking about. For the people who travel for their pleasure when the sea is smooth, and smiles at them, and who declare that they love her, they do not know what love means. It is the sailors, who have been beaten and battered by the sea, and who have cursed and damned her, who are her true lovers. Very likely the same law applies to husbands and wives. I shall learn more from the seamen. I am a child and a fool, compared to them.
Isak Dinesen, The Young Man with the Carnation

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more.
George Gordon, Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, IV. 178

No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned. . . . A man in a jail has more room, better food and commonly better company.
Dr Samuel Johnson, Boswell, Life of Johnson, Mar. 1759

One road leads to London,
One road runs to Wales,
My road leads me seawards
To the white dipping sails.
John Masefield, Roadways

Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors.
African Proverb

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines, Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream.
Mark Twain

Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide, wide sea!
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Ancient Mariner, Pt IV

for whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea.
e(dward) e(stlin) Cummings, `maggie and milly and molly and may'

I want to know what it says . . . The sea, Floy, what it is that it keeps on saying.
Charles Dickens, (Paul Dombey) Dombey and Son, Ch. 8

Illi robur et aes triplex / Circa pectus erat, qui fragilem truci / Commisit pelago ratem / Primus.- His heart was mailed with oak and triple brass who first committed a frail ship to the wild seas.
Horace, Odes, I. iii. 9

`Sailor men 'ave their faults,' said the night-watchman, frankly. `I'm not denying it. I used to 'ave myself when I was at sea.'
W. W. Jacobs, The Lady of the Barge, `Bill's Paper Chase'

The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea.
James Joyce, Ulysses (Bodley Head, 1937), p. 3

`Wouldst thou' - so the helmsman answered.
`Learn the secret of the sea?
Only those who brave its dangers
Comprehend its mystery!'
H. W. Longfellow, The Secret of the Sea

Suave, mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis, / E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem.- Sweet it is, when on the high seas the winds are lashing the waters, to gaze from the land on another's struggles.
Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, II. 1

There were gentlemen and there were seamen in the navy of Charles the Second. But the seamen were not gentlemen: and the gentlemen were not seamen.
Thomas Babington Macaulay, History of England, I. Ch. 3

Curiosity is only vanity. Most frequently we wish not to know, but to talk. We would not take a sea voyage for the sole pleasure of seeing without hope of ever telling.
Blaise Pascal, Pensées

"When your out there, you want to be in here.
When your in here, you want to be out there."
submitted by Ron Blackwell

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