Sea Quotes

The moon went slowly down in loveliness; she departed into the depth of the horizon, and long veil-like shadows crept up the sky through which the stars appeared. Soon, however, they too began to pale before a splendour in the east, and the advent of the dawn declared itself in the newborn blue of heaven. Quieter and yet more quiet grew the sea, quiet as the soft mist that brooded on her bosom, and covered up her troubling, as in our tempestuous life the transitory wreaths of sleep brook upon a pain-racked soul, causing it to forget its sorrow. From the east to the west sped those angels of the Dawn, from sea to sea, from mountain-top to mountain-top, scattering light from breast and wing. On they sped out of the darkness, perfect, glorious; on, over the quiet sea, over the low coast-line, and the swamps beyond, and the mountains above them; over those who slept in peace and those who woke in sorrow; over the evil and the good; over the living and the dead; over the wide world and all that breathes or as breathed thereon.

~ H. Rider Haggard

To reach a port we must set sail –Sail, not tie at anchorSail, not drift.

~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

Every few days the sea delivers us gifts, and I am convinced that there is something of the divine nature in this process. Often I have prayed for a jacket, a bucket, or a handsaw, but instead I find one single flip-flop. Many times it has left my heart bitter, but then I find some useful purpose for my found treasure. Maybe the sea doesn’t give me what I want, but what I need.

~ Jennifer Arnett

A sailor's love for the sea is only matched by his mistress's salty kiss.

~ Anthony T. Hincks

My woman has a wandering eye;Yarrow, thyme and thorn.She eyes the ocean and the skyWhile stitching sails, forlorn.I got a kiss, and then a tearAs she bade me go;But on the waves, my heart's in fear:My woman's in the know.

~ F.t. Mckinstry

They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.

~ Francis Bacon

People don't say what they mean very often. You have to read between the lines of their behavior, of what they say, to get to what they truly feel. That's what good literature is all about-- what Austen did better than anyone.

~ M.c. Frank

The sigh of all the seas breaking in measure round the isles soothed them; the night wrapped them; nothing broke their sleep, until, the birds beginning and the dawn weaving their thin voices in to its whiteness

~ Virginia Woolf

He imagined that he was looking for her and couldn't find her anywhere, that the two of them were lost on a vast ship, sleep is a skilled magician, it changes the proportions of things, the distances between them, it separates people and they're lying next to each other, brings them together and they can barely see one another, the woman is sleeping only a few yards away from him and he cannot reach her, yet it's so very easy to go from port to starboard.

~ José Saramago

Never mind the stillness -the deep sleeps to

~ Nâzım Hikmet

If they will only hold their hands until the season is over, he promises them a royal carnival, when all grudges can he settled and the survivors may toss the non-survivors overboard and arrange a story as to how the missing men were lost at sea.

~ Jack London

Now the night's breath responds to the sea, which I can scarcely hear from here, as it reminisces about its shipwrecks.

~ Joë Bousquet

Contentedly sat the old woman. Soon now, the sea would hold no terrors, and the blinds wouldn't have to be down, nor the windows shut; she would even be able to walk along the shore at midnight as of old; and they, whom she had deserted so long ago, would once more shrink from the irresistable energy aura of her new, young body.The sound of the sea came to her, where she sat so quietly; calm sound at first, almost gentle in the soft sibilation of each wave thrust. Farther out, the voices of the water were louder, more raucous, blatantly confident, but the meaning of what they said was blurred by the distance, a dim, clamorous confusion that rustled discordantly out of the gathering night.Night!She shouldn't be aware of night falling, when the blinds were drawn.(The Witch)

~ A.e. Van Vogt

The foolishness of chasing the moon ached my heart. I was stuck between the moon and the shore and surrounded by an empty sea.

~ Kevin James Moore

Outrage alternated with a sweaty fear he had never before felt. Something, it seemed to him was being drained from him, leaving the body feeling like a very dry sponge, very light, completely at the mercy of sly toying gusts of wind.

~ Ayi Kwei Armah

Sometimes there is no time to wait for the sea to calm down! If you have to reach your target, let your voyage start and let the storm be your path!

~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

If the sky has turned a darkened grey and the sea threatens to spill the occupants in the boat, know that the Lord God made the storm still, and though you shall face storms in your life the Lord God will still them with his hand. When you are alone, Jesus will have his arms wrapped around you, holding you tightly, the angels shall call out your name when you feel that you have been deaf, and you shall see the light of Heaven when you think you are blind. When you feel your dreams are broken it does not do well to cast yourself into misery but look at the brighter side of life, and see all the Lord has blessed you with!

~ Ariana Pedigo

But though, to landsmen in general, the native inhabitants of the seas have ever regarded with emotions unspeakably unsocial and repelling; though we know the sea to be an everlasting terra incognita, so that Columbus sailed over numberless unknown worlds to discover his one superficial western one; though, by vast odds, the most terrific of all mortal disasters have immemorially and indiscriminately befallen tens and hundreds of thousands of those who have gone upon the waters; though but a moment’s consideration will teach that, however baby man may brag of his science and skill, and however much, in a flattering future, that science and skill may augment; yet for ever and for ever, to the crack of doom, the sea will insult and murder him, and pulverize the stateliest, stiffest frigate he can make; nevertheless, by the continual repetition of these very impressions, man has lost that sense of the full awfulness of the sea which aboriginally belongs to it.

~ Herman Melville

Your leadership responsibilities are the real golden stripes

~ V.s. Parani

There is a thin line that separates life from death, but once it's crossed, it becomes as large as an ocean, and so treacherous that it’s impossible to cross back.

~ Federico Chini

I had fought on behalf of man against the sea, but I realised that it had become more urgent to fight on behalf of the sea against men.

~ Alain Bombard

His eyes were the same colour as the sea in a postcard someone sends you when they love you, but not enough to stay.

~ Warsan Shire

I am running and singing and when it’s raining I’m the only one left on the open street, smiling with my eyes fixed on the sky because it’s cleaning me. I’m the one on the other side of the party, hearing laughter and the emptying of bottles while I peacefully make my way to the river, a lonely road, following the smell of the ocean. I’m the one waking up at 4am to witness the sunrise, where the sky touches the sea, and I hold my elbows, grasping tight to whatever I’ve made of myself.

~ Charlotte Eriksson

Surely the Gods did not bring me safe through fire and sea only to kill me with a flux.

~ George R.r. Martin

Our house has its back to the sea,' writes Hester in her journal. 'Below us, the ocean spreads to the sky, twitching wide and blue and hungry. One would think it to be infinite. But we, of course, know better.

~ Tanya Moir

I whisper like the sea in the horse's ear.

~ Maggie Stiefvater

Now I remembered a captain's honor and his only duty: to bring his crew back alive.

~ Carsten Jensen

The smell of the sea pleased him so much that he wanted one day to take it in, pure and unadulterated, in such quantities that he could get drunk on it. And later, when he learned from stories how large the sea is and that you can sail upon it in ships for days on end without ever seeing land, nothing pleased him more than the image of himself sitting high up in the crow's nest of the foremost mast on such a ship, gliding on through the endless smell of the sea -- which really was no smell, but a breath, an exhilaration of breath, the end of all smells -- dissolving with pleasure in that breath.

~ Patrick Süskind

The smell of the sea pleased him so much that he wanted one day to take it in, pure and unadulterated, in such quantities that he could get drunk on it. And later, when he learned from stories how large the sea is and that you can sail upon it in ships fit days on end without ever seeing land, nothing pleased him more than the image of himself shutting high up in the crow's nest of the foremost mast on such ship, gliding on through the endless shell of the sea -- which really was no smell, but a breath, an exhilaration of breath, the end of all smells -- dissolving with pleasure in that breath.

~ Patrick Süskind

The nights now are full of wind and destruction; the trees plunge and bend and their leaves fly helter skelter until the lawn is plastered with them and they lie packed in gutters and choke rain pipes and scatter damp paths. Also the sea tosses itself and breaks itself, and should any sleeper fancying that he might find on the beach an answer to his doubts, a sharer of his solitude, throw off his bedclothes and go down by himself to walk on the sand, no image with semblance of serving and divine promptitude comes readily to hand bringing the night to order and making the world reflect the compass of the soul. The hand dwindles in his hand; the voice bellows in his ear. Almost it would appear that it is useless in such confusion to ask the night those questions as to what, and why, and wherefore, which tempt the sleeper from his bed to seek an answer.

~ Virginia Woolf

I should like my house to be similar to that of the ocean wind, all quivering with gulls.

~ Rene Cazelles

And the sea trickling out of my eye as if I'd always carried it inside me, like a seashell waiting to be cupped to an ear.

~ Cisneros Sandra

I want to be done with tears, and the day is too beautiful for them anyway. Nevertheless, I consider my tears for a moment, the idea of them, a link to the earth’s ancient origins. I’m comforted by the notion that I carry a bit of the sea within myself wherever I go. It’s nice to think that water is not such an exotic thing after all.

~ Denise Getson

Sunny held Kit, and Violet held Klaus, and for a minute the four castaways did nothing but weep, letting their tears run down their faces and into the sea, which some have said is nothing but a library of all tears in history.

~ Lemony Snicket

Every sea to scare the sailor, I have sailed.

~ Patrick Stump

Oceans are vast and almost bottomless. You dance in the rain Elizabeth. You drown in the sea.

~ Jennifer Rush

Let's Run in the circle, opposite to each other. Until we are thrown into the sky by the storm swirling in between us. I'll hold your hands and I'll hug you, let me be your wings. Let's fall on that clouds and let's dance on the rainbow. Let's bore a hole in that sky until we fall back to the sea with the rain. And Let's swim back to the shore, to play the game of circle again.

~ Akshay Vasu

There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath...

~ Herman Melville

She loves the serene brutality of the ocean, loves the electric power she felt with each breath of wet, briny air.

~ Holly Black

She found out that having something to do prevented you from feeling seasick, and that even a job like scrubbing a deck could be satisfying, if it was done in a seamanlike way. She was very taken with this notion, and later on she folded the blankets on her bunk in a seamanlike way, and put her possessions in the closet in a seamanlike way, and used 'stow' instead of 'tidy' for the process of doing so. After two days at sea, Lyra decided that this was the life for her.

~ Philip Pullman