Alone, alone, all, all alone, / Alone on a wide, wide sea!
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1798Quotes
Seamen are the nearest to death and the furthest from God.
—Thomas Fuller, 1732The bathing was so delightful this morning, and Molly so pressing with me to enjoy myself, that I believe I stayed in rather too long, as since the middle of the day I have felt unreasonably tired. I shall be more careful another time, and shall not bathe tomorrow as I had before intended.
—Jane Austen, 1804Tomorrow we take to the mighty sea.
—Horace, 23 BCTake back your golden fiddles, and we’ll beat to open sea.
—Rudyard Kipling, 1892But look, our seas are what we make of them, full of fish or not, opaque or transparent, red or black, high or smooth, narrow or bankless—and we are ourselves sea, sand, coral, seaweed, beaches, tides, swimmers, children, waves.
—Hélène Cixous, 1976The sea receives us in a proper way only when we are without clothes.
—Pliny the Elder, 77Seaward ho! Hang the treasure! It’s the glory of the sea that has turned my head.
—Robert Louis Stevenson, 1883The breaking of a wave cannot explain the whole sea.
—Vladimir Nabokov, 1941A fair complexion is unbecoming to a sailor: he ought to be swarthy from the waters of the sea and the rays of the sun.
—Ovid, c. 1 BCI never even saw the use of the sea. Many a sad heart has it caused, and many a sick stomach has it occasioned! The boldest sailor climbs on board with a heavy soul and leaps on land with a light spirit.
—Benjamin Disraeli, 1827The power which the sea requires in the sailor makes a man of him very fast, and the change of shores and population clears his head of much nonsense of his wigwam.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1870Many, many steeples would have to be stacked one on top of another to reach from the bottom to the surface of the sea. It is down there that the sea folk live.
—Hans Christian Andersen, 1837