Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.

Being thus arrived in good harbor, and brought safe to land, they fell upon their knees and blessed the God of heaven who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean and delivered them from all the perils and miseries thereof, again to set their feet on the firm and stale earth, their proper element.

The sole business of a seaman onshore who has to go to sea again is to take as much pleasure as he can.

What will not attract a man’s stare at sea?—a gull, a turtle, a flying fish!

The sea yields action to the body, meditation to the mind, the world to the world, all parts thereof to each part, by this art of arts—navigation.

All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full.

The Mediterranean has the colors of a mackerel, changeable I mean. You don’t always know if it is green or violet—you can’t even say it’s blue, because the next moment the changing light has taken on a tinge of pink or gray.

I’ve been bathing in the poem / Of star-infused and milky sea / Devouring the azure greens.

Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.

The wonderful sea charmed me from the first.

He that commands the sea is at great liberty and may take as much and as little of the war as he will.

But 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.

The sea hath fish for every man.