Ashore it’s wine, women, and song; aboard it’s rum, bum, and concertina.

Of all objects that I have ever seen, there is none which affects my imagination so much as the sea or ocean. A troubled ocean, to a man who sails upon it, is, I think, the biggest object that he can see in motion, and consequently gives his imagination one of the highest kinds of pleasure that can arise from greatness.

We are as near to heaven by sea as by land!

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 humankind and understandable, and so the springs of its behavior are hidden.

I’ve been bathing in the poem

Of star-infused and milky sea

Devouring the azure greens.

Ocean. A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man—who has no gills.

Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.

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 no king but God alone.

The sea receives us in a proper way only when we are without clothes.

The life of a sailor is very unhealthy.

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

Take back your golden fiddles, and we’ll beat to open sea.