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Quotes

The winds and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.

—Edward Gibbon, 1788

Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.

—Publilius Syrus, c. 30 BC

Alone, alone, all, all alone, / Alone on a wide, wide sea!

—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1798

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

—Zora Neale Hurston, 1937

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.

—H.M. Tomlinson, 1912

Never trust her at any time when the calm sea shows her false alluring smile.

—Lucretius, c. 60 BC

Seamen are the nearest to death and the furthest from God.

—Thomas Fuller, 1732

The 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, 1870

And to our age’s drowsy blood / Still shouts the inspiring sea.

—James Russell Lowell, 1848

We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea—whether it is to sail or to watch it—we are going back whence we came.

—John F. Kennedy, 1962

The wonderful sea charmed me from the first.

—Joshua Slocum, 1900

The sea hath fish for every man.

—William Camden, 1605

Many, 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