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Quotes

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

—British naval saying, c. 1800

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.

—William Bradford, 1630

Tomorrow we take to the mighty sea.

—Horace, 23 BC

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

—Leigh Hunt, 1820

A 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 BC

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

—Book of Ecclesiastes, c. 250 BC

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

—Francis Bacon, c. 1600

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

—Humphrey Gilbert, 1583

The most advanced nations are always those who navigate the most.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1870

The wonderful sea charmed me from the first.

—Joshua Slocum, 1900

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

—Edward Gibbon, 1788

He who commands the sea has command of everything.

—Francis Bacon, c. 1600

The 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, 1804