The life of a sailor is very unhealthy.

Seaward ho! Hang the treasure! It’s the glory of the sea that has turned my head.

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.

Why is a ship under sail more poetical than a hog in a high wind? The hog is all nature, the ship is all art.

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.

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

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.

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

The legislator is like the navigator of a ship on the high seas. He can steer the vessel on which he sails, but he cannot alter its construction, raise the wind, or stop the waves from swelling beneath his feet.

The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea.

He who travels by sea is nothing but a worm on a piece of wood, a trifle in the midst of a powerful creation. The waters play about with him at will, and no one but God can help him.

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.