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Quotes

It is He who has subdued the ocean so that you may eat of its fresh fish and bring up from its depth ornaments to wear. Behold the ships plowing their course through it. All this, that you may seek His bounty and render thanks.

—The Qur’an, c. 625

The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea.

—James Joyce, 1922

I must be a mermaid, Rango. I have no fear of depths and a great fear of shallow living.

—Anaïs Nin, 1950

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

—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1798

The breaking of a wave cannot explain the whole sea.

—Vladimir Nabokov, 1941

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

Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.

—Publilius Syrus, c. 30 BC

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

—British naval saying, c. 1800

The wonderful sea charmed me from the first.

—Joshua Slocum, 1900

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

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

—Thomas Fuller, 1732

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.

—Lord Byron, 1821