The sea yields action to the body, meditation to the mind, the world to the world, all parts thereof to each part, by this art of arts—navigation.
—Samuel Purchas, 1613Quotes
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, 1804Ocean. A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man—who has no gills.
—Ambrose Bierce, 1906The sea hath fish for every man.
—William Camden, 1605Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.
—Zora Neale Hurston, 1937But 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.
—Hélène Cixous, 1976The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea.
—James Joyce, 1922Without a decisive naval force, we can do nothing definitive, and with it, everything honorable and glorious.
—George Washington, 1781The wonderful sea charmed me from the first.
—Joshua Slocum, 1900Why 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, 1821Never trust her at any time when the calm sea shows her false alluring smile.
—Lucretius, c. 60 BCThe 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, 1870Seafarers go to sleep in the evening not knowing whether they will find themselves at the bottom of the sea the next morning.
—Jean de Joinville, c. 1305