Archive

Quotes

Take back your golden fiddles, and we’ll beat to open sea.

—Rudyard Kipling, 1892

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

—Book of Ecclesiastes, c. 250 BC

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

The breaking of a wave cannot explain the whole sea.

—Vladimir Nabokov, 1941

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

—Anaïs Nin, 1950

Be not the slave of your own past. Plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so shall you come back with self-respect, with new power, with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1838

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

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.

—Muhammad as-Saffar, 1846

The sea receives us in a proper way only when we are without clothes.

—Pliny the Elder, 77

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

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

—Humphrey Gilbert, 1583

The life of a sailor is very unhealthy.

—Francis Galton, 1883

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

—Arthur Rimbaud, 1871