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.

Without a decisive naval force, we can do nothing definitive, and with it, everything honorable and glorious.

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.

What will not attract a man’s stare at sea?—a gull, a turtle, a flying fish!

Of all objects that I have ever seen, there is none which affects my imagination so much as the sea or ocean. A troubled ocean, to a man who sails upon it, is, I think, the biggest object that he can see in motion, and consequently gives his imagination one of the highest kinds of pleasure that can arise from greatness.

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.

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.

I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast, for I intend to go in harm’s way.

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

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.

He who commands the sea has command of everything.

Ocean. A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man—who has no gills.

The life of a sailor is very unhealthy.