Seamen are the nearest to death and the furthest from God.
—Thomas Fuller, 1732Quotes
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, 1838Many, 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.
—Hans Christian Andersen, 1837It 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. 625The sea hath no king but God alone.
—Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1881What will not attract a man’s stare at sea?—a gull, a turtle, a flying fish!
—Richard Burton, 1883Being thus arrived in good harbor, and brought safe to land, they fell upon their knees and blessed the God of heaven who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean and delivered them from all the perils and miseries thereof, again to set their feet on the firm and stale earth, their proper element.
—William Bradford, 1630The sea hath fish for every man.
—William Camden, 1605He that commands the sea is at great liberty and may take as much and as little of the war as he will.
—Francis Bacon, c. 1600I must be a mermaid, Rango. I have no fear of depths and a great fear of shallow living.
—Anaïs Nin, 1950I’ve been bathing in the poem / Of star-infused and milky sea / Devouring the azure greens.
—Arthur Rimbaud, 1871He who commands the sea has command of everything.
—Francis Bacon, c. 1600A 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