The sole business of a seaman onshore who has to go to sea again is to take as much pleasure as he can.

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

The sea hath fish for every man.

The winds and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.

The 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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

He who commands the sea has command of everything.

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

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.