Ashore it’s wine, women, and song; aboard it’s rum, bum, and concertina.

Seamen are the nearest to death and the furthest from God.

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

He that commands the sea is at great liberty and may take as much and as little of the war as he will.

I am ill every time it blows hard, and nothing but my enthusiastic love for the profession keeps me one hour at sea.

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.

The most advanced nations are always those who navigate the most.

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.

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.

Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.

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

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

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.