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.

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 sea hath no king but God alone.

The wonderful sea charmed me from the first.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

But look, our seas are what we make of them, full of fish or not, opaque or transparent, red or black, high or smooth, narrow or bankless—and we are ourselves sea, sand, coral, seaweed, beaches, tides, swimmers, children, waves.