A 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 BCQuotes
Without a decisive naval force, we can do nothing definitive, and with it, everything honorable and glorious.
—George Washington, 1781The 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.
—Vincent van Gogh, 1888Seafarers go to sleep in the evening not knowing whether they will find themselves at the bottom of the sea the next morning.
—Jean de Joinville, c. 1305Take back your golden fiddles, and we’ll beat to open sea.
—Rudyard Kipling, 1892Many, 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, 1837But 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.
—Hélène Cixous, 1976The 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.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1870The breaking of a wave cannot explain the whole sea.
—Vladimir Nabokov, 1941The sea hath fish for every man.
—William Camden, 1605Never trust her at any time when the calm sea shows her false alluring smile.
—Lucretius, c. 60 BCAshore it’s wine, women, and song; aboard it’s rum, bum, and concertina.
—British naval saying, c. 1800You never enjoy the world aright, till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars.
—Thomas Traherne, c. 1670