The sea hath no king but God alone.

The wonderful sea charmed me from the first.

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.

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.

The sea yields action to the body, meditation to the mind, the world to the world, all parts thereof to each part, by this art of arts—navigation.

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

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

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

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.

You 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.

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

Seafarers go to sleep in the evening not knowing whether they will find themselves at the bottom of the sea the next morning.