As to the sea itself, love it you cannot. Why should you? I will never believe again the sea was ever loved by anyone whose life was married to it. It is the creation of omnipotence, which is not of humankind and understandable, and so the springs of its behavior are hidden.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Being thus arrived in good harbor, and brought safe to land, they fell upon their knees and blessed the God of heaven who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean and delivered them from all the perils and miseries thereof, again to set their feet on the firm and stale earth, their proper element.

Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.

We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea—whether it is to sail or to watch it—we are going back whence we came.

Never trust her at any time when the calm sea shows her false alluring smile.

Be not the slave of your own past. Plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so shall you come back with self-respect, with new power, with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.

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