Archive

Quotes

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

—Humphrey Gilbert, 1583

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.

—Jane Austen, 1804

The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea.

—James Joyce, 1922

The sea receives us in a proper way only when we are without clothes.

—Pliny the Elder, 77

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

—Ambrose Bierce, 1906

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.

—Alexis de Tocqueville, 1835

And to our age’s drowsy blood / Still shouts the inspiring sea.

—James Russell Lowell, 1848

Tomorrow we take to the mighty sea.

—Horace, 23 BC

Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.

—Publilius Syrus, c. 30 BC

I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast, for I intend to go in harm’s way.

—John Paul Jones, 1778

The wonderful sea charmed me from the first.

—Joshua Slocum, 1900

The breaking of a wave cannot explain the whole sea.

—Vladimir Nabokov, 1941

Seafarers 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. 1305