The breaking of a wave cannot explain the whole sea.

Seaward ho! Hang the treasure! It’s the glory of the sea that has turned my head.

All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full.

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.

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

The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

The 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.