For many, it’s just a source of livelihood or a place of recreation. But the sea is much, much more. It is deep and has the power to stir man’s deepest emotions: loneliness, grief, despair, fear, shock, awe, love, ecstasy and hope. From the vast ocean of quotations on the subject we’ve selected a small number that should inspire both sea-going and city folks.
There are no signposts in the sea. ~Vita Sackville-West
If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness. ~Joseph Conrad
There is nothing so desperately monotonous as the sea, and I no longer wonder at the cruelty of pirates. ~James Russell Lowell
The sea has neither meaning nor pity. ~Anton Chekhov
Time is more complex near the sea than in any other place, for in addition to the circling of the sun and the turning of the seasons, the waves beat out the passage of time on the rocks and the tides rise and fall as a great clepsydra. ~John Steinbeck
Roll on, deep and dark blue ocean, roll. Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain. Man marks the earth with ruin, but his control stops with the shore. ~Lord (George Gordon) Byron
The sea, the snotgreen sea, the scrotumtightening sea. ~James Joyce
The sea is mother-death and she is a mighty female, the one who wins, the one who sucks us all up. ~Anne Sexton
I hate to be near the sea, and to hear it roaring and raging like a wild beast in its den. It puts me in mind of the everlasting efforts of the human mind, struggling to be free, and ending just where it began. ~William Hazlitt
A person who hates the sound of the sea cannot be a good sailor. ~Captain Michael Cuanzon
He that will learn to pray, let him go to sea. ~George Herbert
There is, one knows not what, sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seems to speak of some hidden soul beneath. ~Herman Melville
To gaze into the depths of the sea is, in the imagination, like beholding the vast unknown, and from its most terrible point of view. The submarine gulf is analogous to the realm of night and dreams. There also is sleep, unconsciousness, or at least apparent unconsciousness, of creation. There in the awful silence and darkness, the rude first forms of life, phantomlike, demoniacal, pursue their horrible instincts. ~Victor Hugo
The sea is everything. It covers seven tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and healthy. It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely, for he feels life stirring on all sides. ~Jules Verne
The least movement is of importance to all nature. The entire ocean is affected by a pebble. ~Blaise Pascal
When anxious, uneasy and bad thoughts come, I go to the sea, and the sea drowns them out with its great wide sounds, cleanses me with its noise, and imposes a rhythm upon everything in me that is bewildered and confused. ~Rainer Maria Rilke
The cure for anything is salt water – sweat, tears, or the sea. ~Isak Dinesen
There is indeed, perhaps, no better way to hold communion with the sea than sitting in the sun on the veranda of a fishermen’s café ~Joseph Warren Beach
From birth, man carries the weight of gravity on his shoulders. He is bolted to earth. But man has only to sink beneath the surface and he is free. ~Jacques Yves Cousteau
The sea will grant each man new hope, and sleep will bring dreams of home. ~Christopher Columbus
~Barista Uno
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Lovely! Thank you for sharing!
Ah, what a chord you strike! Excellent post.
I remember when, as a young seaman, I used to take extra bow watches just to be out there, away from the vibration & noise, my back to the deck lights, nothing ahead but the horizon, no sound but the bow wave. I was young and very foolish then, but intensely romantic. Some of the guys thought I was nuts to want to take their watches, but to me it was a gift.
All the quotes are good, but Capt. Cuanzon’s, Victor Hugo’s, and George Herbert’s really resonate with me. Thanks again!
Reid
Many thanks to you, Reid, and to Helen for dropping by and commenting.
I’ve not come across a quotation that describes the smell of the sea. I love the smell of the sea, probably because I was a ship captain in a previous life. 🙂
A seaman is at home when he feels the heaving of the deck beneath his feet.
THE SONG OF THE SOU’WESTER
by Sir Henry Newbolt (1862-1938)
The sun was lost in a leaden sky,
And the shore lay under our lee;
When a great Sou’ Wester hurricane high
Came rollicking up the sea.
He played with the fleet as a boy with boats
Till out for the Downs we ran,
And he laugh’d with the roar of a thousand throats
At the militant ways of man:
_Oh! I am the enemy most of might,
The other be who you please!
Gunner and guns may all be right,
Flags a-flying and armour tight,
But I am the fellow you’ve first to fight–
The giant that swings the seas._
A dozen of middies were down below
Chasing the X they love,
While the table curtseyed long and slow
And the lamps were giddy above.
The lesson was all of a ship and a shot,
And some of it may have been true,
But the word they heard and never forgot
Was the word of the wind that blew:
_Oh! I am the enemy most of might,
The other be who you please!
Gunner and guns may all be right,
Flags a-flying and armour tight,
But I am the fellow you’ve first to fight–
The giant that swings the seas._
The Middy with luck is a Captain soon,
With luck he may hear one day
His own big guns a-humming the tune
“‘Twas in Trafalgar’s Bay.”
But wherever he goes, with friends or foes,
And whatever may there befall,
He’ll hear for ever a voice he knows
For ever defying them all:
_Oh! I am the enemy most of might,
The other be who you please!
Gunner and guns may all be right,
Flags a-flying and armour tight,
But I am the fellow you’ve first to fight–
The giant that swings the seas._.
(The end)
Henry Newbolt’s Poem: Song of the Sou’ Wester
Dear Abbas Ali,
You are quite right – the sea can humble any, often the proudest first!
Psalm 107
23 They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters;
24 These see the works of the LORD, and his wonders in the deep.
Beautiful! Had to be included.