Sea quotes and aphorisms | The World of English

Sea quotes and aphorisms, ideas, thoughts, short reflections and meditations about the sea, the ocean and the metaphors about the sea, life, travel and troubles.

The ocean moans over dead men’s bones.
Thomas B. Aldrich

A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man, who has no gills.
Ambrose Bierce

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 Byron

Sea waves sound reminds me of the beating of my mother’s heart filtered by the amniotic fluid in her placenta. It is an association that, however, cannot calm my anguish for her passing.
Carl William Brown

Praise the sea; on shore remain.
John Florio

He that will learn to pray, let him go to sea.
George Herbert

Where there is a sea there are pirates.
Greek Proverb

Merchant and pirate were for a long period one and the same person. Even today mercantile morality is really nothing but a refinement of piratical morality.
Friedrich Nietzsche

If you can’t change the wind, you must adjust your sails.
Sea proverb

The rougher the seas, the smoother we sail. Ahoy!

If the ocean can calm itself, so can you. We are both salt water mixed with air.
Nayyirah Waheed

The Mediterranean has the color of 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 reflection has taken on a tint of rose or gray.
Vincent Van Gogh

The ocean, whose tides respond, like women’s menses, to the pull of the moon, the ocean which corresponds to the amniotic fluid in which human life begins, the ocean on whose surface vessels (personified as female) can ride but in whose depth sailors meet their death and monsters conceal themselves… it is unstable and threatening as the earth is not; it spawns new life daily, yet swallows up lives; it is changeable like the moon, unregulated, yet indestructible and eternal.
Adrienne Rich

There is hope from the sea, but none from the grave.
Irish Proverb

Wide sea, that one continuous murmur breeds along the pebbled shore of memory!
John Keats

In high seas or in low seas, I’m gonna be your friend… I’m gonna be your friend. In high tide or in low tide, I’ll be by your side… I’ll be by your side.
Bob Marley

The ocean makes me feel really small and it makes me put my whole life into perspective.
Beyoncé

There’s nothing wrong with enjoying looking at the surface of the ocean itself, except that when you finally see what goes on underwater, you realize that you’ve been missing the whole point of the ocean. Staying on the surface all the time is like going to the circus and staring at the outside of the tent.
Dave Barry

The heart of man is very much like the sea, it has its storms, it has its tides and in its depths it has its pearls too.
Vincent van Gogh

The ridiculous modern bourgeoisie is more interested in a seaside vacation, in the garden of their own house, or in the various optional extras to be mounted on their car than in the real fate of humanity.
Carl William Brown

When men come to like a sea-life, they are not fit to live on land.
Samuel Johnson

I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky; and all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by.
John Masefield

The sea complains upon a thousand shores.
Alexander Smith

The ocean is a mighty harmonist.
William Wordsworth

The only cure for seasickness is to sit on the shady side of a church in the country.
Author Unknown

Those who live by the sea can hardly form a single thought of which the sea would not be part.
Hermann Broch

The sea – this truth must be confessed – has no generosity. No display of manly qualities — courage, hardihood, endurance, faithfulness – has ever been known to touch its irresponsible consciousness of power.
Joseph Conrad

The sea is mother-death and she is a mighty female, the one who wins, the one who sucks us all up.
Anne Sexton

Theory is a great net that goes fishing in the sea of experience, what is fished, is fished. Especially today, where the waters are very polluted and fish are scarce.
Carl William Brown

The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.
Joseph Conrad

To me, the sea is like a person – like a child that I’ve known a long time. It sounds crazy, I know, but when I swim in the sea I talk to it. I never feel alone when I’m out there.
Gertrude Ederle

There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath…
Herman Melville

I have seafoam in my veins, I understand the language of waves.
Le Testament d’Orphée

There are veins in the hills where jewels hide And gold lies buried deep; There are harbor-towns where the great ships ride And fame and fortune sleep; But land and sea though we tireless rove And follow each trail to the end Whatever the wealth of our treasure-trove The best we shall find is a friend.
John J. Moment

I must down to the seas again to the vagrant gypsy life To the gulls way and the whales way where the winds like a whetted knife; And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow rover And a quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long tricks o
John Masefield

The abode of God too is wherever is earth and sea and air and sky and virtue. Why further do we seek the Gods of heaven? Whatever thou dost behold and whatever thou dost touch that is Jupiter.
Lucan

They went to sea in a sieve they did; In a sieve they went to sea; In spite of all their friends could say.
Edward Lear

In fact the belief in the spherical earth had currency more than a century before Columbus famous voyage. For which cause men may well perceive that the land and the sea are of round shape and form for the portion of the firmament that shows itself in one country does not show itself in another country. And men may well prove by experience and subtle exercise of wit that if a man should find routes by ship that would go to search the world men might go by ship all about the world and around and beneath it….
Sir John Mandeville

Man is so stupid that he despises the companions who sail with him in the stormy sea of ??troubles of his own existence, while he admires in amazement those who make him sink.
Carl William Brown

Touch the earth love the earth honour the earth her plains her valleys her hills and her seas; rest your spirit in her solitary places.
Henry Beston

Old England is our home and Englishmen are we; Our tongue is known in every clime our flag in every sea.
Mary Howitt

A perfect life is like that of a ship of war which has its own place in the fleet and can share in its strength and discipline but can also go forth alone in the solitude of the infinite sea. We ought to belong to society to have our place in it and yet be capable of a complete individual existence outside of it.
Philip Gilbert Hamerton

… and so castles made of sand slip into the sea eventually.
Jimi Hendrix

Interest in global circumnavigation is older than Christianity itself. In fact if the following quotation is to be credited some attempts at circumnavigation predated the birth of Christ: As for the rest of the distance around the inhabited earth which has not been visited by us up to the present time (because of the fact that the navigators who sailed in opposite directions never met) it is not of very great extent if we reckon from the parallel distances that have been traversed by us… For those who undertook circumnavigation and turned back without having achieved their purpose say that they were made to turn back not because of any continent that stood in their way and hindered their further advance inasmuch as the sea still continued open as before but because of their destitution and loneliness.
Strabo

We must plant the sea and herd its animals. Using the sea as farmers instead of hunters. That is what civilization is all about farming replacing hunting.
Jacques Yves Cousteau

Of Law there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is the bosom of God her voice the harmony of the world: all things in heaven and earth do her homage the very least as feeling her care and the greatest as not exempted from her power.
Richard Hooker

The surging sea of human life forever onward rolls And bears to the eternal shore its daily freight of souls; Tbough bravely sails our bark today pale Death sits at the prow And few shall know we ever lived a hundred years from
Mary A. Ford

The old wooden shed Stranded in a sea of wheat Waiting for harvest.
Daniel Denault

Bernard Loomers father was a sea captain. He was acquainted with his small place in an uncontrollable nature. In a talk in 1974 Loomer described his fathers instructions about the uses of a baseball glove. The father had just overheard his sons sandlot
William Dean

Over the glittering rattled ladders of shale the birds cross tangential to the sea at night. Hour upon hour you can sense the undulation of wings. If you lift your cheek quite carefully you can feel the kiss and the wisp of air stirred by the inaudible glide.
Jan Haag

L’éternité. Cest la mer mêlee Au soleil [Eternity. It is the sea mingled with the sun.]
Arthur Rimbaud

The time has come the Walrus said To talk of many things: Of shoesand shipsand sealing-wax Of cabbages and kings And why the sea is boiling hot And whether pigs have wings.
Lewis Carroll

Shermans buzzin along to de sea Like Moses ridin on a bumblebee.
Stephen Vincent Benet

I am once more seated under my own vine and fig tree … and hope to spend the remainder of my days in peaceful retirement making political pursuits yield to the more rational amusement of cultivating the earth.
George Washington

If the sea And the sun Can bleach a bone Til its whiter Than a gull Cleaner than foam Oh how bright My soul Can emerge Purged On the beach Of Christs water And light. And How calm And warm His sand.
Carol Lynn Pearson

Literature feeds on itself, which is why sometimes some writers get indigestion and vomit a sea of nonsense.
Carl William Brown

To the pilot of a deep sea submersible upon finding out what would happen if the craft sprung a leak while submerged. Ill trust you to make sure that doesnt happen.
Dan Rather

How can we fret and stew sub specie aeternitatis – under the calm gaze of ancient Tao? The salt of the sea is in our blood; the calcium of the rocks is in our bones; the genes of ten thousand generations of stalwart progenitors are in our cells. The sun shines and we smile. The winds rage and we bend before them. The blossoms open and we rejoice. Earth is our long home.
Stewart W. Holmes

Power? Its like a Dead Sea fruit. When you achieve it there is nothing there.
Harold Macmillan

O beautiful for spacious skies For amber waves of grain For purple mountain majesties Above the fruited plain! America! America! God shed His grace on thee And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea!
Katharine Lee Bates

Suddenly from behind the rim of the moon in long slow-motion moments of immense majesty there emerges a sparkling blue and white jewel a light delicate sky-blue sphere laced with slowly swirling veils of white rising gradually like a small pearl in a thick sea of black mystery. It takes more than a moment to fully realize this is Earth … home.
Edgar Mitchell

Esoteric science premises the existence of the Great Unmanifest which may be conceived as a sea of limitless but latent force which underlies all things and whence all things derive their substance and draw their life.
Dion Fortune

Though they go mad they shall be sane Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again Though lovers be lost Love shall not. And Death Shall Have No Dominion.
Dylan Thomas

To cleave that sea [the Aegean] in the gentle autumnal season murmuring the name of each islet is to my mind the joy most apt to transport the heart of man into paradise.
Nikos Kazantzakis

A gull rides the waves as if Made for the sea A swallow will sail high in the air. Oh let my soul rise let it Soar far and free; Or mount on the high winds of care.
Clara Edmunds-Hemingway

The trumpet! the trumpet! the dead have all heard; Lo the depths of the stone-covered charnels are stirred: From the sea from the land from the south and the north. The vast generations of man are come forth.
Henry H. Milman

Fear not to swear; the winds carry the perjuries of lovers without effect over land and sea thanks to Jupiter. The father of the gods himself has denied effect to what foolish lovers in their eagerness have sworn.
Tibullus

Glory to those who have explored the sea of darkness and what there was to explore. Their folly represents the highest degree of intellect.
Carl William Brown

We watch the liner in the distance glide Out from the sheltered waters of the bay Into the arms of ocean’s vastness won. Enfolded in infinity of tide We lose it and the last faint smoke line gray Merges into the sunset and is gone. Vanished from sight and lost art thou at sea Swallowed in oceans blue immensity? Ah no. Though trackless be the deep and wide Thy pilot shall bring thee triumphantly Into the harbor on the other side.
Edith E. McGee

The sea is God’s thoughts spread out.
Charles Morgan

The Three Ships As I went up the mountain-side The sea below me glitterd wide And Eastward far away I spied On Christmas Day on Christmas Day The three great ships that take the tide On Christmas Day in the morning. Ye have heard the song how thes
Alfred Noyes

Twisting inland the sea fog takes awhile in the apple trees.
Michael McClintock

The use of the sea and air is common to all; neither can a title to the ocean belong to any people or private persons forasmuch as neither nature nor public use and custom permit any possession thereof.
Queen Elizabeth I

Cease rude Boreas blustering railer! List ye landsmen all to me; Messmates hear a brother sailor Sing the dangers of the sea.
George A. Stevens

The hills have been high for man’s mounting The woods have been dense for his axe The stars have been thick for his counting The sands have been wide for his tracks. The sea has been deep for his diving The poles have been broad for his sway But bravely he’s proved in his striving That Where there’s a will there’s a way.
Eliza Cook

A wet sheet and a flowing sea A wind that follows fast And fills the white and rustling sail And bends the gallant mast. And bends the gallant mast my boys While like the eagle free Away the good ship flies and leaves Old England on the lee.
Allan Cunningham

The sea! the sea! the open sea! The blue the fresh the ever free!
Bryan W. Procter

The sea of mass media stupidity with socials has become an ocean of imbecility.
Carl William Brown

What fairy-like music steals over the sea Entrancing our senses with charmed melody?
Mrs. C. B. Wilson

I am obsessed with the edges of things like stone at the edge of the sea when foam breaks into sky or your hand dissolves into my.
Stanley Cooperman

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

Two battleships assigned to the training squadron had been at sea on maneuvers in heavy weather for several days. I was serving on the lead battleship and was on watch on the bridge as night fell. The visibility was poor with patchy fog so the captain re
Frank Koch

No life can be barren which hears the whisper of the wind in the branches or the voice of the sea as it breaks upon the shore; and no soul can lack happiness looking up to the midnight stars.
William Winter

Speed bonnie boat like a bird on the wing Onward the sailors cry: Carry the lad thats born to be king Over the sea to Skye.
Harold Edwin Boulton

The sea – this truth must be confessed – has no generosity. No display of manly qualities – courage, hardihood, endurance, faithfulness – has ever been known to touch its irresponsible consciousness of power.
Joseph Conrad

The sea, washing the equator and the poles, offers its perilous aid, and the power and empire that follow it… “Beware of me,” it says, “but if you can hold me, I am the key to all the lands.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

The sea is a desert of waves, A wilderness of water.
Langston Hughes