“For in tremendous extremities human souls are like drowning men; well enough they know they are in peril; well enough they know the causes of that peril;--nevertheless, the sea is the sea, and these drowning men do drown.”
Source: Pierre or the Ambiguities
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Herman Melville 144
American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet 1818–1891Related quotes
Source: Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West
“5744. Wine hath drowned more Men than the Sea.”
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
Variant: Bacchus hath drown'd more Men than Neptune.
Context: 830. Bacchus hath drown'd more Men than Neptune.
“The world is a sea in which we all must surely drown.”
Source: English Music
As quoted by Brian Masters (2011), Killing for Company, Random House, p. 49, ISBN 1446428737
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915)
Source: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Other Poems
Context: I grow old … I grow old...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
Pt. VI
The Open Boat (1894)
Source: The Open Boat and Other Stories
“I have drowned
in the big sea
now I find I'm still alive”
"The Big Music"
This Is the Sea (1985)
Context: I have drowned
in the big sea
now I find I'm still alive
And I'm coming up forever
shadows all behind me
ecstacy to come