Quotes about the sea

A collection of quotes on the topic of sea, likeness, world, land.

Best quotes about the sea

Isaac Newton photo

“What we know is a drop, what we don't know is an ocean.”

Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet
Franz Kafka photo

“A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

Letter to Oskar Pollak http://www.languagehat.com/archives/001062.php (27 January 1904)
Variant translations:
If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skulls, then why do we read it? Good God, we also would be happy if we had no books and such books that make us happy we could, if need be, write ourselves. What we must have are those books that come on us like ill fortune, like the death of one we love better than ourselves, like suicide. A book must be an ice axe to break the sea frozen inside us.
What we need are books that hit us like a most painful misfortune, like the death of someone we loved more than we love ourselves, that make us feel as though we had been banished to the woods, far from any human presence, like a suicide. A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.
A book should be an ice-axe to break the frozen sea within us.
A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul.
A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.
Variant: A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.
Context: I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for?... we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.

Arthur Rimbaud photo

“Eternity is the sun
mixed
with the sea”

Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891) French Decadent and Symbolist poet
Pythagoras photo

“Salt is born of the purest parents: the sun and the sea.”

Pythagoras (-585–-495 BC) ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher
Carl Sagan photo

“Across the sea of space, the stars are other suns.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator
Yoko Ono photo

“Every drop in the ocean counts.”

Yoko Ono (1933) Japanese artist, author, and peace activist
Rumi photo

“Silence
is an ocean. Speech is a river.”

Rumi (1207–1273) Iranian poet

"The Three Fish" Ch. 18 : The Three Fish, p. 196
Variant translations or adaptations:
Silence is the language of God, all else is poor translation.
As quoted in Teachers of Wisdom (2010) by Igor Kononenko, p. 134
Silence is an ocean. Speech is a river. Silence is the language of God, all else is poor translation.
As quoted in "Rumi’s wisdom" (2 October 2015) http://paulocoelhoblog.com/2015/10/02/character-of-the-week-rumi/, by Paulo Coelho
The Essential Rumi (1995)
Context: Silence
is an ocean. Speech is a river.When the ocean is searching for you, don't walk
into the language-river. Listen to the ocean,
and bring your talky business to an end Traditional words are just babbling
in that presence, and babbling is a substitute
for sight.

George Burns photo

“When I was a boy the Dead Sea was only sick.”

George Burns (1896–1996) American comedian, actor, and writer
Al-Shafi‘i photo

“He who seeks pearls immerses himself in the sea.”

Al-Shafi‘i (767–820) Founder of Sunni Shafi‘i

Diwan al-Imam al-shafi'i, (book of poems - al-shafi'i) p. 100; Dar El-Marefah Beirut - Lebanon 2005

Quotes about the sea

Jacques-Yves Cousteau photo

“The Sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.”

Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1910–1997) French naval officer, explorer, conservationist, filmmaker, innovator, scientist, photographer, author and …
Rick Riordan photo
Vincent Van Gogh photo
Billie Eilish photo

“When I was older
I was a sailor
On an open sea
But now I'm underwater
And my skin is paler
Than it should ever be”

Billie Eilish (2001) American singer-songwriter

When I Was Older, Music Inspired by the Film Roma (9 January 2019)
Singles (2017 - )

Tove Jansson photo
Isaac Newton photo

“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”

Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics

Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton (1855) by Sir David Brewster (Volume II. Ch. 27). Compare: "As children gath'ring pebbles on the shore", John Milton, Paradise Regained, Book iv. Line 330

Axel Munthe photo
Aryabhata photo
Alexis Karpouzos photo
H.P. Lovecraft photo

“We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.”

Variant: We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of the infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.
Source: The Call of Cthulhu

Augustus photo
Jacque Fresco photo
Christopher Paolini photo
Nikos Kazantzakis photo
Ava Gardner photo
Amin Maalouf photo
D.H. Lawrence photo

“I am part of the sun as my eye is of me. That I am part of the earth my feet know perfectly, and my blood is part of the sea.”

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter

Apocalypse (1930)
Context: What man most passionately wants is his living wholeness and his living unison, not his own isolate salvation of his "soul." Man wants his physical fulfillment first and foremost, since now, once and once only, he is in the flesh and potent. For man, the vast marvel is to be alive. For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive. Whatever the unborn and the dead may know, they cannot know the beauty, the marvel of being alive in the flesh. The dead may look after the afterwards. But the magnificent here and now of life in the flesh is ours, and ours alone, and ours only for a time. We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living, incarnate cosmos. I am part of the sun as my eye is part of me. That I am part of the earth my feet know perfectly, and my blood is part of the sea. My soul knows that I am part of the human race, my soul is an organic part of the great human soul, as my spirit is part of my nation. In my own very self, I am part of my family. There is nothing of me that is alone and absolute except my mind, and we shall find that the mind has no existence by itself, it is only the glitter of the sun on the surface of the waters.

Henry Ward Beecher photo

“The Bible is God's chart for you to steer by, to keep you from the bottom of the sea, and to show you where the harbor is, and how to reach it without running on rocks or bars.”

Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887) American clergyman and activist

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 28

Rumi photo
Dante Alighieri photo
Konrad Zuse photo

“The belief in a certain idea gives to the researcher the support for his work. Without this belief he would be lost in a sea of doubts and insufficiently verified proofs.”

Konrad Zuse (1910–1995) German computer scientist and engineer

Der Glaube an eine bestimmte Idee gibt dem Forscher den Rückhalt für seine Arbeit. Ohne diesen Glauben wäre er verloren in einem Meer von Zweifeln und halbgültigen Beweisen.
Attributed in Konrad Zuse http://www.dpma.de/ponline/erfindergalerie/bio_zuse.html on "Die Erfindergalerie", dpma.de, 2008

Dante Alighieri photo

“And just as he who, with exhausted breath,
having escaped from the sea to shore,
turns to the perilous waters and gazes.”

Canto I, lines 22–24 (tr. Mandelbaum).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno

Pablo Neruda photo

“It is time, love, to break off that sombre rose,
shut up the stars and bury the ash in the earth;
and, in the rising of the light, wake with those who awoke
or go on in the dream, reaching the other shore of the sea which has no other shore.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Es la hora, amor mío, de apartar esta rosa sombría,
cerrar las estrellas, enterrar la ceniza en la tierra:
y, en la insurrección de la luz, despertar con los que despertaron
o seguir en el sueño alcanzando la otra orilla del mar que no tiene otra orilla.
La Barcarola Termina (The Watersong Ends) (1967), trans. Anthony Kerrigan in Selected Poems by Pablo Neruda [Houghton Mifflin, 1990, ISBN 0-395-54418-1] (p. 500).

Robert Browning photo
Alexis Karpouzos photo
Alexis Karpouzos photo
Karen Blixen photo

“I know of a cure for everything: salt water… in one way or the other. Sweat, or tears, or the salt sea.”

Karen Blixen (1885–1962) Danish writer

As quoted in Reader's Digest (April 1964)
Variant: I know a cure for everything. Salt water … in one form or another, sweat, tears or the salt sea.
Variant: The cure for anything is salt water — sweat, tears, or the sea.

Vladimir Lenin photo
Arundhati Roy photo
Vladimir Nabokov photo
George Orwell photo
Rick Riordan photo
William Shakespeare photo
Marva Collins photo
H.P. Lovecraft photo
William Shakespeare photo
J.M.W. Turner photo
Tamora Pierce photo
George Orwell photo
Emily Dickinson photo
Joan Baez photo
Neil Peart photo
Dante Alighieri photo

“To run over better waters the little vessel of my genius now hoists her sails, as she leaves behind her a sea so cruel.”

Canto I, lines 1–3 (tr. C. E. Norton).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Purgatorio

Dante Alighieri photo

“I came into a place void of all light,
which bellows like the sea in tempest,
when it is combated by warring winds.”

Canto V, lines 28–30 (tr. Charles S. Singleton).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno

“On that day all the gods looked down from heaven upon the ship and the might of the heroes, half-divine, the bravest of men then sailing the sea.”

Source: Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book I. Preparation and Departure, Lines 547–549 (tr. R. C. Seaton)

Alejandro Jodorowsky photo
Stefan Zweig photo
Elizabeth I of England photo
Clarice Lispector photo

“There it is, the sea, the most incomprehensible of non-human existences.”

Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) Brazilian writer

An Apprenticeship, or The Book of Delights (1968)

Emperor Gaozu of Han photo

“A great wind came forth, the clouds rose on high.
Now that my might rules all within the seas, I have returned to my old village.
Where will I find brave men to guard the four corners of my land?”

Emperor Gaozu of Han (-256–-195 BC) founding emperor of the Han Dynasty (256 BC - 195 BC)

Translated by Burton Watson
大風歌 Song of the Great Wind

Socrates photo
Martin Luther photo
T.C. Boyle photo
Martin Luther photo
Frederic William Henry Myers photo
T. B. Joshua photo

“When times are stable, and the sea is calm and secure, no one is really tested.”

T. B. Joshua (1963) Nigerian Christian leader

Inspiration from his late mother - "'ATTRIBUTING THE SATELLITES SUCCESS TO ME IS BLASPHEMY' – T.B. JOSHUA" http://www.modernghana.com/print/247180/1/attributing-the-satellites-success-to-me-is-blasph.html Modern Ghana (November 4 2009)

Saddam Hussein photo

“Palestine is Arab and must be liberated from the river to the sea and all the Zionists who emigrated to the land of Palestine must leave.”

Saddam Hussein (1937–2006) Iraqi politician and President

On Iraqi Television, May 30, 2001; quoted in Robert Wistrich, Muslim Anti-Semitism: A Clear and Present Danger(2002), page 43.

Richard Feynman photo
Yves Klein photo
Peter Ustinov photo
Leonardo DiCaprio photo
Musa I of Mali photo
Dante Alighieri photo

“And his will is our peace; this is the sea
To which is moving onward whatsoever
It doth create, and all that nature makes.”

Canto III, lines 85–87 (tr. Longfellow).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Paradiso

Bahá'u'lláh photo

“Wherefore, if those who have come to the sea of His presence are found to possess none of the limited things of this perishable world, whether it be outer wealth or personal opinions, it mattereth not. For whatever the creatures have is limited by their own limits, and whatever the True One hath is sanctified therefrom; this utterance must be deeply pondered that its purport may be clear”

Bahá'u'lláh (1817–1892) founder of the Bahá'í Faith

The Valley of True Poverty and Absolute Nothingness
The Seven Valleys Of Bahá’u’lláh
Context: He who hath attained this station is sanctified from all that pertaineth to the world. Wherefore, if those who have come to the sea of His presence are found to possess none of the limited things of this perishable world, whether it be outer wealth or personal opinions, it mattereth not. For whatever the creatures have is limited by their own limits, and whatever the True One hath is sanctified therefrom; this utterance must be deeply pondered that its purport may be clear. “Verily the righteous shall drink of a winecup tempered at the camphor fountain.” If the interpretation of “camphor” become known, the true intention will be evident. This state is that poverty of which it is said, “Poverty is My glory.” And of inward and outward poverty there is many a stage and many a meaning which I have not thought pertinent to mention here; hence I have reserved these for another time, dependent on what God may desire and fate may seal.

Edgar Allan Poe photo

“I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love —
I and my Annabel Lee —”

St. 2.
Annabel Lee (1849)
Context: I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love —
I and my Annabel Lee —
With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven
Coveted her and me.

Taras Shevchenko photo
Edgar Allan Poe photo

“It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee; —”

St. 1.
Annabel Lee (1849)
Context: It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee; —
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk photo

“I have no religion, and at times I wish all religions at the bottom of the sea.”

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–1938) Turkish army officer, revolutionary, and the first President of Turkey

He is a weak ruler who needs religion to uphold his government; it is as if he would catch his people in a trap. My people are going to learn the principles of democracy, the dictates of truth and the teachings of science. Superstition must go. Let them worship as they will; every man can follow his own conscience, provided it does not interfere with sane reason or bid him against the liberty of his fellow-men.
Quoted in Atatürk: The Biography of the founder of Modern Turkey, by Andrew Mango; "In a book published in 1928, Grace Ellison quotes [Atatürk], presumably in 1926-27", Grace Ellison Turkey Today (London: Hutchinson, 1928)

Augustus photo

“He took a beating twice at sea, And threw two fleets away. So now to achieve one victory, He tosses dice all day.”

Augustus (-63–14 BC) founder of Julio-Claudian dynasty and first emperor of the Roman Empire

Postquam bis classe victus naves perdidit, Aliquando ut vincat, ludit assidue aleam.
A popular rhyme at the time of the Sicilian war, mocking Augustus' habit of playing dice; in Suetonius, Divus Augustus, paragraph 70. Translation: Robert Graves, 1957.

Alexis Karpouzos photo
E.E. Cummings photo

“as small as a world and as large as alone
For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

Variant: For whatever we lose (like a you or a me),
It's always our self we find in the sea.
Source: 100 Selected Poems

Joseph Conrad photo

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

Source: The Mirror of the Sea (1906), Ch. 35
Context: For all that has been said of the love that certain natures (on shore) have professed to feel for it, for all the celebrations it had been the object of in prose and song, the sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.

Margaret Wise Brown photo

“Nights and days came and passed
And summer and winter
and the rain.
And it was good to be a little Island.
A part of the world
and a world of its own
All surrounded by the bright blue sea.”

Variant: nights and days came and passed
and summer and winter
and the sun and the wind
and the rain.
and it was good to be a little island
a part of the world
and a world of its own
all surrounded by the bright blue sea.
Source: The Little Island

Henryk Sienkiewicz photo
Isaac Asimov photo

“When asked for advice by beginners. Know your ending, I say, or the river of your story may finally sink into the desert sands and never reach the sea.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

Source: I. Asimov

Virginia Woolf photo

“I am drowning, my dear, in seas of fire.”

Source: To the Lighthouse

Virginia Woolf photo
Ramana Maharshi photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Herman Melville photo
Tamora Pierce photo
Sylvia Plath photo

“Is it the sea you hear in me?
Its dissatisfactions?
Or the voice of nothing, that was your madness?

Love is a shadow.
How you lie and cry after it.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: Ariel: The Restored Edition

Elizabeth Barrett Browning photo
Rebecca Solnit photo
Christina Rossetti photo
Thor Heyerdahl photo
Eugene O'Neill photo
Aimé Césaire photo
Janet Fitch photo
Louisa May Alcott photo
Virginia Woolf photo
Patricia A. McKillip photo
Bram Stoker photo
Karen Blixen photo
John Steinbeck photo