Quotes about the sea

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

Best quotes about the sea

“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

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

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

“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.

“Eternity is the sun
mixed
with the sea”

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

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

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

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

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

“Every drop in the ocean counts.”

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

“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.

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

George Burns (1896–1996) American comedian, actor, and writer

“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

“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 …

“Percy smiled at her - that sarcastic troublemaker smile that had annoyed her for years but eventually had become endearing. His sea-green eyes were as gorgeous as she remembered. His dark hair was swept to one side, like he'd just come from a walk on the beach. He looked even better than he had six months ago - tanner and taller, leaner and more muscular.

Percy threw his arms around her. They kissed and for a moment nothing else mattered. An asteroid could have hit the planet and wiped out all life, and Annabeth wouldn't have cared.”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

Life, Smile, Kiss

“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 book The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

Source: The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

For Men, Heart

“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 - )

“I love borders. August is the border between summer and autumn; it is the most beautiful month I know.

Twilight is the border between day and night, and the shore is the border between sea and land. The border is longing: when both have fallen in love but still haven't said anything. The border is to be on the way. It is the way that is the most important thing.”

Tove Jansson (1914–2001) Finnish children's writer and illustrator

Love, Beauty, Way, Autumn

“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

Truth, World, Boy, Appearance

“My home shall be open for the sun and the wind and the voices of the sea - like a Greek temple - and light, light, light everywhere!”

Axel Munthe (1857–1949) Swedish physician

Light, Home, Sun

“He is the master who, after reaching the furthest shores and plumbing the inmost depths of the sea of ultimate knowledge of mathematics, kinematics and spherics, handed over the three sciences to the learned world.”

Aryabhata (476–550) Indian mathematician-astronomer

Bhaskara I, quoted in: J J O'Connor and E F Robertson "Aryabhata the Elder".

Learning, Knowledge, Mathematics, World

“Listen,
if stars are still lit it means there is someone who needs them.
It means someone wants to love,
Why then do we feel so much pain and heaviness of heart?
are we waiting for something, regretting anything?
To whom I can strech out my hand in the somber desert?
Who will accompany me on the empty night?
Who will give me a fiery day?
Who will bring back the sea that left?
No hope here. Torment is certain.
Without sacredness in the emptiness of this world of ours,
the heart of man fades like a flower.
Suddenly, the shuddering of the heavens penetrating my soul,
Oh never let the parting sun, no star is ever lost we once have seen, the long rains will continue to fall.”

Alexis Karpouzos (1967)

Source: Song THE HEART OF MAN

Soul, Pain, Waiting, Night

“You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Water

“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.”

H.P. Lovecraft book The Call of Cthulhu

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

“Wars, both civil and foreign, I undertook throughout the world, on sea and land, and when victorious I spared all citizens who sued for pardon. The foreign nations which could with safety be pardoned I preferred to save rather than to destroy.”

Augustus book Res Gestae Divi Augusti

Res Gestae Divi Augusti

War, World, Victory

“When travel outside the city is desired, computer-guided vehicles for land, sea, air, space and beyond can transport passengers and freight. For rapid movement of passengers on land across via ducts, bridges, and tunnels, high-speed mag-lev trains span great distances and will efficiently replace most aircraft transportation.”

Jacque Fresco (1916–2017) American futurist and self-described social engineer

Designing the Future (2007)

Training, Travel, Speed

“The sea is emotion incarnate. It loves, hates, and weeps. It defies all attempts to capture it with words and rejects all shackles. No matter what you say about it, there is always that which you can't.”

Christopher Paolini book Eragon

Source: Eragon

Love, Hate

“I felt once more how simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. Nothing else.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book Zorba the Greek

Source: Zorba the Greek

Happy, Wine, Happiness

“When I’m old and gray, I want to have a house by the sea. And paint. With a lot of wonderful chums, good music, and booze around. And a damn good kitchen to cook in.”

Ava Gardner (1922–1990) American actress

Music, Painting, Housing, Cooking

“Never hesitate to go far away, beyond all seas, all frontiers, all countries, all beliefs.”

Amin Maalouf book Leo Africanus

Source: Leo Africanus

Country

“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.

Sun, Parting

“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

God

“I don't know where I am.
At times I plunge
to the bottom of the sea,
at times, rise up
like the Sun. At times, the universe is pregnant by me,
at times I give birth to it.”

Rumi (1207–1273) Iranian poet

Hush Don't Say Anything to God (1999)

Birth, Universe, Time, Sun

“Therefore the sight that is granted to your world penetrates within the Eternal Justice as the eye into the sea; for though from the shore it sees the bottom, in the open sea it does not, and yet the bottom is there but the depth conceals it.”

Dante Alighieri book Paradiso

Canto XIX, lines 58–63 (tr. Sinclair).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Paradiso

World, Justice

“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

Idea, Support

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

Dante Alighieri book Inferno

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

Water

“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).

Love, Dreams, Star, Light

“All the breath and the bloom of the year in the bag of one bee:
All the wonder and wealth of the mine in the heart of one gem:
In the core of one pearl all the shade and the shine of the sea:
Breath and bloom, shade and shine, — wonder, wealth, and — how far above them —
: Truth, that's brighter than gem,
: Trust, that's purer than pearl, —
Brightest truth, purest trust in the universe, — all were for me
: In the kiss of one girl.
:* "Summum Bonum" (1889).”

Robert Browning (1812–1889) English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era

Truth, Girl, Kiss, Universe

“I'm looking for the face i had before the world was made. I was the primordial flaring forth, the gravitational waves, the whirling galaxies, and the exploding supernovas that would become stars and planets. I was the steaming planet Earth, the bacteria awash in the sea, and the early eukaryotes and multicellular animals. I exploded in the Cambrian explosion, stumbled onto land, walked with dinosaurs, saw trees and flowers appear, walked upright in Africa, and walked on the moon. I felt the embrace of gravity. I was one with all that had been and all that was to be. I experienced subjective mystical communion with the evolutionary, emergent universe. I was the universe. We know not where the journey leads, nor whether a final destination is even a meaningful concept. The attraction is the inherent thrill of participating in a grand creative endeavor for which participation is its own reward”

Alexis Karpouzos (1967)

Source: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14108295.alexis_karpouzos

Tree, Star, Animals, Flowers

“My child, let your life come into the world of darkness
like a spark of light, without flicker and pure,
and thank them in silence. You know,
my child, they are cruel in their greed and envy,
their words are disguised knives thirsting for blood.
But do not be afraid, my child, go and stand in their hearts,
and let your gentle eyes fall on them like the forgiving serenity of the night.
My child, let them see your face and so they know it
meaning of all things, let them love and love one another.
Go, at sunrise, open and lift up your heart like a blooming flower,
and at sunset, bend your head and silently complete the worship of the day.
Remember, my child, gods and demons, ghosts and elves are fragments of one,
built by the hand of the abyss.
So, move on, go to the shore of the vast darkness,
there, is the Great Meeting of Children,
there, the sea gives a smile to the beach,
there, sing the waves facing death.”

Alexis Karpouzos (1967)

Source: https://dailywisdomwords.com/community-poetry/my-child/

God, Light, Silence, Children

“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.

Way, Tear, Water

“Take a factory, a railway, a ship on the high seas, said Engels: is it not clear that not one of these complex technical establishments, based on the use of machinery and the systematic co-operation of many people, could function without a certain amount of subordination and, consequently, without a certain amount of authority or power?”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Source: State and Revolution

People

“Our dreams have been doctored. We belong no where. We sail unanchored on troubled seas. We may never be allowed ashore. Our sorrows will never be sad enough. Our joys never happy enough. Our dreams never big enough. Our lives never important enough. To matter..”

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

Sadness, Dreams, Joy, Happiness

“The sun is a thief: she lures the sea
and robs it. The moon is a thief:
he steals his silvery light from the sun.
The sea is a thief: it dissolves the moon.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Pale Fire

Source: Pale Fire

Light, Sun

“He felt as though he were wandering in the forests of the sea bottom, lost in a monstrous world where he himself was the monster. He was alone. The past was dead, the future was unimaginable”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

World, Past, Future, Dead

“She glared at me like she was about to punch me, but then she did something that surprised me even more. She kissed me.
"Be careful seaweed brain." She said putting on her invisible cap and disappearing.
I probably would have sat there all day, trying to remember my name, but then the sea demons came.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Kiss

“My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite.”

William Shakespeare book Romeo and Juliet

Source: Romeo and Juliet

love, Romantic, Wedding, Love

“I'm a teacher. A teacher is someone who leads. There is no magic here. I do not walk on water. I do not part the sea. I just love children.”

Marva Collins (1936–2015) American schoolteacher

Love, Children, Teachers, Water

“To be bitter is to attribute intent and personality to the formless, infinite, unchanging and unchangeable void. We drift on a chartless, resistless sea. Let us sing when we can, and forget the rest..”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Singing, Personality, Forgetting

“Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
Men were deceivers ever;
One foot in sea, and one on shore,
To one thing constant never.”

William Shakespeare book Much Ado About Nothing

Balthazar, Act II, scene iii.
Source: Much Ado About Nothing (1598)

Men

“J. M. W. Turner's Poem dedicated to Ivan Aivazovsky (1842)

Like a curtain slowly drawn
It stops suddenly half open,
Or, like grief itself, filled with gentle hope,
It becomes lighter in the shore-less dark,
Thus the moon barely wanes
Winding her way above the storm-tossed sea.
Stand upon this hill and behold endlessly
This scene of a formidable sea,
And it will seem to thee a waking dream.
That secret mind flowing in thee
Which even the day cannot scatter,
The serenity of thinking and the beating of the heart
Will enchain thee in this vision;
This golden-silver moon
Standing lonely over the sea,
All curtain the grief of even the hopeless.
And it appears that through the tempest
Moves a light caressing wind,
While the sea swells up with a roar,
Sometimes, like a battlefield it looks to me
The tempestuous sea,
Where the moon itself is a brilliant golden crown
Of a great king.
But even that moon is always beneath thee
Oh Master most high,
Oh forgive thou me
If even this master was frightened for a moment
Oh, noble moment, by art betrayed…
And how may one not delight in thee,
Oh thou young boy, but forgive thou me,
If I shall bend my white head
Before thy art divine
Thy bliss-wrought genius…”

J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851) British Romantic landscape painter, water-colourist, and printmaker

Source: J.M.W. Turner

Secret, Dreams, Hope, Art

“There's plenty more fish in the sea than Prince Jonathan," he told her softly. "And this particular fish loves you with all his crooked heart."
-George to Alanna”

Tamora Pierce The Woman Who Rides Like a Man

Source: The Woman Who Rides Like a Man

Love, Fish, Heart

“War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking into the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comforable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

War, Way, Intelligence

“A soft Sea washed around the House
A Sea of Summer Air
And rose and fell the magic Planks
That sailed without a care —
For Captain was the Butterfly
For Helmsman was the Bee
And an entire universe
For the delighted crew.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Universe, Bee, Summer, Housing

“Hold your hands out over the earth as over a flame. To all who love her, who open to her the doors of their veins, she gives of her strength, sustaining them with her own measureless tremor of dark life. 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. For the gifts of life are the earth’s and they are given to all, and they are the songs of birds at daybreak, Orion and the Bear, and dawn seen over ocean from the beach.”

Henry Beston (1888–1968) American writer

Source: The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod

Love, Life, Bird

“Well you burst on the scene
Already a legend
The unwashed phenomenon
The original vagabond
You strayed into my arms
And there you stayed
Temporarily lost at sea
The Madonna was yours for free
Yes the girl on the half-shell
Would keep you unharmed”

Joan Baez (1941) American singer

Diamonds & Rust
Diamonds & Rust (1975)

Girl

“All the busy little creatures
chasing out their destinies.
Living in their pools
they soon forget about the sea…
-- Natural Science (1980)”

Neil Peart (1952–2020) Canadian-American drummer , lyricist, and author

Rush Lyrics

Business, Nature, Science, Forgetting

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

Dante Alighieri book Purgatorio

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

Water

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

Dante Alighieri book Inferno

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

War, Light

“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.”

Apollonius of Rhodes book Argonautica

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

Men, God

“The person who does not control his territory does not control his existence. If someone is not conscious, he is taken over, not only outwardly but also with the thoughts that assault him. He is very vulnerable to desires and feelings. For example, you live calmly with your wife, and then—catastrophe! Suddenly you lose control because you have fallen in love with another. You don't have to fall victim to that reality; what you have to do is navigate in it, overcome the winds and sandstorms. Amid the storms at sea and the signs, you must move forward calmly and look toward the port you're heading for. In New York, when I was filming The Holy Mountain, I had problems of all sorts. I soaked six or seven T-Shirts a night with my sweat. I went to see a Chinese sage that someone had recommended. He was a poet, a great master of tai chi, and a doctor. When he first saw me, he said, "What is your purpose in life?" I was disconcerted and did not answer. He continued, "If you do not tell me what is your purpose in life, I cannot heal you."”

Alejandro Jodorowsky (1929) Filmmaker and comics writer

So I understood that if a ship crosses the sea without a purpose, it will arrive at no port. What prevents life from devouring us is having a purpose. The higher it is, the further it will carry us...
Psychomagic: The Transformative Power of Shamanic Psychotherapy (2010)

Love, Life, Feeling, Mountain

“The vast power of money, mighty when you have it and even mightier when you don't, with its divine gift of freedom and the demonic fury it unleashes on those forced to do without it — they felt this as never before and were filled with bitter rage when, in the dark of the early morning, they saw the brightly lit windows and knew that those glowing gold curtains gave shelter and freedom to hundreds of thousands of people, men with women they desired, while they themselves were homeless, plodding blindly through the streets, through the rain; it was cruel as only the sea could be cruel — the sea in which a person can die of thirst.”

Stefan Zweig book The Post Office Girl

The Post Office Girl (published posthumously in 1982)

Women, Men, Money, People

“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.”

Elizabeth I of England (1533–1603) Queen regnant of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until 1603

To the Spanish Ambassador (1580).

People, Nature, Personality

“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)

“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

Men

“Upon the earth are animals and men, some in a middle region, others dwelling about the air as we dwell about the sea; others in islands which the air flows round, near the continent; and in a word, the air is used by them as the water and the sea are by us, and the ether is to them as the air is to us. Moreover, the temperament of their seasons is such that they have no disease, and live much longer than we do, and have sight and hearing and smell, and all the other senses, in far greater perfection, in the same degree that air is purer than water or the ether than air. Also they have temples and sacred places in which the gods really dwell, and they hear their voices and receive their answers and are conscious of them and hold converse with them, and they see the sun, moon, and stars as they really are, and their other blessedness is of a piece with this.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

Men, God, Disease, Star

“The "great things" are nothing less than that she became the Mother of God, in which work so many and such great good things are bestowed upon her as pass man's understanding. For on this there follows all honor, all blessedness, and her unique place in the whole of mankind, among whom she has no equal, namely, that she had a child by the Father in Heaven, and such a child. She herself is unable to find a name for this work, it is too exceedingly great; all she can do is break out in the fervent cry: "They are great things," impossible to describe or define. Hence men have crowded all her glory into a single word, calling her the Mother of God. No one can say anything greater of her or to her, though he had as many tongues as there are leaves on the trees, or grass in the fields, or stars in the sky, or sand by the sea. It needs to be pondered in the heart, what it means to be the Mother of God.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Commentary on the Magnificat (Das Magnificat), A.D. 1521
<cite>Luther's Works</cite>, American Edition, vol. 21, p. 326, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan, Concordia Publishing House, 1956. ISBN 057006421X

Men, God, Star, Understanding

“The smell of the ocean was stronger now, rank and enveloping, as if the bottom of the sea had turned over and littered the shore with its dead.”

T.C. Boyle (1948) American novelist and short story writer

Acts of God (1989)

Dead

“[S]he became the Mother of God, in which work so many and such great good things are bestowed on her as pass man's understanding. For on this there follows all honor, all blessedness, and her unique place in the whole of mankind, among which she has no equal, namely, that she had a child by the Father in heaven, and such a Child…. Hence men have crowded all her glory into a single word, calling her the Mother of God…. None can say of her nor announce to her greater things, even though he had as many tongues as the earth possesses flowers and blades of grass: the sky, stars; and the sea, grains of sand. It needs to be pondered in the heart what it means to be the Mother of God.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Luther's Works, 21:326, cf. 21:346

Men, God, Star, Flowers

“Look when the clouds are blowing
And all the winds are free:
In fury of their going
They fall upon the sea.
But though the blast is frantic,
And though the tempest raves,
The deep immense Atlantic
Is still beneath the waves.”

Frederic William Henry Myers (1843–1901) English poet and essayist

Wind, Moon and Tides.

“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)

Time

“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.

“I stand at the seashore, alone, and start to think.
There are the rushing waves
mountains of molecules
each stupidly minding its own business
trillions apart
yet forming white surf in unison.Ages on ages
before any eyes could see
year after year
thunderously pounding the shore as now.
For whom, for what?
On a dead planet
with no life to entertain.Never at rest
tortured by energy
wasted prodigiously by the sun
poured into space.
A mite makes the sea roar. Deep in the sea
all molecules repeat
the patterns of one another
till complex new ones are formed.
They make others like themselves
and a new dance starts.Growing in size and complexity
living things
masses of atoms
DNA, protein
dancing a pattern ever more intricate.Out of the cradle
onto dry land
here it is
standing:
atoms with consciousness;
matter with curiosity.Stands at the sea,
wonders at wondering: I
a universe of atoms
an atom in the universe.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

The Value of Science (1955)

Life, Age, Mountain, Business

“Blue has no dimensions, it is beyond dimensions, whereas the other colours are not. They are pre-psychological expanses, red, for example, presupposing a site radiating heat... All colours arouse specific associative ideas, psychologically material or tangible, while blue suggests at most the sea and sky, and they, after all, are in actual, visible nature what is most abstract.”

Yves Klein (1928–1962) French artist

Quote from Yves Klein's lecture at the Sorbonne in 1959; published in Studio International, Vol. 186 (1973), p. 43; also quoted in: David Batchelor (2008) Colour. p. 122
before 1960

Idea, Nature

“The sea is calm you said. Peaceful. Calm above, but below a world of gliding monsters preying on their fellows. Murderers, all of them. Only the strongest teeth survive. And who's to tell me it's any different here on board, or yonder on dry land.”

Peter Ustinov (1921–2004) English actor, writer, and dramatist

Master At Arms Claggert
Billy Budd (1962)

World, Peace

“I like to help the whales, the otters, and the dolphins. When I`m acting and I take a break, the first thing on my list is spending time by the sea.”

Leonardo DiCaprio (1974) American actor and film producer

Time, Help

“From the far reaches of the Mediterranean Sea to the Indus River, the faithful approached the city of Mecca. All had the same objective to worship together at the most sacred shrine of Islam, the Kaaba in Mecca. One such traveler was Mansa Musa, Sultan of Mali in Western Africa. Mansa Musa had prepared carefully for the long journey he and his attendants would take. He was determined to travel not only for his own religious fulfillment, but also for recruiting teachers and leaders, so that his realms could learn more of the Prophet's teachings.”

Musa I of Mali (1280–1337) emperor of the Mali Empire

Chronicle of the Seeker by: Mahmud Kati

Faith, Travel, Learning, Teachers

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

Dante Alighieri book Paradiso

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

Peace, Nature

“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.

World, Personality, Wealth

“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 —”

Edgar Allan Poe 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.

Love

“When I am dead, bury me
In my beloved Ukraine,
My tomb upon a grave mound high
Amid the spreading plain,
So that the fields, the boundless steppes,
The Dnieper's plunging shore
My eyes could see, my ears could hear
The mighty river roar.

When from Ukraine the Dnieper bears
Into the deep blue sea
The blood of foes… then will I leave
These hills and fertile fields --
I'll leave them all and fly away
To the abode of God,
And then I'll pray…. But until that day
I know nothing of God.

Oh bury me, then rise ye up
And break your heavy chains
And water with the tyrants' blood
The freedom you have gained.
And in the great new family,
The family of the free,
With softly spoken, kindly word
Remember also me.”

Taras Shevchenko Testamento

Taras Shevchenko Zapovit, 1845 (Shevchenko's "Testament"), Translated by John Weir, Toronto, 1961; Online at

God, Family, Freedom, Water

“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; —”

Edgar Allan Poe 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.

“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)

Religion, Time

“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.

Victory

“Our road not marked on maps.
Fugitives of the centuries,
our origin is the breathing
and our destination is exhalation,
A thousand suns are flowing in our blood,
and the vision of infinity is always chasing us.
The form cannot tame us,
Our days are a fire and our nights a sea.”

Alexis Karpouzos (1967)

Source: https://hellopoetry.com/alexis-karpouzos/

Sun, Night

“Our civilization has fallen out of touch with night. With lights, we drive the holiness and beauty of night back to the forests and the sea; the little villages, the crossroads even, will have none of it. Are modern folk, perhaps, afraid of night? Do they fear that vast serenity, the mystery of infinite space, the austerity of stars?”

Henry Beston book Northern Farm

Source: Northern Farm

Fear, Beauty, Star, Light

“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

World

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

Joseph Conrad book The Mirror of the Sea

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.

“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.”

Margaret Wise Brown book The Little Island

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

World, Winter, Summer, Parting