Quotes about the sea
page 15

“The sea was a phenomenon I had never clapped eyes on for myself, yet it seemed, from the tales, a destination ultimate and uncompromising. The ocean’s edge, the brink of the land; the lip of Chaos.”

Tanith Lee book Vazkor, Son of Vazkor

Book Two, Part II “The Wolf Hunt”, Chapter 2 (p. 173)
Vazkor, Son of Vazkor (1978)

“When twilight dews are falling soft
Upon the rosy sea, love,
I watch the star whose beam so oft
Has lighted me to thee, love.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

When Twilight Dews.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Love, Star, Light

“The Spanish voyager, as his caravel ploughed the adjacent seas, might give full scope to his imagination, and dream that beyond the long, low margin of forest which bounded his horizon lay hid a rich harvest for some future conqueror; perhaps a second Mexico with its royal palace and sacred pyramids, or another Cuzco with its temple of the Sun, encircled with a frieze of gold. Haunted by such visions, the ocean chivalry of Spain could not long stand idle.”

Francis Parkman (1823–1893) American historian

Pt. I, Ch. 1
Pioneers of France in the New World (1865)

Dreams, Imagination, Sun, Future

“Through Chance, we are each a ghost to all the others, and our only reality; through Chance, the huge hinge of the world, and a grain of dust; the stone that starts an avalanche, the pebble whose concentric circles widen across the seas.”

Thomas Wolfe book Look Homeward, Angel

Source: Look Homeward, Angel (1929), p. 160

World, Reality, Chance

“From the hour of the invention of printing, books, and not kings, were to rule the world. Weapons forged in the mind, keen-edged, and brighter than a sunbeam, were to supplant the sword and battle-axe. Books! lighthouses built on the sea of time! Books! by whose sorcery the whole pageantry of the world's history moves in solemn procession before our eyes. From their pages great souls look down in all their grandeur, undimmed by the faults and follies of earthly existence, consecrated by time.”

Edwin Percy Whipple (1819–1886) American writer

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 386.

Books, World, Soul, History

“The further we move our main force to the westward, and still be within supporting distance of this garrison, the better, both for the preservation of the provision and forage of this State, as well as to les sen the general expense of transportation. And the greater stock of provision and forage we can leave in this State, and upon the communications, the less difficulty we shall find in giving support to this place, should the enemy approach it. I should re commend, therefore, to quarter the army as far wesir ward as Morristown or Baskingridge. The country is strong, secure from a surprise, happily situated to receive supplies of provisions and forage, and not very inconvenient for giving protection and cover to the inhabitants. It is true, it is considerably removed from this place. But were we to take a position at Suffern's or Pompton, the consumption of forage would be so great that it would destroy the possibility of keeping up a communication with the Western States, however pressing the necessity, before the grass sea son. Suppose the enemy should move up, early in the spring, and lay siege to West Point, and the supplies of this State prove unequal to our support, should we not be obliged to abandon it to its fate?”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (November 1779)

Fate, Spring, Communication, Support

“As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Moveable Feast

Source: A Moveable Feast (1964), Ch. 1

Happiness, Feeling, Strong, Wine

“Let the church come to God in the strength of a perfect weakness, in the power of a felt helplessness and a child-like confidence, and then, either she has no strength, and has no right to be, or she has a strength that is infinite. Then and thus, will she stretch out the rod over the seas of difficulty that lie before her, and the waters shall divide, and she shall pass through, and sing the song of deliverance.”

Mark Hopkins (educator) (1802–1887) American educationalist and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 146.

God, Lie, Confidence, Water

“…media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.”

Nicholas Carr (1959) American writer

Is Google Making us Stupid in The Atlantic, July 2008.

Way, Guy

“A baby was sleeping,
Its mother was weeping,
For her husband was far on the wild-raging sea.”

Samuel Lover (1797–1868) Irish song-writer, novelist, and painter

The Angel's Whisper, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Sleep, Rage, Baby

“The rugged old Norsemen spoke of death as Heimgang — home-going. So the snow-flowers go home when they melt and flow to the sea, and the rock-ferns, after unrolling their fronds to the light and beautifying the rocks, roll them up close again in the autumn and blend with the soil. Myriads of rejoicing living creatures, daily, hourly, perhaps every moment sink into death’s arms, dust to dust, spirit to spirit — waited on, watched over, noticed only by their Maker, each arriving at its own heaven-dealt destiny. All the merry dwellers of the trees and streams, and the myriad swarms of the air, called into life by the sunbeam of a summer morning, go home through death, wings folded perhaps in the last red rays of sunset of the day they were first tried. Trees towering in the sky, braving storms of centuries, flowers turning faces to the light for a single day or hour, having enjoyed their share of life’s feast — all alike pass on and away under the law of death and love. Yet all are our brothers and they enjoy life as we do, share heaven’s blessings with us, die and are buried in hallowed ground, come with us out of eternity and return into eternity. 'Our little lives are rounded with a sleep.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

pages 439-440 ("Trees towering … into eternity" are the next-to-last lines of the documentary film " John Muir in the New World http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/john-muir-in-the-new-world/watch-the-full-documentary-film/1823/" (American Masters), produced, directed, and written by Catherine Tatge.) John of the Mountains, 1938

Love, Life, Death, Law

“The sea is the same sea, and the Arabs are the same Arabs.”

Yitzhak Shamir (1915–2012) prime minister of Israel

Shamir used this phrase in 1996, following the Oslo accords http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/pen-ultimate/word-for-word-who-s-throwing-who-into-the-sea-1.449269 ("It's Inconceivable" by Rafi Mann)

“The wind came steadily, like the rushing of a great cataract heard at a great distance, but the noises of the sea were continually changing, rising and falling, with the stupendous modulations of an orchestra played by giants.”

Liam O'Flaherty (1896–1984) Irish writer

"The Landing", from Spring Sowing (1924; New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926) p. 70

Change

“No, the Dutchman is not cold, not insensitive, our people are still full of enthusiasm for what is noble and good. Holland above all! We artists, from Rembrandt to Maris, rave over our country. We find our Holland a delicious beautiful country with its meadows, its beaches, its sea, its domestic interiors, its figures, peasants, farmers, Jews, merchants, everything is similar picturesque as it is all just up for grabs. The most beautifully in the Netherlands is however Amsterdam, that delicious spacious Amsterdam, which is expressing so much and uniting so much in itself.”

Jozef Israëls (1824–1911) Dutch painter

translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch (citaat van Jozef Israëls, in Nederlands): Neen, de Nederlander is niet koud, niet ongevoelig, ons volk is nog steeds vol geestdrift voor wat edel en goed is. Holland bovenal! Wij kunstenaars, van Rembrandt tot Maris, dwepen met ons land. Wij vinden ons Holland een heerlijk mooi land met zijn weiden, zijn stranden, zijn zee, zijn binnenhuizen, zijn figuren, boeren, landlieden, joden, kooplieden, alles is even schilderachtig, als maar voor het grijpen. Het mooiste van Nederland is echter Amsterdam, het heerlijk ruim Amsterdam, waarvan zoveel uitgaat en dat zooveel in zich vereenigt.
Quote from Israëls' speech of thanks at the honoring-party for his 70th birthday in Arti et Amacitiae in Amsterdam, Feb 1885; as cited in 'Jozef Israëls in Arti', in Algemeen Hadelsblad, 6 Feb. 1895
Quotes of Jozef Israels, 1871 - 1900

People, Beauty, Country

“You saw, with what unheard of insolence
The highest heavens they did invade of yore:
You saw, how (against reason, against sense)
They did invade the sea with sail and oar:
Actions so proud, so daring, so immense,
You saw; and we see daily more, and more:
That in few years (I fear) of heaven and sea,
Men, will be called gods; and but men, we.”

Luís de Camões (1524–1580) Portuguese poet

Vistes que, com grandíssima ousadia,
Foram já cometer o Céu supremo;
Vistes aquela insana fantasia
De tentarem o mar com vela e remo;
Vistes, e ainda vemos cada dia,
Soberbas e insolências tais, que temo
Que do Mar e do Céu, em poucos anos,
Venham Deuses a ser, e nós, humanos.
Stanza 29 (tr. Richard Fanshawe); council of the sea gods.
Epic poetry, Os Lusíadas (1572), Canto VI

Men, God, Fear, Sense

“General Kaika: Was it black men who filled the Mediterranean with poison? No, it was destroyed by the filthy wastes from European factories!
Reporter: Well, the Aswan dam--
General Kaika: Yes, yes, the Aswan dam may have tipped the balance finally, but before that the sea was dying. Because so many had to starve on the African coast there began this war. That is why I say the white countries are responsible. It is the typical white habit to ruin what you have and then go to steal from other people.
Reporter: Oh, General, you’re stretching the facts a bit!
General Kaika: Is the fact that it is dangerous to swim in the Mediterranean? Is the fact that the fish have died?
Reporter: Well, yes, but--
General Kaika: I have no more to say.”

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

January “CHARGE ACCOUNT”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

Men, War, People, Fish

“2001 was written in an age which now lies beyond one of the great divides in human history; we are sundered from it forever by the moment when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped out on to the Sea of Tranquility. Now history and fiction have become inexorably intertwined.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

As quoted in "Writer Arthur C. Clarke Dies at 90" by Ravi Nessman in the Associated Press (18 March 2008) http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jfE8qUikNEG6MVWqYku2k8BD_RcgD8VG4VI00 2000s and attributed from posthumous publications

Age, History

“So vivid is my recollection of the birth of Benjamin Black that surely, I feel, a cunning artificer has been at work, fashioning a surreally realistic picture of something that happened quite differently from what I seem to remember. Consider that light falling on the sea, how effulgent and steady it is; consider the trees, improbably full-leafed for the time of year – and look at those birds! Has Madam Memory really such a piercing eye for detail, are her powers of recall so comprehensive?”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

John Banville on the birth of his dark twin, Benjamin Black (2011)

Feeling, Fashion, Birth, Bird

“When Hannibal's eyes were sated with the picture of all that valour, he saw next a marvellous sight—the sea suddenly flung upon the land with the mass of the rising deep, and no encircling shores, and the fields inundated by the invading waters. For, where Nereus rolls forth from his blue caverns and churns up the waters of Neptune from the bottom, the sea rushes forward in flood, and Ocean, opening his hidden springs, rushes on with furious waves. Then the water, as if stirred to the depths by the fierce trident, strives to cover the land with the swollen sea. But soon the water turns and glides back with ebbing tide; and then the ships, robbed of the sea, are stranded, and the sailors, lying on their benches, await the waters' return. It is the Moon that stirs this realm of wandering Cymothoe and troubles the deep; the Moon, driving her chariot through the sky, draws the sea this way and that, and Tethys follows with ebb and flow.”
Postquam oculos varia implevit virtutis imago, mira dehinc cernit: surgentis mole profundi injectum terris subitum mare nullaque circa litora et infuso stagnantis aequore campos. nam qua caeruleis Nereus evoluitur antris atque imo freta contorquet Neptunia fundo, proruptum exundat pelagus, caecosque relaxans Oceanus fontis torrentibus ingruit undis. tum uada, ceu saevo penitus permota tridenti, luctantur terris tumefactum imponere pontum. mox remeat gurges tractoque relabitur aestu, ac ratis erepto campis deserta profundo, et fusi transtris expectant aequora nautae. Cymothoes ea regna vagae pelagique labores Luna mouet, Luna, immissis per caerula bigis, fertque refertque fretum, sequiturque reciproca Tethys.

Silius Italicus Punica

Postquam oculos varia implevit virtutis imago,
mira dehinc cernit: surgentis mole profundi
injectum terris subitum mare nullaque circa
litora et infuso stagnantis aequore campos.
nam qua caeruleis Nereus evoluitur antris
atque imo freta contorquet Neptunia fundo,
proruptum exundat pelagus, caecosque relaxans
Oceanus fontis torrentibus ingruit undis.
tum uada, ceu saevo penitus permota tridenti,
luctantur terris tumefactum imponere pontum.
mox remeat gurges tractoque relabitur aestu,
ac ratis erepto campis deserta profundo,
et fusi transtris expectant aequora nautae.
Cymothoes ea regna vagae pelagique labores
Luna mouet, Luna, immissis per caerula bigis,
fertque refertque fretum, sequiturque reciproca Tethys.
Book III, lines 45–60
Punica

Way, Spring, Lying, Water

“Our sovereignty has been taken away by the European Court of Justice…Our courts must no longer enforce our national laws. They must enforce Community law…No longer is European law an incoming tide flowing up the estuaries of England. It is now like a tidal wave bringing down our sea walls and flowing inland over our fields and houses—to the dismay of all.”

Alfred Denning, Baron Denning (1899–1999) British judge

Introduction to The European Court of Justice: Judges or Policy Makers? (London: Bruges Group, 1990).

Justice, Law, Communication, Housing

“Who hath desired the Sea?—the sight of salt water unbounded—
The heave and the halt and the hurl and the crash of the comber wind-hounded?”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

The Sea and the Hills, Stanza 1 (1903).
Other works

Water

“In the midst of this sublime and terrible storm [at Sidmouth], Dame Partington, who lived upon the beach, was seen at the door of her house with mop and pattens, trundling her mop, squeezing out the sea-water, and vigorously pushing away the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic was roused; Mrs. Partington's spirit was up. But I need not tell you that the contest was unequal; the Atlantic Ocean beat Mrs. Partington.”

Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English writer and clergyman

Speech at Taunton (1813)

Water, Housing

“…to protect our position in the Norwegian and Arctic areas by threatening the flank of enemy operations against the northern Norwegian areas, and by attacking White Sea convoys…to tie down enemy forces in the Atlantic, so that they cannot operate in the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean or the Pacific.”

Erich Raeder (1876–1960) German naval officer and Großadmiral during World War II

Quoted in Peter Charles Smith, The Great Ships Pass: British Battleships at War (1977).

“The state of international relations in the sixteenth century is hardly conceivable at this day. The Puritans of England and the Huguenots of France regarded Spain as their natural enemy, and on the high seas and in the British Channel they joined hands with godless freebooters to rifle her ships, kill her sailors, or throw them alive into the sea. Spain on her side seized English Protestant sailors who ventured into her ports, and burned them as heretics, or consigned them to a living death in the dungeons of the Inquisition. Yet in the latter half of the century these mutual outrages went on for years while the nations professed to be at peace. There was complaint, protest, and occasional menace, but no redress, and no declaration of war.”

Francis Parkman (1823–1893) American historian

Pt. I, Ch. 9 Charles IX and Philip II
Pioneers of France in the New World (1865)

Death, War, Peace, Nature

“By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow book The Song of Hiawatha

Pt. III, Hiawatha’s Childhood, st. 8.
The Song of Hiawatha (1855)

Water, Daughters

“Like most sharks, Margaret liked to think of herself as a victim of the cruel sea.”

Craig Ferguson book Between the Bridge and the River

Between the Bridge and the River (2006)

Thinking

“Oh, it’s home again, and home again, America for me!
I want a ship that’s westward bound to plow the rolling sea,
To the blessed Land of Room Enough beyond the ocean bars,
Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars.”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

Source: America for Me (1909), Lines 21-24.

Home, Star

“This conversation taught me that some of us can meet reality on this side of the grave. I do not envy them. Such adventures may profit the disembodied soul, but as long as I have flesh and blood I pray that my grossness preserve me. Our lower nature has its dreams. Mine is of a certain farm, windy but fruitful, half-way between the deserted moorland and the uninhabitable sea. Hither, at rare intervals, she should descend and he ascend, to shatter their spiritual communion by one caress.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

The Rock
The Life to Come and other stories (1972)

Dreams, Way, Soul, Nature

“The activity of writing, then, is not to be distinguished from the activity of self-exploration. It consists in contemplating the sea of internal images, discerning connections, and setting these out in grammatical sentences (“I could never conceive of a network of meaning too complex to be expressed in a series of grammatical sentences,” says Murnane, whose views on grammar are firm, even pedantic.)”

J.M. Coetzee (1940) South African writer

“The quest for the girl from Bendigo Street,” The New York Review of Books, v. 59. n. 20, December 20, 2012

“I wanted to do a show about a character that was an innocent, and so I focused on a sea sponge because it's a funny animal, a strange one, I thought he was a funny, nerdy, squeaky-clean square.”

Stephen Hillenburg (1961–2018) American marine biologist, cartoonist, animator, storyboard artist, director, producer, and writer

Animals

“Deck us all with Boston Charlie
Walla Walla, Wash, and Kalamazoo!
Nora's freezin' on the trolley,
Swaller dollar cauliflower Alleygaroo!
Don't we know archaic barrel,
Lullaby Lilla Boy, Louisville Lou.
Trolley Molly don't love Harold,
Boola Boola Pensacoola Hullabaloo!

Bark us all bow-wows of folly,
Polly wolly cracker n' too-da-loo!
Hunky Dory's pop is lolly gaggin' on the wagon,
Willy, folly go through!

Donkey Bonny brays a carol,
Antelope Cantaloup, 'lope with you!
Chollie's collie barks at Barrow,
Harum scarum five alarum bung-a-loo

Duck us all in bowls of barley,
Hinky dinky dink an' Polly Voo!
Chilly Filly's name is Chollie,
Chollie Filly's jolly chilly view halloo!

Bark us all bow-wows of folly,
Double-bubble, toyland trouble! Woof, Woof, Woof!
Tizzy seas on melon collie!
Dibble-dabble, scribble-scrabble! Goof, Goof, Goof!”

Walt Kelly (1913–1973) American cartoonist

Pogo comic strip (1948 - 1975), Others

Love, Boy

“Sea fighting is pure common sense. The first of all its necessities is SPEED, so as to be able to fight--When you like, Where you like, and How you like.”

John Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher (1841–1920) Royal Navy admiral of the fleet

Letter to Churchill, dated 16/1/1912, quoted in The World Crisis, Vol 1, 1911-14 (1923), Churchill, Thornton Butterworth (London), p. 140.

Sense, Fight, Speed

“The tongue of the sword of the Khalifa of the time, which is the tongue of the flame of Islam, has imparted light to the entire darkness of Hindustan by the illumination of its guidance… On the other side, so much dust arose from the battered temple of Somnat that even the sea was not able to lay it, and on the right hand and on the left hand the army has conquered from sea to sea, and several capitals of the gods of the Hindus, in which Satanism has prevailed since the time of the Jinns, have been demolished. All these impurities of infidelity have been cleansed by the Sultan's destruction of idol-temples, beginning with his first holy expedition against Deogir,44so that the flames of the light of the law illumine all these unholy countries, and places for the criers to prayer are exalted on high, and prayers are read in mosques. Allah be praised!'…'On Sunday, the 23rd, after holding a council of chief officers, he [Malik Kafur, converted Hindu and commander of the Muslim army] took a select body of cavalry with him and pressed on against Billal Deo, and on the 5th of Shawwal reached the fort of Dhur Sammund after a difficult march of twelve days over the hills and valleys, and through thorny forests. 'The fire-worshipping' Rai, when he learnt that 'his idol-temple was likely to be converted into a mosque,' despatched Kisu Mal' The commander replied that he was sent with the object of converting him to Muhammadanism, or of making him a zimmi, and subject to pay tax, or of slaying him if neither of these terms were assented to. When the Rai received this reply, he said he was ready to give up all he possessed, except his sacred thread.”

Alauddin Khalji (1266–1316) Ruler of the Khalji dynasty

Elliot and Dowson, Vol. III : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 85-89
Quotes from The History of India as told by its own Historians

God, Law, Light, Time

“I am a glass man, but there is no light in me that can shine across the sea. I shall lead no one home, save no lives, not even my own.”

Jeanette Winterson book Lighthousekeeping

Lighthousekeeping (2004)

Home, Light

“Give me a spirit that on this life's rough sea
Loves t' have his sails fill'd with a lusty wind,
Even till his sail-yards tremble, his masts crack,
And his rapt ship run on her side so low
That she drinks water, and her keel plows air.”

George Chapman The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron

Act III, scene i; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron (1608)

Love, Life, Drink, Water

“Yet now despair itself is mild,
Even as the winds and waters are;
I could lie down like a tired child,
And weep away the life of care
Which I have borne and yet must bear,
Till death like sleep might steal on me,
And I might feel in the warm air
My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea
Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

Stanzas Written in Dejection Near Naples http://www.readprint.com/work-1373/Percy-Bysshe-Shelley (1818), st. 5

Life, Death, Lie, Feeling

“Hither, thither, masterless
Ship upon the sea,
Wandering through the ways of air,
Go the birds like me.
Bound am I by ne’er a bond,
Prisoner to no key,
Questing go I for my kind,
Find depravity.”
Feror ego veluti sine nauta navis, ut per vias aeris vaga fertur avis, non me tenent vincula, non me tenet clavis, Quęro mihi similes, et adiungor pravis.

Archpoet (1130–1165) 12th century poet

Feror ego veluti
sine nauta navis,
ut per vias aeris
vaga fertur avis,
non me tenent vincula,
non me tenet clavis,
Quęro mihi similes,
et adiungor pravis.
Source: "Confession", Line 17

Way, Bird

“To a person uninstructed in natural history, his country or sea-side stroll is a walk through a gallery filled with wonderful works of art, nine-tenths of which have their faces turned to the wall.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

"On the Educational Value of the Natural History Sciences" (1854) p. 29 http://books.google.com/books?id=FJZWAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA29 1850s

Art, History, Nature, Personality

“The people know the salt of the sea
and the strength of the winds
lashing the corners of the earth.
The people take the earth
as a tomb of rest and a cradle of hope.
Who else speaks for the Family of Man?”

Carl Sandburg (1878–1967) American writer and editor

"The People, Yes" (1936)

People, Family, Hope

“I can illustrate the … approach with the … image of a nut to be opened. The first analogy that came to my mind is of immersing the nut in some softening liquid, and why not simply water? From time to time you rub so the liquid penetrates better, and otherwise you let time pass. The shell becomes more flexible through weeks and months — when the time is ripe, hand pressure is enough, the shell opens like a perfectly ripened avocado! A different image came to me a few weeks ago. The unknown thing to be known appeared to me as some stretch of earth or hard marl, resisting penetration … the sea advances insensibly in silence, nothing seems to happen, nothing moves, the water is so far off you hardly hear it … yet finally it surrounds the resistant substance.”

Alexander Grothendieck (1928–2014) French mathematician

C. McLarty, The Rising Sea: Grothendieck on simplicity and generality, in J. J. Gray and K.H. Parshall eds., Episodes in the History of Modern Algebra (1800–1950), Amer. Math. Soc., Providence, RI, 2007.Link http://math.stanford.edu/~vakil/216blog/FOAGjun1113public.pdf

Silence, Water, Appearance, Time

“[P]eople think that the human brain is in the head. Nothing of the sort; it is carried by the wind from the Caspian Sea.”

Nikolai Gogol book Diary of a Madman

Diary of a Madman (1835)

Thinking

“…One thing alone can drive us, against our will, beyond these modest desires. If the next French attack against the German Empire found the Dutch among the enemy faction, at that exact moment Holland, by her senseless mistrust, would herself be precipitated into her ruin. Then, and only then, would it be necessary to attempt to put an end once and for all to the millenary struggle over the ruins of ancient Lotharingia, and once more to compel the countries of the Lower Rhine perforce to rejoin the great people whom they abandoned long ago. Holland holds in her hands the means of averting, by a just and fearless policy, these interminable conflagrations. The majestic progress of German affairs, the unity of our Empire from the North Sea to Lake Constance, the complete organisation of this unity are not to be impeded by the outcries of small peoples who cannot forget the splendour of past days.”

Heinrich von Treitschke (1834–1896) Historian, political writer

Statement (1869), quoted in W. W. Coole (ed.), Thus Spake Germany (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1941), p. 257.

People, Past, Country, Forgetting

“Strictly speaking, the land does not exist; it is merely dehydrated sea.”

Alan Coren (1938–2007) humorist and writer from the United Kingdom

"All You Need To Know About Europe", Netherlands.
The Sanity Inspector (1974)

“Sonorous immensity of the seas of Harmony
Where dreams like ships that shake in the profound,
Voyage to the unknown, their sails bent to infinity,
Billowing with anguish in the gusts of Sound.”

Stuart Merrill (1863–1915) American poet, who wrote mostly in the French language

Sonore immensité des mers de l’Harmonie,
Où les rêves, vaisseaux pris d’un vaste frisson,
Voguent vers l’inconnu, leur voilure infinie
Claquant aven angoisse aux bourrasques du Son!
"Pendant qu’elle chantait", from Les gammes, translated by Catherine Perry and Henry Weinfield in The White Tomb: Selected Writing, Talisman House, 1999.

Dreams

“Why, I hold fate
Clasped in my fist, and could command the course
Of time's eternal motion, hadst thou been
One thought more steady than an ebbing sea.”

John Ford (dramatist) (1586–1639) dramatist

Act V, sc. v.
Tis Pity She's a Whore (1629-33?)

Fate, Time

“Be not afraid to swear. Null and void are the perjuries of love; the winds bear them ineffective over land and the face of the sea. Great thanks to Jove! The Sire himself has decreed no oath should stand that love has taken in the folly of desire.”
Nec iurare time: veneris periuria venti inrita per terras et freta summa ferunt. gratia magna Iovi: vetuit Pater ipse valere, iurasset cupide quidquid ineptus amor.

Tibullus (-50–-19 BC) poet and writer (0054-0019)

Nec iurare time: veneris periuria venti
inrita per terras et freta summa ferunt.
gratia magna Iovi: vetuit Pater ipse valere,
iurasset cupide quidquid ineptus amor.
Bk. 1, no. 4, line 21.
Elegies

Love

“Who ever loves, if he do not propose
The right true end of love, he's one that goes
To sea for nothing but to make him sick.”

John Donne (1572–1631) English poet

No. 18, Love's Progress, line 1
Elegies

Love

“The legend of the parting of the Red Sea probably refers to tidal changes in the Sea of Reeds related to the Thera eruption.”

Julian Jaynes book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Book II, Chapter 3, p. 213 ( See also: The Exodus and Minoan eruption)
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)

Change, Parting

“Standing on my watch-tower I am commanded, if I see aught of evil coming, to give warning. I solemnly declare that I do discern evil approaching; I see a storm collecting in the heavens; I discover the commotion of the troubled elements; I hear the roar of a distant wind — heaven and earth seem mingled in the conflict — and I cry to those for whom I watch, "A storm! A storm! Get you into the ark or you are swept away. "Oh! what is it I see? I see a world convulsed and falling to ruins — the sea burning like oil — nations rising from under ground — the sun falling — the damned in chains before the bar, and some of my poor hearers among them! I see them cast from the battlements of the judgment scene. My God! the eternal pit has closed upon them forever!”

Edward Dorr Griffin (1770–1837) American academic administrator

Sermons, vol. II (1839), sermon XXXIX: "The Watchman".

God, World, Distant, Evil

“The best thing I know between France and England is the sea.”

Douglas William Jerrold (1803–1857) English dramatist and writer

The Anglo-French Alliance, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“The very sound of ‘Indian sub-continent’ is shocking to the ears of those who have had the privilege of performing or participating in some Hindu saMskãras. The wording of every saMkalpa, starting with Jambudvîpe BharatakhaNDe, invokes the opposite vision of a single, though vast and variegated land, inhabited by a people who are proud of being born and having lived in it. The territorial unity and integrity of Bharatavarsha - the land that lies south of the Himalayas, east of Sakadvipa (Seistan), south-east of Vãhlîka (Balkh), west of Burma and between the two seas - was never a political contrivance created by the sword of a conqueror. On the contrary, it was meant and manifested by Mother Nature herself as the cradle of an incomparable culture - the culture of Sanãtana Dharma.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Muslim Separatism – Causes and Consequences (1987)

People, Nature

“There were no roads connecting different colonies and different parts of the same colony in a manner that made sense with regard to Africa’s needs and development. All roads and railways led down to the sea. They were built to extract gold or manganese or coffee or cotton. They were built to make business possible for the timber companies, trading companies, and agricultural concession firms, and for white settlers. Any catering to African interests was purely coincidental.”

Walter Rodney book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

Source: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972), p. 327.

Coffee, Business, Sense, Parting

“The drums ceased and the parade ground was as silent as an inland sea. At the other end of the parade ground, I heard Gauldin Grace's harsh, overextended voice screaming out the findings of the honor court. "Gentlemen, the honor court has met tonight and has found Pignetti, D. A., Company R, guilty of the honor code violation of stealing. His name will never be spoken by any man from Carolina Military Institute. He will never return to the campus so long as he may live. His name and memory are anathema to anyone who aspires to wear the ring. Let him go from us and never be heard from again. Let him begin the Walk of Shame."”

Pat Conroy The Lords of Discipline

Source: The Lords of Discipline (1980), p. 439

Memory

“And when I hearken to the Earth, she saith:
'My fiery heart shrinks, aching. It is death.
Mine ancient scars shall not be glorified,
Nor my titanic tears, the seas, be dried.”

Wilfred Owen The End

The End

Death, Tear, Heart

“The houses, many of them no longer lived in by the people whose faces he all knew, are like the houses in a town you see from the train, their brick faces blank in posing the riddle, Why does anyone live here? Why was he set down here, why is this town, a dull suburb of a third-rate city, for him the center and index of a universe that contains immense prairies, mountains, deserts, forests, cities, seas? This childish mystery—the mystery of ‘any place,’ prelude to the ultimate, ‘Why am I me?’—ignites panic in his heart.”

John Updike book Rabbit, Run

Rabbit, Run (1960)

People, Mountain, Universe, Heart

“Rally round the flag, boys—
Give it to the breeze!
That's the banner that we bore
On the land and seas.
Brave hearts are under it,
Let the traitors brag,
Gallant lads, fire away!
And fight for the flag.
Their flag is but a rag—
Ours is the true one;
Up with the Stars and Stripes!
with the new one!
Let our colors fly, boys—
Guard them day and night;
For victory is liberty,
And God will bless the right.”

James Thomas Fields (1817–1881) American writer and publisher

"The Stars and Stripes"; reported in Florence Adams and Elizabeth McCarrick, Highdays & Holidays (1927), pp. 182–83.

God, Color, Star, Boy

“A grand old Neptune in the prow,
Gray-hair'd, and white with touch of time,
Yet strong as in his middle prime;
A grizzled king, I see him now,
With beard as blown by wind of seas,
And wild and white as white sea-storm,
Stand up, turn suddenly, look back
Along the low boat's wrinkled track,
Then fold his mantle round a form
Broad-built as any Hercules,
And so sit silently.”

Joaquin Miller (1837–1913) American judge

III, p. 22.
The Ship in the Desert (1875)

Strong, Time

“And here, facing this supreme religious sacrifice, we reach the summit of the tragedy, the very heart of it — the sacrifice of our own individual consciousness upon the alter of the perfected Human Consciousness, of the Divine Consciousness. But is there really a tragedy? …if we could succeed in understanding and feeling that we were going to enrich Christ, should we hesitate for a moment in surrendering ourselves to Him? Would the stream that flows into the sea, and feels in the freshness of its waters the bitterness of the salt of the ocean, wish to flow back to its source? would it wish to return to the cloud which drew it life from the sea? is it not joy to feel itself absorbed?”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), X : Religion, the Mythology of the Beyond and the Apocatastasis

Life, Feeling, Understanding, Water

“For a long time we had talked of the hill as we might have talked of the sea or the woods. I used to go back there in the evening from the city when it grew dusk, and for me it was not just another place but a point of view, a way of life. For instance, I saw no difference between those hills and these ancient ones where I played as a child and where I live now: the same broken, straggling country, cultivated and wild, the same roads, farmhouses, and ravines. I used to climb up there in the evening as if I too were fleeing the nightly shock of the air-raid alarms.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

Incipit
The house on the hill (1949)

Life, Way, Time, Country

“Many years ago I was a boy drowning in the sea. I am always drowning in the sea… down amongst the dead men, deep down. There is a peace in the sea back down to our origins… when the last man has taken his breath the sea will still be remaining. It washes everything clean. It holds within it forever the boy suspended in its body and the streaming hair and the open eyes.”

Dennis Nilsen (1945–2018) British serial killer

As quoted by Brian Masters (2011), Killing for Company, Random House, p. 49, ISBN 1446428737

Men, Peace, Boy, Dead

“And once again the scene was chang’d,
New earth there seem’d to be,
I saw the Holy City
Beside the tideless sea;
The light of God was on its streets,
The gates were open wide,
And all who would might enter,
And no one was denied.
No need of moon or stars by night,
Or sun to shine by day,
It was the new Jerusalem,
That would not pass away.”

Fred Weatherly (1848–1929) English lawyer, author, lyricist and broadcaster

Song The Holy City http://www.biblestudycharts.com/SH_The_Holy_City.html

God, Star, Light, Sun

“Far the horizon
Hove to the wind;
We're sailing the sea
To the Edge of the World.”

Mike Oldfield (1953) English musician, multi-instrumentalist

Song lyrics, The Millennium Bell (1999)

World

“My feet are set on the outward trails
And the call of the roistering sea.
My wings are spread on the outbound gales
And the paths that are long and free.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

From a letter to Tevis Clyde Smith (June 23, 1926)
Letters

“Taking on water
Sailing a restless sea
From a memory
A fantasy
The wind carries into white water
Far from the islands
Don't you know…
You're never going to get to France
Mary, queen of chance, will they find you!
Never going to get to France…
Could a new romance ever bind you?”

Mike Oldfield (1953) English musician, multi-instrumentalist

Song lyrics, Discovery (1984)

Water, Memory, Chance

“Two Voices are there; one is of the sea,
One of the mountains; each a mighty Voice.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Thought of a Briton on the Subjugation of Switzerland, l. 1 (1807).

Mountain

“With white tails smoking free,
Long streaming manes, and arching necks, they show
Their kinship to their sisters of the sea –
And forward hurl their thunderbolts of snow.
Still out of hardships bred,
Spirits of power and beauty and delight
Have ever on such frugal pastures fed
And loved to course with tempests through the night.”

Roy Campbell (poet) (1901–1957) South African poet

"Horses on the Camargue," lines 41-48
Adamastor (1930)

Love, Beauty, Sister, Night

“Once you were tethered
now you are free
That was the river
this is the sea.”

Mike Scott (1958) songwriter, musician

"This Is The Sea"
This Is the Sea (1985)

“Then once more comes deep grief to their hearts, when he comrades sat in their places and no lion's hide was there to see, but the empty seat upon that mighty thwart. Loyal Aeacides weeps, the heart of Philoctetes is sad, brother Pollux with his dear Castor makes lament. The ship is flying fast, and still all cry "Hercules," all cry "Hylas," but the names are lost in the middle of the sea.”
Hic vero ingenti repetuntur pectora luctu, ut socii sedere locis nullaeque leonis exuviae tantique vacant vestigia transtri. flet pius Aeacides, maerent Poeantia corda, ingemit et dulci frater cum Castore Pollux. omnis adhuc vocat Alciden fugiente carina, omnis Hylan, medio pereunt iam nomina ponto.

Gaius Valerius Flaccus book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica, Book III, Lines 719–725

Sadness, Heart, Cry, Flying

“But while at the bottom of the national life the slime was thus constantly accumulating more and more deleteriously and deeply, so much the more smooth and glittering was the surface, overlaid with the varnish of polished manners and universal friendship. All the world interchanged visits; so that in the houses of quality it was necessary to admit the persons presenting themselves every morning for the levee in a certain order fixed by the master or occasionally by the attendant in waiting, and to give audience only to the more notable one by one, while the rest were more summarily admitted partly in groups, partly en masse at the close—a distinction which Gaius Gracchus, in this too paving the way for the new monarchy, is said to have introduced. The interchange of letters of courtesy was carried to as great an extent as the visits of courtesy; "friendly" letters flew over land and sea between persons who had neither personal relations nor business with each other, whereas proper and formal business-letters scarcely occur except where the letter is addressed to a corporation. In like manner invitations to dinner, the customary new year's presents, the domestic festivals, were divested of their proper character and converted almost into public ceremonials; even death itself did not release the Roman from these attentions to his countless "neighbours," but in order to die with due respectability he had to provide each of them at any rate with a keepsake. Just as in certain circles of our mercantile world, the genuine intimacy of family ties and family friendships had so totally vanished from the Rome of that day that the whole intercourse of business and acquaintance could be garnished with forms and flourishes which had lost all meaning, and thus by degrees the reality came to be superseded by that spectral shadow of "friendship," which holds by no means the least place among the various evil spirits brooding over the proscriptions and civil wars of this age.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Vol. 4, Pt. 2, Translated by W.P. Dickson.
On Roman Friendship in the last ages of the Republic.
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 2

Life, Death, Friendship, War

“Plough not the seas, sow not the sands,
Leave off your idle pain;
Seek other mistress for your minds,
Love's service is in vain.”

Robert Southwell (1561–1595) English Jesuit

"Love's Servile Lot", line 73; p. 65.

Love, Pain

“I gave to you, now, you give to me
I'd like to know what you learned.
The sky is blue and so is the sea
What is the color, when black is burned?”

Neil Young (1945) Canadian singer-songwriter

I Am a Child, from Last Time Around (1968)
Song lyrics, With Buffalo Springfield

Color, Learning

“"We, Seth, Emperor of Azania, Chief of Chiefs of Sakuyu, Lord of Wanda and Tyrant of the Seas, Bachelor of the Arts of Oxford University, being in this the twenty-fourth year of our life, summoned by the wisdom of Almighty God and the unanimous voice of our people to the throne of our ancestors, do hereby proclaim…" Seth paused in his dictation and gazed out across the harbour where in the fresh breeze of early morning the last dhow was setting sail for the open sea. "Rats," he said; "stinking curs. They are all running away."”

Evelyn Waugh book Black Mischief

First lines
Black Mischief (1932)

Life, Wisdom, God, People

“How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man?
How many seas must a white dove sail before she sleeps in the sand?”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963), Blowin' in the Wind

Sleep

“The thundering waves are calling me home to you
The pounding sea is calling me home to you”

Loreena McKennitt (1957) Canadian musician and composer

The Visit (1991), The Old Ways

Home

“It was devotion to the sea, wedded to a fire of pent-up patriotism struggling incessantly for an outlet in strenuous physical expression; a humanity, born of acute sensitiveness to his own limitations, only adding fuel to the flame.”

Robert Erskine Childers (1870–1922) Irish nationalist and author

Source: Literary Years and War (1900-1918), The Riddle Of The Sands (1903), p. 91.

Wedding

“You have by this time surely seen with your own eyes what your iron ships, with which you think you can accomplish wonders and on which you boast so much, can do against my junks; how one of them has been burned by one of my junks and has disappeared in smoke; how the others would have met with the same doom had they not taken to flight and gone out to sea.”

Koxinga (1624–1662) Chinese military leader

Formosa under the Dutch: described from contemporary records, with explanatory notes and a bibliography of the island, 1903, William Campbell, Kegan Paul, 424, Dec. 20 2011 http://books.google.com/books?id=OpdMq-YJoeoC&pg=PA423&dq=koxinga+formosa+always+belonged+to+china&hl=en&ei=vsjiTergDM3TgAekqbzKBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CEQQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=same%20doom%20had%20they%20not%20taken%20to%20flight%20and%20gone%20out%20to%20sea.&f=false, Original from the University of Michigan(LONDON : KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO. LTD DRYDEN HOUSE, 43 GERRARD STREET, SOHO MDCCCCIII Edinburgh : T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty)

Thinking, Time

““If any glory at all attaches to the awful tragedy of the sea about which the world is still talking, it circles round the heads of these heroic bandsmen who played the mighty vessel to its doom”

Steve Turner (1949) British writer

Source: The Band That Played On (Thomas Nelson, 2011), p. 173

World

“All the wild world is beautiful, and it matters but little where we go, to highlands or lowlands, woods or plains, on the sea or land or down among the crystals of waves or high in a balloon in the sky; through all the climates, hot or cold, storms and calms, everywhere and always we are in God's eternal beauty and love. So universally true is this, the spot where we chance to be always seems the best.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

June 1890, page 299
John of the Mountains, 1938

Love, God, World, Beauty

“The final lines are not mine: they come from an experiment on soft matter, after Boudin… An English translation might run like this:
Have fun on sea and land
Unhappy it is to become famous
Riches, honors, false glitters of this world
All is but soap bubbles”

Pierre-Gilles de Gennes (1932–2007) French Physicist

'No conclusion could be more appropriate today.'
"Soft Matter" Nobel lecture (9 December 1991)

World, Falseness

“Yes: in the sea of life enisl’d,
With echoing straits between us thrown,
Dotting the shoreless watery wild,
We mortal millions live alone.”

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools

"To Marguerite, in Returning a Volume of the Letters of Ortis" (1852), stanza 1

Life

“Yesterday I went for the second time to the Crystal Palace. We remained in it about three hours, and I must say I was more struck with it on this occasion than at my first visit. It is a wonderful place – vast, strange, new and impossible to describe. Its grandeur does not consist in one thing, but in the unique assemblage of all things. Whatever human industry has created you find there, from the great compartments filled with railway engines and boilers, with mill machinery in full work, with splendid carriages of all kinds, with harness of every description, to the glass-covered and velvet-spread stands loaded with the most gorgeous work of the goldsmith and silversmith, and the carefully guarded caskets full of real diamonds and pearls worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. It may be called a bazaar or a fair, but it is such a bazaar or fair as Eastern genii might have created. It seems as if only magic could have gathered this mass of wealth from all the ends of the earth – as if none but supernatural hands could have arranged it this, with such a blaze and contrast of colours and marvellous power of effect. The multitude filling the great aisles seems ruled and subdued by some invisible influence. Amongst the thirty thousand souls that peopled it the day I was there not one loud noise was to be heard, not one irregular movement seen; the living tide rolls on quietly, with a deep hum like the sea heard from the distance.”

Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855) English novelist and poet

Charlotte Brontë, on attending The Great Exhibition of 1851. The Brontes' Life and Letters, (by Clement King Shorter) (1907)

People, Soul, Time, Wealth

“In geometry the following theorems are attributed to him [Thales]—and their character shows how the Greeks had to begin at the very beginning of the theory—(1) that a circle is bisected by any diameter (Eucl. I., Def. 17), (2) that the angles at the base of an isosceles triangle are equal (Eucl. I., 5), (3) that, if two straight lines cut one another, the vertically opposite angles are equal (Eucl. I., 15), (4) that, if two triangles have two angles and one side respectively equal, the triangles are equal in all respects (Eucl. I., 26). He is said (5) to have been the first to inscribe a right-angled triangle in a circle: which must mean that he was the first to discover that the angle in a semicircle is a right angle. He also solved two problems in practical geometry: (1) he showed how to measure the distance from the land of a ship at sea (for this he is said to have used the proposition numbered (4) above), and (2) he measured the heights of pyramids by means of the shadow thrown on the ground”

Thomas Little Heath (1861–1940) British civil servant and academic

this implies the use of similar triangles in the way that the Egyptians had used them in the construction of pyramids
Achimedes (1920)

Way, Problem

“If, however, thou art sailing upon the sea of creation, know thou that the First Remembrance, which is the Primal Will of God, may be likened unto the sun. God hath created Him through the potency of His might, and He hath, from the beginning that hath no beginning, caused Him to be manifested in every Dispensation through the compelling power of His behest, and God will, to the end that knoweth no end, continue to manifest Him according to the good-pleasure of His invincible Purpose.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

Dalá’Il-I-Sab‘ih

God, Pleasure, Art, Sun

“When the seagulls follow the trawler, it's because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea.”

Eric Cantona (1966) French actor and association football player

Only comment to journalists waiting for him following the "Kung-Fu Kick Incident" of January 1995 27 January 1995: Cantona banned over attack on fan, On This Day, BBC News, 2007-04-18 http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/january/27/newsid_2506000/2506237.stm,

Thinking

“So from the heights of Will
Life's parting stream descends,
And, as a moment turns its slender rill,
Each widening torrent bends,

From the same cradle's side,
From the same mother's knee,
—One to long darkness and the frozen tide,
One to the Peaceful Sea!”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

"The Two Streams", Ch. VI.
The Professor at the Breakfast Table (1859)

Life, Peace, Parting

“Goethe, … who lived through the struggle against Napoleon, was once asked how he had managed to exist during the days of shame, defeat, and humiliation. He replied: “I have nothing to complain of. Like one who, from the fastness of a cliff, gazes down on the raging sea, unable to help the ship-wrecked crew, but also out of the reach of the billows—according to Lucretius, a not unpleasant feeling—I have been standing in security, and have watched the fury of the storm passing by me.” …
It was not only on the political combats and storms of his emasculate fellow-countrymen that Goethe looked down with indifference; to those troubles of the heart, which Rousseau’s teaching had quickened, a philanthropic and educational enthusiasm, he was not merely apathetic; he was positively hostile. … “As of old Lutherdom, so now French ideals are forcing us away from a peaceful development of culture,” he used to say.”

Oscar Levy (1867–1946) German physician and writer

Source: The Revival of Aristocracy (1906), pp. 29-30.

Hostility, Education, Peace, Feeling

“Well, what if I'm wrong, I mean — anybody could be wrong. We could all be wrong about the up the mountain. There's no particular reason to pick on the Judeo-Christian god, in which by the sheerest accident you happen to have been brought up and ask me the question, "What if I'm wrong?" What if you're wrong about the great Juju at the bottom of the sea?”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

Answering audience questions after a reading of The God Delusion http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mmskXXetcg,Randolph-Macon Woman's College, Posed question: "This is probably going to be the most simplest one for you to answer, but: What if you're wrong?"

God, Mountain, Question

“The things that happen on the sea take you beyond yourself, beyond human capability.”

Abby Sunderland (1993) Camera Assistant, Inspirational Speaker and Sailor

Source: Unsinkable: A Young Woman's Courageous Battle on the High Seas (2011), p. 178

“Foldings of the earth's crust, low hills, extensive plains, mountain-chains and narrow valleys, broad table-lands and wide valleys, local chimneys or volcanoes, river-beds, lake-basins, inland seas,—such are some of the phenomena which, disconnected as they seem at first glance, have nevertheless been brought under certain principles, and explained according to definite physical laws.”

Louis Agassiz (1807–1873) Swiss naturalist

Geological Sketches (1870), ch 4, p. 98 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044018968388;view=1up;seq=116

Law, Mountain

“[G]iven our inability over the past two decades to deal with an unbreakable chain of unemployment, debt, inflation and no real growth, we have drifted farther and farther out into a cold, unfriendly, confusing sea. The new certitude of those in positions of authority — those out of the water — is that the certain answer is to cut away the life preservers.”

John Ralston Saul book The Unconscious Civilization

The Unconscious Civilization (1995)

Life, Water, Past

“One, if by land, and two, if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm
For the country folk to be up and to arm.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Tales of a Wayside Inn

Pt. I, The Landlord's Tale: Paul Revere's Ride, st. 2.
Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863-1874)

Country

“He was the rarest musician that his age did behold; having travelled beyond the seas, and compounded English with foreign skill in that faculty.”

John Dowland (1563–1626) English Renaissance composer, lutenist, and singer

Thomas Fuller The History of the Worthies of England ([1662] 1840), vol. 2, p. 426.
Criticism

Age, Travel

“We twain have met like the ships upon the sea,
Who hold an hour’s converse, so short, so sweet;
One little hour! And then, away they speed
On lonely paths, through mist and cloud and foam,
To meet no more.”

Alexander Smith (1829–1867) Scottish poet and essayist

Part iv.
A Life Drama and other Poems (1853)

Speed

“For us, climate change is real. We are already relocating people from 16 islands affected by rising seas to other areas of our country”

Mohamed Nasheed (1967) Maldivian politician, 4th president of the Maldives

Maldives Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed told Costas Christ of National Geographic, quoted on Parent Herald, "Maldives: Is The Maldives Sinking? Only 30 Years Until It Becomes Next Atlantis" http://www.parentherald.com/articles/30490/20160321/maldives-sinking-30-years-until-becomes-next-atlantis.htm, March 21, 2016.

People, Change, Country

“Never day-beam hath shone o'er
Lovelier or wilder shore!
Half was land, and half was sea
Where the eye could only see
The blue sky for boundary.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

(30th November 1822) Fragments in Rhyme V: the Happy Isle
7th December 1822) Fragments in Rhyme VI: The Painter's Love see The Improvisatrice (1824
14th December 1822) Fragments in Rhyme VII: Manmadin, The Indian Cupid. Floating down the Ganges see The Improvisatrice (1824
21st December 1822) Fragments in Rhyme IX: The Female Convict see The Improvisatrice (1824
The London Literary Gazette, 1821-1822

“Your pa had seven years at sea, mostly in foreign parts.
You’ve heard him talk. He’s got a way about him, a way with words. He can make the temple bells tinkle for you, and you can just hear them big old elephants shuff-shuffling along, the priests callin’ folks to prayer and the like.
Your pa learned a sight of things most folks never even hear of. I’ve seen scholars back off an’ look at your pa, amazed.
You take these Injuns, now. You look at the way they live and you’ll say they don’t amount to much, but what are they thinkin’? What do they know? What memories do they have? They want different things, boy, and they consider different things important. Many a thing we’d give anything to know, they just take for granted.
Some of these Injuns, maybe all of them, they’re in tune with something. I don’t know what. But some of them have lost touch with it, and others are losin’ touch. Goin’ the white folks’ way might seem the likely thing to do, but maybe they lose as much as they gain.”

Louis L'Amour (1908–1988) Novelist, short story writer

Source: The Lonesome Gods (1983), Ch. 11

Way, Boy, Learning, Memory