Quotes about the sea
page 17

“The land is numb.
It stands beneath the feet, and one may come
Walking securely, till the sea extends
Its limber margin, and precision ends.”

Yvor Winters (1900–1968) American poet and literary critic

"The Slow Pacific Swell"
The Collected Poems of Yvor Winters (1960)

“One lesson of Irish history might be that it’s better to tolerate your annoying neighbors rather than bring in people from beyond the seas to help you win your petty domestic disputes.”

Steve Sailer (1958) American journalist and movie critic

Thinking of England http://takimag.com/article/thinking_of_england_steve_sailer/print#ixzz4A7pKSd3k, Taki's Magazine, March 30, 2016

People, History, Help

“Inverted totalitarianism reverses things. It is all politics all of the time but a politics largely untempered by the political. Party squabbles are occasionally on public display, and there is a frantic and continuous politics among factions of the party, interest groups, competing corporate powers, and rival media concerns. And there is, of course, the culminating moment of national elections when the attention of the nation is required to make a choice of personalities rather than a choice between alternatives. What is absent is the political, the commitment to finding where the common good lies amidst the welter of well-financed, highly organized, single-minded interests rabidly seeking governmental favors and overwhelming the practices of representative government and public administration by a sea of cash.”

Sheldon S. Wolin (1922–2015) American political philosopher

Sheldon Wolin, Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (2008), p. 66

Time, Personality

“The main lesson that emerges from this volume is that sea level rise, combined with human population growth, urban development in coastal areas, and landscape fragmentation, poses an enormous threat to human and natural well-being in Florida. How Floridians respond to sea level rise will offer lessons, for better or worse, for other low-lying regions worldwide.”

Reed Noss (1952)

[Between the devil and the deep blue sea: Florida’s unenviable position with respect to sea level rise, Climatic Change, 107, 1–2, July 2011, 1–16, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-011-0109-6] (quote from p. 1)

Lying, Nature

“As the liberty lads o'er the sea
Bought their freedom, and cheaply, with blood,
So we, boys, we
Shall die fighting or live free,
And down with all kings but King Ludd!”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Song for the Luddites http://readytogoebooks.com/LB-Luddites.htm (1816).

Boy, Freedom, Fight

“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.”

Mahmud Kati (1468–1593) Malian historian

Faith, Travel, Learning, Teachers

“I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more — the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort — to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires — and expires, too soon — too soon before life itself.”

Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) Polish-British writer

Youth, A Narrative http://www.gutenberg.org/files/525/525.txt (1902)

Love, Life, Death, Men

“Our present control of the sea is so absolute that it is sometimes taken for granted.”

Chester W. Nimitz (1885–1966) United States Navy fleet admiral

Employment of Naval Forces (1948)

“One rich light
Broke thro' the shadow of the tempest's wing,
While the black clouds, with gold and purple edged,
Caught every moment warmer hues, until
'Twas all one sparkling arch, and, like a king
In triumph o'er his foes, the Sun god sought
The blue depths of the sea; — the waters yet
Were ruffled with the storm, and the white foam
Yet floated on the billows, while the wind
Murmured at times like to an angry child,
Who sobs even in his slumber.”

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

(2nd February 1822) Poetic Sketches, No.4
The London Literary Gazette, 1821-1822

God, Light, Water, Time

“All earth’s full rivers can not fill
The sea that drinking thirsteth still.”

Christina Rossetti (1830–1894) English poet

By the Sea; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919); Old and New, Volume 5 (1872), p. 169.

Drink

“Water—the mighty, the pure, the beautiful, the unfathomable—where is thy element so glorious as it is in thine own domain, the deep seas? What an infinity of power is in the far Atlantic, the boundary of two separate worlds, apart like those of memory and of hope! or in the bright Pacific, whose tides are turned to gold by a southern sun, and in whose bosom sleep a thousand isles, each covered with the verdure, the flowers, and the fruit of Eden! But, amid all thy hereditary kingdoms, to which hast thou given beauty, as a birthright, lavishly as thou hast to thy favourite Mediterranean? The silence of a summer night is now sleeping on its bosom, where the bright stars are mirrored, as if in its depths they had another home and another heaven. A spirit, cleaving air midway between the two, might have paused to ask which was sea, and which was sky. The shadows of earth and earthly things, resting omen-like upon the waters, alone shewed which was the home and which the mirror of the celestial host.”

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

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

World, Beauty, Hope, Home

“When the great markets by the sea shut fast
All that calm Sunday that goes on and on:
When even lovers find their peace at last,
And Earth is but a star, that once had shone.”

James Elroy Flecker (1884–1915) Poet

The Golden Journey to Samarkand (l. 7)

Peace, Star, Lovers

“She gave way under the sudden weight, the sea rushed in, and the Io sank beneath the wave. Shields and helmets float on the water, images of tutelary gods and javelins with useless points.”
Subito cum pondere victus, insiliente mari, summergitur alveus undis. scuta virum cristaeque et inerti spicula ferro tutelaeque deum fluitant.

Silius Italicus Punica

Book XIV, lines 540–543
Punica

God, Way, Water

“Good evening Mr. and Mrs. America, from border to border and coast to coast and all the ships at sea. Let’s go to press.”

Walter Winchell (1897–1972) American gossip journalist

Attributed

“The hills look over on the South,
And Southward dreams the sea;
And with the sea-breeze hand in hand,
Came innocence and she.”

Francis Thompson (1859–1907) British poet

Daisy http://www.bartleby.com/103/26.html (1893), st. 2.

Dreams

“Now you're my whole life;
Now you're my whole world.
I just can't believe
The way I feel about you girl.
Like a river meets the sea,
Stronger than it's ever been.
We've come so far since that day,
And I thought I loved you then.”

Brad Paisley (1972) American country music singer

Then, written by Chris DuBois, Ashley Gorley, and Brad Paisley.
Song lyrics, American Saturday Night (2009)

Love, Life, World, Way

“Sir,
Having long deferred to make any report relating to the observations that were taken at sea by captain Campbell, in the year 1757, which you transmitted to me by order of the lords of the admiralty, I think it necessary to acquaint you, that, upon examining those observations, I perceived that they were not in all respects accompanied with such circumstances as are requisite for forming a right judgment of the accuracy and certainty with which observations proper for finding the longitude at sea by the moon can in fact be taken; for which reason I delayed giving my opinion upon this point till I could have an opportunity of comparing a greater variety of observations, made at different times, and with different instruments: such an opportunity having lately been given me by captain Campbell, who has favoured me with a copy of several observations that were made by him in 1758 and 1759, I now beg leave to lay before their lordships the result of the comparisons which I have made.”

James Bradley (1693–1762) English astronomer; Astronomer Royal

Miscellaneous Works and Correspondence (1832), To Mr. Cleveland Secretary of the Admiralty (April 14, 1760)

Thinking, Time

“The Aegean sea washes Greece on two sides: first, the side that faces towards the east and stretches from Sunium, towards the north as far as the Thermaean Gulf and Thessaloniceia, a Macedonian city…; and secondly, the side that faces towards the south, I mean the Macedonian country, extending from Thessaloniceia as far as the Strymon.”

Strabo Geographica

7.7.4-5
Geographica, 7 BC

Country

“Whether we assert our rights by sea, or attempt their maintenance by land—whithersoever we turn ourselves, this phantom incessantly pursues us. Already has it had too much influence on the councils of the nation.”

Henry Clay (1777–1852) American politician from Kentucky

Speech on the Line of the Perdido, Senate (25 December 1810).

“But all legislative powers appertain to sovereignty. The original power of giving the law on any subject whatever is a sovereign power […] All admit that the Government may legitimately punish any violation of its laws, and yet this is not among the enumerated powers of Congress. The right to enforce the observance of law by punishing its infraction might be denied with the more plausibility because it is expressly given in some cases. Congress is empowered "to provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States," and "to define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offences against the law of nations." The several powers of Congress may exist in a very imperfect State, to be sure, but they may exist and be carried into execution, although no punishment should be inflicted, in cases where the right to punish is not expressly given. Take, for example, the power "to establish post-offices and post-roads." This power is executed by the single act of making the establishment. But from this has been inferred the power and duty of carrying the mail along the post road from one post office to another. And from this implied power has again been inferred the right to punish those who steal letters from the post office, or rob the mail. It may be said with some plausibility that the right to carry the mail, and to punish those who rob it, is not indispensably necessary to the establishment of a post office and post road. This right is indeed essential to the beneficial exercise of the power, but not indispensably necessary to its existence. So, of the punishment of the crimes of stealing or falsifying a record or process of a Court of the United States, or of perjury in such Court. To punish these offences is certainly conducive to the due administration of justice. But Courts may exist, and may decide the causes brought before them, though such crimes escape punishment. The baneful influence of this narrow construction on all the operations of the Government, and the absolute impracticability of maintaining it without rendering the Government incompetent to its great objects, might be illustrated by numerous examples drawn from the Constitution and from our laws. The good sense of the public has pronounced without hesitation that the power of punishment appertains to sovereignty, and may be exercised, whenever the sovereign has a right to act, as incidental to his Constitutional powers. It is a means for carrying into execution all sovereign powers, and may be used although not indispensably necessary. It is a right incidental to the power, and conducive to its beneficial exercise.”

John Marshall (1755–1835) fourth Chief Justice of the United States

17 U.S. (4 Wheaton) 316, 409 and 416-418. Regarding the Necessary and Proper Clause in context of the powers of Congress.
McCulloch v. Maryland (1819)

Justice, Law, Exercises, Sense

“In the summer of 1864, pessimists warned that the North could not win the Civil War. President Abraham Lincoln faced opposition for the Republican-party nomination, and even if he won it, he was considered likely to lose the November election to Union general George McClellan. General Grant’s Army of the Potomac was being bled white in Virginia in vain attempts to dislodge Robert E. Lee’s defenders from their entrenchments around the Confederate capital of Richmond. Gruesome encounters such as the Battle of Cold Harbor and the Battle of the Wilderness had given the depressed Northern public nightmares. Then, suddenly, fantasy became reality. The maverick General William Tecumseh Sherman unexpectedly took Atlanta on September 2, 1864. Euphoria swept the North. McClellan’s sure-thing candidacy crashed. The mercurial Sherman then headed off with his huge army on the famous “March to the Sea” through Georgia. He next plowed through the Carolinas to the rear of Lee’s army in Virginia. In less than nine months the entire Confederate cause collapsed. The supposedly endless Civil War ended with a sudden and absolute Union victory that no one had foreseen.”

Victor Davis Hanson (1953) American military historian, essayist, university professor

2010s, The American Art of Renewal (2018)

War, Reality, Victory, Summer

“Between the crowded houses of Gravesend and the monstrous red-brick pile on the Essex shore the ship is surrendered fairly to the grasp of the river. That hint of loneliness, that soul of the sea which had accompanied her as far as the Lower Hope Reach, abandons her at the turn of the first bend above. The salt, acrid flavour is gone out of the air, together with a sense of unlimited space opening free beyond the threshold of sandbanks below the Nore. The waters of the sea rush on past Gravesend, tumbling the big mooring buoys laid along the face of the town; but the sea-freedom stops short there, surrendering the salt tide to the needs, the artifices, the contrivances of toiling men. Wharves, landing-places, dock-gates, waterside stairs, follow each other continuously right up to London Bridge, and the hum of men’s work fills the river with a menacing, muttering note as of a breathless, ever-driving gale. The water-way, so fair above and wide below, flows oppressed by bricks and mortar and stone, by blackened timber and grimed glass and rusty iron, covered with black barges, whipped up by paddles and screws, overburdened with craft, overhung with chains, overshadowed by walls making a steep gorge for its bed, filled with a haze of smoke and dust.”

Joseph Conrad book The Mirror of the Sea

Tilbury / Gravesend to London Bridge
The Mirror of the Sea (1906), On the River Thames, Ch. 16

Men, Hope, Way, Soul

“Families who have never worked a day in their lives having 4 or 5 kids and the rest of us having 1 or 2 means it’s not long before we’re drowning in a vast sea of unemployed wasters that we pay to keep! Iain Duncan Smith’s cap proposal is spot on!”

Ben Bradley (politician) (1989) British politician

Ben Bradley under fire for urging jobless to have vasectomies, The Guardian (2018)

Family

“When God comes
A great noise will pierce us,
The day of judgment terribly.
Messengers from the door,
Wind, and sea, and fire.
lightning and thunder
A number without flattery.
The people of the world groaning
Will be concealed.”

Taliesin (534–599) Welsh bard

Book of Taliesin (c. 1275?), Oh God, the God of Formation

God, People, World

“At sea on a ship in a thunderstorm
on the very night the Christ was born
a sailor heard from overhead
a mighty voice cry "Pan is Dead!"
So follow Christ as best you can
Pan is dead — Long live Pan!”

Mike Scott (1958) songwriter, musician

"The Return Of Pan"
Dream Harder (1993)

Christ, Cry, Night, Dead

“Arms and the man I sing who first from Troy
Came to the Italian and Lavinian shores,
Exiled by fate; much tossed on land and sea
By power divine and cruel Juno's rage;
Much too in war he suffered, till he reared
A city and to Latium brought his gods:
Whence sprung the Latin progeny, the kings
Of Alba, and the walls of towering Rome.”

Joseph Trapp (1679–1747) English poet

The Æneis of Virgil (1718)

God, Fate, War, Suffering

“Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night
Sailed off in a wooden shoe—
Sailed on a river of crystal light,
Into a sea of dew.”

Eugene Field (1850–1895) American writer

Wynken, Blynken, and Nod http://www.amherst.edu/~rjyanco94/literature/eugenefield/poems/poemsofchildhood/wynkenblynkenandnod.html, st. 1 Love Songs of Childhood (1894)

Shoe, Light, Night

“I am quite incapable of doing them [making landscapes], even the shadow. My trees look like spinach and my sea like heaven knows what.... [the Mediterranean landscape was] the devil to paint, precisely because it is so beautiful.”

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901) French painter

young Lautrec comments his own paintings of the landscape, when he was c. 15 years old.
Source: 1879-1884, T-Lautrec, by Henri Perruchot, p. 46 - remark to his friend Etienne Devismes - in Nice, 1879

Beauty, Tree, Painting

“We must not despair, we must not for a moment pretend that we cannot face these things. Dangers come upon the world; other nations face them. When, in old days, the sea gave access to this island, it was a danger to this island, it made it the most invadable place at any point, but by taking proper measures our ancestors gained the command of the sea, and, consequently, what had been a means of inroad upon us became our sure shield and protection; and there is not the slightest reason why, with our ability and our resources, and our peaceful intentions, our desire only to live quietly here in our island, we should not raise up for ourselves a security in the air above us which will make us as free from serious molestation as did our control of blue water through bygone centuries.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1934/mar/08/air-estimates-1934#column_2071 in the House of Commons (8 March 1934) during the debate on the Government's White Paper on Defence that announced an increase in the Royal Air Force The 1930s

World, Peace, Water, Despair

“The infinity of God is not mysterious, it is only unfathomable; not concealed, but incomprehensible; it is a clear infinity, the darkness of the pure unsearchable sea.”

John Ruskin book Modern Painters

Volume II, part III, chapter V (1846).
Modern Painters (1843-1860)

God

“In the year AH 710 (AD 1310), the King again sent Mullik Kafoor and Khwaja Hajy with a great army, to reduce Dwara Sumoodra and Maabir in the Deccan, where he heard there were temples very rich in gold and jewels' They found in the temple prodigious spoils, such as idols of gold, adorned with precious stones, and other rich effects, consecrated to Hindoo worship. On the sea-coast the conqueror built a small mosque, and ordered prayers to be read according to the Mahomedan faith, and the Khootba to be pronounced in the name of Allaood-Deen Khiljy. This mosque remains entire in our days at Sett Bund Rameswur, for the infidels, esteeming it a house consecrated to God, would not destroy it.”

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

John Briggs, Tarikh-i-Firishta, translated by John Briggs under the title History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India, first published in 1829, New Delhi Reprint 1981, Vol. I, pp. 213-14.
Quotes from Muslim medieval histories

God, Faith, Reading, Housing

“So much to learn!
Old Nature's ways
Of glee and gloom with rapt amaze
To study, probe, and paint – brown earth,
Salt sea, blue heavens, their tilth and dearth,
Birds, grasses, trees – the natural things
That throb or grope or poise on wings.”

Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890) British explorer, geographer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, lin…

Richard Eugene Burton, Memorial Day, And Other Poems (1897), 'So Much to Learn', p. 8
Misattributed

Way, Nature, Bird, Tree

“A brackish reach of shoal off Madaket--
The sea was still breaking violently and night
Had steamed into our North Atlantic Fleet,
When the drowned sailor clutched the drag-net. Light
Flashed from his matted head and marble feet,
He grappled at the net
With the coiled, hurdling muscles of his thighs:
The corpse was bloodless, a botch of reds and whites,
Its open, staring eyes
Were lustreless dead-lights
Or cabin-windows on a stranded hulk
Heavy with sand.”

Robert Lowell (1917–1977) Poet

Poem: The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/g_l/lowell/onlinepoems.htm

Light, Night, Dead

“The advantage it had gained it has steadily maintained. 'This is our matter, you know', it said. 'Just please let us alone'. It was let alone. Texas was ceded for Florida, completing the sea-line of slavery; and when slavery was ready Texas was taken back again, as when, afterwards, slavery had secured its share of the bargain, the Missouri Compromise was broken. In due order came the Mexican war and its consequences, the Fugitive-slave Bill and the loud chatter about saving the Union, so incessant that every thoughtful man asked himself. Is the casket more than the gem — the body than the soul — the Union than liberty? Then came the bloody tragedy of Kansas, with its justification by the President of the United States and by the Chief Justice; and I think no one will deny that Mr. Stephens is correct in calmly congratulating himself that slavery has carried all the important objects for which it has striven.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

War, Justice, Soul, Thinking

“But the spirit which they so nobly represented two generations ago has not departed from the land. It was resurgent in the days of 1898 and in 1917, and finds a lineal succession in the three branches which make up the land and sea forces of the present day and in the public opinion of the people. Our country has never had a better-equipped army or a more efficient navy in time of peace than it has at the present time. The Air Service is being perfected, better quarters are being provided, and our whole Military Establishment is being made worthy of the power and dignity of this great Nation. We realize that national security and national defense can not be safely neglected. To do so is to put in peril our domestic tranquility and jeopardize our respect and standing among the other nations.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Ways to Peace (1926)

People, Peace, Time, Success

“When we can get beyond that smoky world, there, out in the country we may still see the works of our fathers yet alive amidst the very nature they were wrought into, and of which they are so completely a part: for there indeed if anywhere, in the English country, in the days when people cared about such things, was there a full sympathy between the works of man, and the land they were made for: — the land is a little land; too much shut up within the narrow seas, as it seems, to have much space for swelling into hugeness: there are no great wastes overwhelming in their dreariness, no great solitudes of forests, no terrible untrodden mountain-walls: all is measured, mingled, varied, gliding easily one thing into another: little rivers, little plains, swelling, speedily- changing uplands, all beset with handsome orderly trees; little hills, little mountains, netted over with the walls of sheep- walks: all is little; yet not foolish and blank, but serious rather, and abundant of meaning for such as choose to seek it: it is neither prison nor palace, but a decent home.”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

The Decorative Arts (1877)

People, World, Home, Mountain

“So extravagant is Nature with her choicest treasures, spending plant beauty as she spends sunshine, pouring it forth into land and sea, garden and desert. And so the beauty of lilies falls on angels and men, bears and squirrels, wolves and sheep, birds and bees,….”

John Muir book My First Summer in the Sierra

Terry Gifford, EWDB, page 224
1860s, My First Summer in the Sierra, 1869

Men, Beauty, Angels, Nature

“Every impulse and stroke of missionary power on earth is from the heart of Christ. He sows, and there is a harvest. He touches nations, and there arises a brotherhood, not only civilized by His light, but sanctified by His love. The isles of the ocean wait for Him. He spreads His net and gathers of every kind, and lo! the burden of the sea is not only fishes, but fishermen, who go and gather and come again. If there are activity, free giving, ready going, a full treasury, able men who say, " Here am I, send me," it is because through all the organization Christ lives, and His personal Spirit works. There is no other possible spring for that enthusiasm.”

Frederic Dan Huntington (1819–1904) American bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 418.

Love, Men, Spring, Fish

“God damn them all!
I was told we'd cruise the seas for American gold
we'd fire no guns -- shed no tears!
Now I'm a broken man on a Halifax pier
The last of Barrett's Privateers.”

Stan Rogers (1949–1983) Folk singer

Barrett's Privateers (1976)

God, Tear

“Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

April 10, 1778
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol III

Thinking

“Singing, "Here came a mortal,
But faithless was she:
And alone dwell for ever
The kings of the sea."”

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

St. 7
The Forsaken Merman (1849)

Singing

“Oh, Sussex, Sussex by the sea!
Good old Sussex by the Sea!
You may tell them all that we stand or fall
For Sussex by the sea!”

William Ward-Higgs (1866–1936) English songwriter

Song Sussex by the Sea.

“The sea has no renewal, no forgetting,
no variety of death,
is silent with the silence of a single note.”

Basil Bunting (1900–1985) Poet

from "Villon" (1930)

Death, Silence, Forgetting

“It is a costly thing living here to fight the erosion. The sea is constantly threatening to cut into the coastline and sweep all this away. Every year we have to haul stones up here to repair the damage and plug the holes. It's a full-time job.”

Dermot Healy (1947–2014) Irish writer

John O'Mahony (2000). Let the west of the world go by http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2000/jun/03/fiction.johnomahony, The Guardian (3 June 2000)

Time, Fight

“All of the boats in question were in the Indonesian search and rescue zone and I want the fullest possible cooperation between Indonesia and Australia in places where Indonesia has, if you like, the legal responsibility under the law of the sea, but Australia has more practical capacity to help.”

Tony Abbott (1957) Australian politician

abc.net.au http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2013/s3890402.htm. 2013

Law, Search, Question, Help

“Sail through the sea of sad faces with love.
Love. Love for everyone.
Drift like a little boat on a wave.”

Edie Brickell (1966) singer from the United States

"Big Day Little Boat" on Edie Brickell & New Bohemians : Ultimate Collection (2002)

Love, Sadness

““On Wednesday, the 20th of Jamadi-ul Awwal in AH 698 (23 February, 1299), the Sultan sent an order to the manager of the armed forces for despatching the army of Islam to Gujarat so that the temple of Somnat on its shore could be destroyed. Ulugh Khan was put in charge of the expedition. When the royal army reached that province, it won a victory after great slaughter. Thereafter the Khan-i-‘Ãzam went with his army to the sea-shore and besieged Somnat which was a place of worship for the Hindus. The army of Islam broke the idols and the biggest idol was sent to the court of the Sultan.”70”

Amir Khusrow (1253–1325) Indian poet, writer, musician and scholar

About Sultan ‘Alau’d-Din Khalji (AD 1296-1316) and his generals conquests in Somnath (Gujarat) S.A.A. Rizvi, Khalji Kalina Bharata, Aligarh, 1955, pp. 159
Khazainu’l-Futuh

Victory

“I'm sorry, remind me again, what is the point of encouraging little girls to dream big if any career puts them in the path of boob honkers? There's not a workplace on land or sea or even at the bottom of a big, deep hole in the ground where we're actually keeping women safe. Right now I'm actually picturing some guy saying, oh, what am I supposed to do, stop asking women out at work because it makes them uncomfortable? Yes.”

Samantha Bee (1969) Canadian comedic actress and author

Full Frontal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDfpGdk3HgQ, February 22, 2016; as quoted in "Samantha Bee On 'Full Frontal,' Feminism And The Freedom Of Her 40s" https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=473371862, NPR, April 7, 2016

Women, Dreams, Guy, Girl

“Yonder in the unknown vastness"—his long finger stabbed at the black silent jungle which brooded beyond the firelight—"yonder lies mystery and adventure and nameless terror. Once I dared the jungle—once she nearly claimed my bones. Something entered into my blood, something stole into my soul like a whisper of unnamed sin. The jungle! Dark and brooding—over leagues of the blue salt sea she has drawn me and with the dawn I go to seek the heart of her. Mayhap I shall find curious adventure—mayhap my doom awaits me. But better death than the ceaseless and everlasting urge, the fire that has burned my veins with bitter longing.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

"The Hills of the Dead" (1930)

Death, Soul, Heart

“Ah, what shall we say then, but that earth threatened often
Shall live on for ever that such things may be,
That the dry seed shall quicken, the hard earth shall soften,
And the spring-bearing birds flutter north o'er the sea,
That earth's garden may bloom round my love's feet and me?”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

Love is Enough (1872), Song II: Have No Thought for Tomorrow

Love, Spring, Bird

“People may wonder how Mitt came to join in the Holand Sea Festival, carrying a bomb, and what he thought he was doing. Mitt wondered himself by the end.”

Diana Wynne Jones (1934–2011) English children's fantasy writer

First lines.
Source: Dalemark Quartet, Drowned Ammet (1977), p. 223.

People

“In the office there are about fifteen people whose attention is directed toward a table covered with the costly fabric [raw cotton]; one man is bent over the table and another is sort of seating on it – the buyer and the broker are discussing a sample. A painting of a vernacular subject, if there is such a thing, and I think by a better hand than most others (a size 40 canvas, I think). I'm planning another less complicated and more surprising yet, better art, in which everyone is in summer dress, the walls white, and a sea of cotton on the tables. (translation based on M. Kay's, in M. Gérin [ed. ] and M. Kay, transl. 'Degas letters', Oxford, 1947, pp. 29-30, no. 2”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

Quote in Gegas letter to his friend James Tissot, New Orleans, 18 February 1873; as quoted in 'Impressionism: A Centenary Exhibition', Anne Distel, Michel Hoog, Charles S. Moffett, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, (New York, N.Y.) 1975, p. 99 Degas is referring to his painting 'Cotton Merchants in New Orleans' [Cotton Merchants in New Orleans https://www.harvardartmuseums.org/art/299832, (1873) 1855 - 1875

People, Art, Thinking, Summer

“And I am very happy to have the boat motif because, when I grew up, in summer with my parents we were always in Massachusetts, and I was always by the sea. You know, sometimes little boys love cars, but I had a particular passion for boats, and now I live by the sea. For sure, it is a passage, but it's also very fascinating for lots of things. When you get interested in something you can find out a lot about things. You might meet people who are interested in one subject or another, like they collect palms. I've found people from all over the world who were fanatical about palms, which you wouldn't know unless you were interested in palms. And the sea: because, if you've noticed, the sea is white three quarters of the time, just white – early morning. Only in the fall does it get blue, because the haze is gone. The Mediterranean [where Twombly is living later in his life], at least – the Atlantic is brown – is just always white, white, white. And then, even when the sun comes up, it becomes a lighter white... Not because I paint it white; I'd have painted it white even if it wasn't, but I am always happy that I might have. It's something that has other consciousness behind it.”

Cy Twombly (1928–2011) American painter

Source: 2000 - 2011, Cy Twombly, 2000', by David Sylvester (June 2000), pp. 174-175

Love, Life, Happiness, People

“Aviation seems almost a gift from heaven to those Western nations who were already the leaders of their era, strengthening their leadership, their confidence, their dominance over other peoples. It is a tool specially shaped for Western hands, a scientific art which others only copy in a mediocre fashion; another barrier between the teeming millions of Asia and the Grecian inheritance of Europe — one of those priceless possessions which permit the White race to live at all in a pressing sea of Yellow, Black, and Brown.”

Charles Lindbergh (1902–1974) American aviator, author, inventor, explorer, and social activist

Aviation, Geography, and Race (1939)

People, Art, Confidence, Fashion

“Three days later we went after him again, and this time we got him. Not a mark on him. We got him. We brought him back into our base there and we had a Sea Land container set up to hold prisoners in, and I said put him in there. They put him in there, there was one guard with him. I said search him, they searched him, and then I walked in with no one in there but the guard, and I looked at him and said, "Are you Osman Atto?" And he said "Yes."”

William G. Boykin (1948) Recipient of the Purple Heart medal

And I said, "Mr. Atto, you underestimated our God." Web Archives: Homestead.co, "General Boykin Bio" http://web.archive.org/web/20040207103627/www.homestead.com/prosites-prs/generalboykin.html, Jan, 2003.

God, Search, Time

“They rowed her in across the rolling foam,
The cruel crawling foam,
The cruel hungry foam,
To her grave beside the sea:
But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home
Across the sands of Dee.”

Charles Kingsley (1819–1875) English clergyman, historian and novelist

The Sands of Dee, st. 4.

Home

“Standing on the bridge that crosses
The river that goes out to the sea
The wind is full of a thousand voices
They pass by the bridge and me.”

Loreena McKennitt (1957) Canadian musician and composer

The Visit (1991), All Souls Night

“How many of our virtues originate in the fear of Death — & that while we flatter ourselves that we are melting in Christian Sensibility over the sorrows of our human Brethren and Sisteren, we are in fact, tho' perhaps unconsciously, moved at the prospect of our own End — for who sincerely pities Sea-sickness, Toothache, or a fit of the Gout in a lusty Good-liver of 50?”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

Letter to James Gillman (9 October 1825)
Letters

Death, Fear, Sincerity

“The account of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, as the manuscripts are inaccurately designated, and of the half a century of intense research that followed, is in itself a fascinating as well as an exasperating story.”

Géza Vermès (1924–2013) British scholar

Introduction, p. 1
The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English

Dead

“It's a well-known fact that no novel is taken seriously in India until a good deal of research has gone into it. This stay in the Taj will be my research. Going down the stairs will be research. So will looking out at the sea.”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

Friend of My Youth (2017)

“Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

"Hymn in the Vale of Chamouni" (1802)

“The woodcutter is far better for skill than he is for brute strength.
It is by skill that the sea captain holds his rapid ship
on its course, though torn by winds, over the wine-blue water.
By skill charioteer outpasses charioteer.”

Homér Iliad

XXIII. 315–318 (tr. R. Lattimore).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

Water, Wine

“I will mount a long wind some day and break the heavy waves,
And set my cloudy sail straight and bridge the deep, deep sea.”

Li Bai (701–762) Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty poetry period

"The Hard Road" (行路難) I http://wengu.tartarie.com/wg/wengu.php?no=82&l=Tangshi, trans. Witter Bynner

“Thrown like a star in my vast sleep
I open my eyes to take a peep
To find that I was by the sea
Gazing with tranquillity. 'Twas then when the Hurdy Gurdy Man
Came singing songs of love…”

Donovan (1946) Scottish singer, songwriter and guitarist

Hurdy Gurdy Man (1967)

Love, Star, Sleep, Singing

“This indigested vomit of the Sea,
Fell to the Dutch by Just Propriety.”

Andrew Marvell (1621–1678) English metaphysical poet and politician

The Character of Holland (c. 1653).

“Do you know how fat you are, do you? No, you don't, 'CAUSE YOUR FACE IS AN ISLAND TRAPPED IN A SEA OF FLAB! I would stab you to death… but I can't afford to take the two weeks off work!”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

On relationships with fat people.
Like, Totally (2006)

Death

“It's a totally inhospitable place, you shouldn't be here—the sun—you live about three quarters of a mile from it; I've seen insects walking around with kneepads; you fling yourselves into the sea when you're not actually walking around audibly crackling in the heat. And the sea is full of jellyfish, sharks and other things who hate you, but you persist in living here. So you know, it's a jail you live in. It's lovely, you've done wonderful things with it, but you're all still in denial.”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

On Australia, at the Melbourne Comedy Fest.
Other

Love, Hate, Sun

“I must down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face, and a grey dawn breaking.”

John Masefield (1878–1967) English poet and writer

The first line is often misquoted as "I must go down to the seas again." and this is the wording used in the song setting by John Ireland. I disagree with this last point. The poet himself was recorded reading this and he definitely says "seas". The first line should read, 'I must down ...' not, 'I must go down ...' The original version of 1902 reads 'I must down to the seas again'. In later versions, the author inserted the word 'go'.

Source: https://poemanalysis.com/sea-fever-john-masefield-poem-analysis/
Salt-Water Ballads (1902), "Sea-Fever"

Star

“The Chinese said of themselves several thousand years ago: “China is a sea that salts all the waters that flow into it.” There’s another Chinese saying about their country which is much more modern—it dates only from the fourth century. This is the saying: “The tail of China is large and will not be wagged.” I like that one. The British democracy approves the principles of movable party heads and unwaggable national tails. It is due to the working of these important forces that I have the honour to be addressing you at this moment.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Address to a joint session of Congress, Washington, D.C. (January 17, 1952); reported in Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches, 1897–1963, ed. Robert Rhodes James (1974), vol. 8, p. 8326.
Post-war years (1945–1955)

Democracy, Water, Country

“To grow may require that we be shaken right to our core. While kneeling on that roadside in Herat, something died within me, giving birth to a realization necessary for me to move forward on my path. With each step, a camel lifts its hoof from a stable place on earth in order to move forward. And to reach the sea, each ripple of the river must let go of its present state to surrender to the current.”

Radhanath Swami (1950) Gaudiya Vaishnava guru

?
The Journey Home: Autobiography of an American Swami (Tulsi Books, 2010)

Birth

“When you're between any kind of devil and the deep blue sea, the deep blue sea sometimes looks very inviting.”

Terence Rattigan (1911–1977) playwright, screenwriter

The Deep Blue Sea, Act I. (1952).

“Nature is what we see,
The Hill, the Afternoon—
Squirrel, Eclipse, the Bumble-bee,
Nay—Nature is Heaven.

Nature is what we hear,
The Bobolink, the Sea—
Thunder, the Cricket—
Nay,—Nature is Harmony.

Nature is what we know
But have no art to say,
So impotent our wisdom is
To Her simplicity.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Source: Collected Poems (1993), p. 268-269. The Single Hound.

Wisdom, Art, Nature, Bee

“As the shores of Ithaca gradually
Faded away behind him
And he sailed swiftly westward
Toward Iberia and the Pillars of Hercules,
Far from every Achaean sea,
He felt he was alive once more,
Freed from the oppressive bonds
Of familiar, domestic things.
And his adventurous heart rejoiced
Coldly, devoid of love.”

Constantine P. Cavafy (1863–1933) Greek poet

Second Odyssey http://www.cavafy.com/poems/content.asp?id=329&cat=4, as translated by Walter Kaiser Collected Poems (1992)

Love, Heart

“Whither, O splendid ship, thy white sails crowding,
Leaning across the bosom of the urgent West,
That fearest nor sea rising, nor sky clouding,
Whither away, fair rover, and what thy quest?”

Robert Seymour Bridges (1844–1930) British writer

Bk. II, No. 2, A Passer-By http://www.bartleby.com/101/835.html, st. 1 (1879). Shorter Poems (1879-1893)

“We are no nearer heaven on the top of Mount Cenis than at the bottom of the sea; take the distance with your astrolabe. They debase God even to the carnal knowledge of women, to so many times, and so many generations.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book II, Ch. 12
Essais (1595), Book II

Women, God, Knowledge, Time

“Students of the Way must not study Buddhism for the sake of themselves. They must study Buddhism only for the sake of Buddhism. The key to this is to renounce both body and mind without holding anything back and to offer them to the great sea of Buddhism.”

Dogen (1200–1253) Japanese Zen buddhist teacher

V, 2
Shobogenzo Zuimonki (1238)

Way, Study

“Why won't the king of Denmark leave us our names? We have done nothing against him. We deserve no less respect than he does. My forefathers were kings of land and sea... Our skalds composed poetry and told stories in the language of King Óðinn himself, who came from Ásgarður when Europe still spoke the language of slaves.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Snæfríður
Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell) (1946), Part III: Fire in Copenhagen

“There various news I heard of love and strife,
Of peace and war, health, sickness, death, and life,
Of loss and gain, of famine and of store,
Of storms at sea, and travels on the shore,
Of prodigies, and portents seen in air,
Of fires and plagues, and stars with blazing hair,
Of turns of fortune, changes in the state,
The fall of favourites, projects of the great,
Of aid mismanagements, taxations new:
All neither wholly false, nor wholly true.”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

Source: The Temple of Fame (1711), Lines 449-458.

Love, Life, Death, War

“Myself at the age of six, when I believed I was a little girl, raising with a very great care the skin of the sea in order to observe a dog sleeping in the shadow of the water.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

title of his oil-painting, Dali painted in 1950
Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1941 - 1950

Age, Dogs, Girl, Sleep

“Though Seas and Land betwixt us both,
Our Faith and Troth,
Like separated soules,
All time and space controules:
Above the highest sphere wee meet
Unseene, unknowne, and greet as Angels greet.”

Richard Lovelace (1617–1658) English writer and poet

To Lucasta: Going Beyond the Seas, st. 3.
Lucasta (1649)

Faith, Angels, Soul, Time

“To the wild deep-hearted man all was yet new, not veiled under names or formulas; it stood naked, flashing in on him there, beautiful, awful, unspeakable. Nature was to this man, what to the Thinker and Prophet it forever is, preternatural. This green flowery rock-built earth, the trees, the mountains, rivers, many-sounding seas;—that great deep sea of azure that swims overhead; the winds sweeping through it; the black cloud fashioning itself together, now pouring out fire, now hail and rain.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Divinity

Beauty, Mountain, Fashion, Nature

“5744. Wine hath drowned more Men than the Sea.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
Variant: Bacchus hath drown'd more Men than Neptune.
Context: 830. Bacchus hath drown'd more Men than Neptune.

Men, Wine

“Farming as we do it is hunting, and in the sea we act like barbarians.”

Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1910–1997) French naval officer, explorer, conservationist, filmmaker, innovator, scientist, photographer, author and …

Interview (17 July 1971): Cited in: Jane Goodall et al. (2005) Harvest for Hope: A Guide to Mindful Eating.

“It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,
The holy time is quiet as a Nun
Breathless with adoration; the broad sun
Is sinking down in its tranquillity;
The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the Sea.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

It Is a Beautious Evening, l. 1 (1807).

Time, Sun

“Enlarge this meditation upon this great world, man, so far, as to consider the immensity of the creatures this world produces; our creatures are our thoughts, creatures that are born giants; that reach from east to west, from earth to heaven, that do not only bestride all the sea and land, but span the sun and firmament at once; my thoughts reach all, comprehend all. Inexplicable mystery; I their creator am in a close prison, in a sick bed, anywhere, and any one of my creatures, my thoughts, is with the sun, and beyond the sun, overtakes the sun, and overgoes the sun in one pace, one step, everywhere.”

John Donne (1572–1631) English poet

IV. Mediscque Vocatur; The physician is sent for.
Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624)

World, Sun

“I am monarch of all I survey,
My right there is none to dispute;
From the center all round to the sea
I am lord of the fowl and the brute.”

William Cowper (1731–1800) (1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist

Source: Verses supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk (1782), Line 1.

“The glad indomitable sea,
The strong white sun.”

Bliss Carman (1861–1929) author

A Sea Child, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Strong, Sun

“In what a narrow circuit, among what
abandoned solitudes your fame lies bound!
Amid vast seas your island earth is shut,
though "vast" or "ocean", or what words resound
to name that sea, are idle names and fond,
for what it is: a shallow bog, a pond.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

In che picciolo cerchio, e fra che nude
Solitudini è stretto il vostro fasto!
Lei, come isola, il mare intorno chiude;
E lui, ch'or Ocean chiamate or vasto,
Nulla eguale a tai nomi ha in sè di magno;
Ma è bassa palude, e breve stagno.
Canto XIV, stanza 10 (tr. Wickert)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

Solitude

“Fourteen small broidered berries on the hern
Of Circe's mantle, each of magic gold;
Fourteen of lone Calypso's tears that rolled
Into the sea, for pearls to come to them;
Fourteen clear signs of omen in the gem
With which Medea human fate foretold
Fourteen small drops, which Fautus, growing old,
Craved of the Fiend, to water Life's stem”

Eugene Lee-Hamilton (1845–1907) English poet and translator

From What the Sonnet Is.

Life, Fate, Tear, Water

“We are all like fish that have separated from the sea of divine consciousness. For a person to be happy outside his or her natural relationship with God is like a fish trying to enjoy life outside of the water, on the dry sand. Holy people go to great extremes to help even one person to return his or her natural spiritual consciousness, to the sea of true joy. But the net of maya, or illusion, snatches away the minds of the masses, diverting us from the true self-interest.”

Radhanath Swami (1950) Gaudiya Vaishnava guru

?
The Journey Home: Autobiography of an American Swami (Tulsi Books, 2010)

Life, God, Happiness, People

“You must have plenty of sea-room to tell the truth in.”

Herman Melville (1818–1891) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet

Hawthorne and His Mosses (1850)

Truth

“The rise of the Earth's temperature, causing sea level increases that could add up to one foot over the next 30 years, threatens the very existence of New Orleans.”

Ray Nagin (1956) politician, businessman

Attributed by Mayors Climate Protection Agreement site http://www.ci.seattle.wa.us/mayor/climate/quotes.htm Attributed

“I was borne on an eagle's wing,
Till with the noon-sun perishing;
Then I stood in a world alone,
From which all other life was gone,
Whence warmth, and breath, and light were fled,
A world o'er which a curse was said:
The trees stood leafless all, and bare,
The sky spread, but no sun was there:
Night came, no stars were on her way,
Morn came without a look of day,—
As night and day shared one pale shroud,
Without a colour or a cloud.
And there were rivers, but they stood
Without a murmur on the flood,
Waveless and dark, their task was o'er,—
The sea lay silent on the shore,
Without a sign upon its breast
Save of interminable rest:
And there were palaces and halls,
But silence reign'd amid their walls,
Though crowds yet fill'd them; for no sound
Rose from the thousands gather'd round;
All wore the same white, bloodless hue,
All the same eyes of glassy blue,
Meaningless, cold, corpse-like as those
No gentle hand was near to close.
And all seem'd, as they look'd on me,
In wonder that I yet could be
A moving shape of warmth and breath
Alone amid a world of death.”

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

Canto III
The Troubadour (1825)

Life, Death, World, Way

“I watch the sea and the sky; sometimes I wade in the surf and build roads in the sand. At night I study the stars.”
“You have no friends?”
“No.”
“And what of the future?”
“The future stops at ‘now’.”
“As to that, I am not so sure,” said Shimrod. “It is at best a half-truth.”
“What of that? Half a truth is better than none: do you not agree?”
“Not altogether,” said Shimrod. “I am a practical man, I try to control the shape of the ‘nows’ which lie in the offing, instead of submitting to them as they occur.”
Melancthe gave an uninterested shrug. “You are free to do as you like.” Leaning back in the divan, she looked out across the sea.
Shimrod finally spoke. “Well then: are you ‘good’ or ‘bad’?”
“I don’t know.”
Shimrod became vexed. “Talking with you is like visiting an empty house.”

Jack Vance Lyonesse Trilogy

Melancthe considered a moment before responding. “Perhaps,” she said, “you are visiting the wrong house. Or perhaps you are the wrong visitor.”
Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), Madouc (1989), Chapter 5, section 4 (p. 783)

Truth, Lie, Star, Study

“Lady Moon, Lady Moon, where are you roving?
Over the sea.
Lady Moon, Lady Moon, whom are you loving?
All that love me!”

Richard Monckton Milnes, 1st Baron Houghton (1809–1885) British politician and poet

A Child’s Song.

Love

“"Although," said he [Cato], "all the world has fallen under one man's sway, although Caesar's legions guard the land, his fleets the sea, and Caesar's troops beset the city gates, yet Cato has a way of escape; with one single hand he will open a wide path to freedom. This sword, unstained and blameless even in civil war, shall at last do good and noble service: the freedom which it could not give to his country it shall give to Cato!”
"Licet," inquit, "omnia in unius dicionem concesserint, custodiantur legionibus terrae, classibus maria, Caesarianus portas miles obsideat; Cato qua exeat habet; una manu latam libertati viam faciet. Ferrum istud, etiam civili bello purum et innoxium, bonas tandem ac nobiles edet operas: libertatem, quam patriae non potuit, Catoni dabit.

Seneca the Younger Moral Essays

De Providentia (On Providence), 2.10; translation by John W. Basore
Moral Essays

War, World, Way, Freedom

“Translated: We are no one's, always at a boundary, always someone’s dowry. Is it a wonder then that we are poor? For centuries now we have been seeking our true selves, yet soon we will not know who we are, we will forget that we ever wanted anything; others do us the honour of calling us under their banner for we have none, they lure us when we are needed and discard us when we have outserved the purpose they gave us. We remain the saddest little district of the world, the most miserable people of the world, losing our own persona and nor being able to take on anyone else's, torn away and not accepted, alien to all and everyone, including those with whom we are most closely related, but who will not recognise us as their kin. We live on a divide between worlds, at the border between nations, always at a fault to someone and first to be struck. Waves of history strike us as a sea cliff. Crude force has worn us out and we made a virtue out of a necessity: we grew smart out of spite.”

Meša Selimović book Death and the Dervish

So what are we? Fools? Miserable wretches? The most complex people in the world. No one is such a joke of history as we are. Only yesterday we were something that we now wish to forget, yet we have become nothing else. We stopped half way through, flabbergasted. There is no place we can go to any more. We are torn off, but not accepted. As a dead-end branch that streamed away from mother river has neither flow, nor confluence it can rejoin, we are too small to be a lake, too big to be sapped by the earth. With an unclear feeling of shame about our ancestry and guilt about our renegade status, we do not want to look into the past, but there is no future to look into; we therefore try to stop the time, terrified with the prospect of whatever solution might come about. Both our brethren and the newcomers despise us, and we defend ourselves with our pride and our hatred. We wanted to preserve ourselves, and that is exactly how we lost the knowledge of our identity. The greatest misery is that we grew fond of this dead end we are mired in and do not want to abandon it. But everything has a price and so does our love for what we are stuck with.
Death and the Dervish (1966)

People, World, History, Forgetting

“The Germans may take Paris, but that will not prevent me from going on with the war. We will fight on the Loire, we will fight on the Garronne, we will fight even in the Pyrenees. And if at last we are driven off the Pyrenees, we will continue the war at sea.”

Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929) French politician

As quoted in Clemenceau and the Third Republic (1946) by John Hampden Jackson.
Prime Minister

War, Fight

“Anna and Elsa's parents didn't die. Yes, there was a shipwreck, but they were at sea a little bit longer than we think they were because the mother was pregnant, and she gave birth on the boat, to a little boy. They get shipwrecked, and somehow they really washed way far away from the Scandinavian waters, and they end up in the jungle. They end up building a tree house and a leopard kills them, so their baby boy is raised by gorillas.”

Chris Buck

10 August 2015 via MTV http://www.mtv.com/news/2236490/frozen-director-debunks-major-disney-conspiracy-theory/, affirmed 15 December 2017 by Seventeen https://www.seventeen.com/celebrity/movies-tv/news/a33173/chris-buck-talks-tarzan-frozen-theory/

Way, Boy, Birth, Thinking

“The bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) is a creature of superlatives. Growing to 1500 pounds (700 kilos), traveling on transoceanic migrations, and reputedly capable of swimming 50 miles (90 km) per hour, it is one of the largest, most wide-ranging, and fastest of animals. To anyone who has seen this saber-finned giant explode through the surface of the sea, it is among the most magnificent.”

Carl Safina (1955) American biologist

[Conservation Biology, 7, 2, June 1993, Bluefin Tuna in the West Atlantic: Negligent Management and the Making of an Endangered Species, 229–234, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2386419]

Travel, Animals

Quotes about the sea page 17

Quotes about the sea
page 17