Quotes about the sea
page 21

“Webster is not concerned with humanity. He is the poet of bile and brainstorm, the sweet singer of apoplexy; ideally, one feels, he would have had all his characters drowned in a sea of cold sweat. His muse drew nourishment from Bedlam, and might, a few centuries later, have done the same from Belsen.”

John Webster (1578–1634) English dramatist

Kenneth Tynan, review of The Duchess of Malfi at the Aldwych Theatre (1960), from Tynan Left and Right (1967).

Feeling

“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...”

Evelyn Waugh book Black Mischief

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."
First lines
Black Mischief (1932)

Life, Wisdom, God, People

“During the Cretaceous Period many of the inland seas dried up, leaving the Plesiosaurs stranded without any fish. Just about that time Mother Nature scrapped the whole Age of Reptiles and called for a new deal. And you can see what she got.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

Footnote: Here we see the working of another Law of Nature: No water, no fish.
The Plesiosaur
How to Become Extinct (1941)

Age, Nature, Fish, Time

“No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.”

John Donne book Devotions upon Emergent Occasions

Modern version: No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Meditation 17. This was the source for the title of Ernest Hemingway's novel.
Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624)

Death, Bee, Parting, Self-confidence

“Because so many of our writers were born in ugly environments, in monstrous poverty and humilitation, they continue to assert that this is the natural environment, reality, and that beauty is artifice. Why should the natural state be ugliness? Natural to whom? We may be born in ugliness, but the natural consequences should be a thirst for its opposite. To mistake ugliness for reality is one of the frauds of the realistic school. A hunger for the unknown, and an aspiration towards beauty were inseparable from civilization. In America the word art was distorted to mean artificial.
We are born with the power to alter what we are given at birth.
When the Japanese paint flowers or the sea on a kimono they mean to establish a link with nature. But they select only what is beautiful in nature to maintain their love of life.
The creative personality never remains fixed on the first world it discovers. It never resigns itself to anything. That is the deepest meaning of rebellion, not the wearing of different clothes, haircuts, or the adopting of other cultures.”

Anaïs Nin book The Novel of the Future

The Novel of the Future (1969)

Love, Life, Hunger, World

“It was just a bowl of peasant's clay, red brown in color, thickly made and rough to the touch, not perfectly round, with a small indentation on one side where the potter had damaged the unfired clay. It was worth pennies, perhaps nothing. Yet it was the greatest treasure of Christendom. And he kissed it once, and then he drew back his strong archer's right arm, ran down to the sucking sea's edge, and threw it as far and as hard as he could. He hurled it away and it span for an instant above the gray waves, seemed to fly a heartbeat longer as if it were reluctant to let go of mankind, and then the bowl was gone.”

Bernard Cornwell The Grail Quest

The Grail Quest, Heretic (2003)

Color, Kiss, Strong, Flying

“It would cause nothing but madness, Thomas thought. Men would fight for it, lie for it, cheat for it, betray for it, and die for it. The Church would make money from it, it would cause nothing but evil, he thought, for it stirred horror in men's hearts. So he would do what Planchard had said he would do. 'Hurl it into the deepest sea,' he quoted the old Abbott, 'down among the monsters, and tell no one.'”

Bernard Cornwell The Grail Quest

The Grail Quest, Heretic (2003)

Men, Money, Lie, Making love

“Replicators are no longer peppered freely through the sea; they are packaged in huge colonies—individual bodies. And phenotypic consequences, instead of being evenly distributed throughout the world, have in many cases congealed into those same bodies. But the individual body, so familiar to us on our planet, did not have to exist. The only kind of entity that has to exist in order for life to arise, anywhere in the universe, is the immortal replicator.”

Richard Dawkins book The Selfish Gene

Source: The Selfish Gene (1976, 1989), Ch. 13. The Long Reach of the Gene

Life, World, Universe

“There is no middle way in this war. We do not doubt our ultimate victory any more than we doubt the justice of our cause.It is not conceivable that we should fail, for if we fail the lights of freedom go out over the whole world. They may glimmer for a little in the western hemisphere,but a Germany dominating half the world by sea and land will most certainly extinguish them in every quarter where they have hitherto shone upon mankind, so that even the traditions of freedom will pass out of remembrance. If we do our duty we shall not fail.”

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

War, World, Justice, Way

“One must say Yes to life, and embrace it wherever it is found — and it is found in terrible places. … For nothing is fixed, forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

From Nothing Personal, a collaboration with the photographer Richard Avedon (1964). Baldwin's text for the volume can be found " here https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1042&context=cibs".

Life, Children, Faith, Lovers

“If I needed you, would you come to me?
Would you come to me and ease my pain?
If you needed me, I would come to you
I'd swim the seas for to ease your pain
Well, in the night forlorn, oh, the morning's born
And the morning shines with the lights of love
And you will miss sunrise if you close your eyes
And that would break my heart in twoThe lady's with me now since I showed her how
To lay her lily hand in mine
Loop and Lil agree, she's a sight to see
A treasure for the poor to find”

Townes Van Zandt (1944–1997) singer-songwriter

If I Needed You (1972)

Love, Pain, Making love, Light

“And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth
This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Ash-Wednesday (1930)

Dreams, Birth, Solitude, Tree

“I grow old … I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.”

T.S. Eliot The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915)

Girl, Thinking, Water, Singing

“Physical evils are in nature inseparable from animal life, they commenced existence with it, and are its concomitants through life; so that the same nature which gives being to the one, gives birth to the other also; the one is not before or after the other, but they are coexistent together, and contemporaries; and as they began existence in a necessary dependence on each other, so they terminate together in death and dissolution. This is the original order to which animal nature is subjected, as applied to every species of it. The beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, the fishes of the sea, with reptiles, and all manner of beings, which are possessed with animal life; nor is pain, sickness, or mortality any part of God's Punishment for sin. On the other hand sensual happiness is no part of the reward of virtue: to reward moral actions with a glass of wine or a shoulder of mutton, would be as inadequate, as to measure a triangle with sound, for virtue and vice pertain to the mind, and their merits or demerits have their just effects on the conscience, as has been before evinced: but animal gratifications are common to the human race indiscriminately, and also, to the beasts of the field: and physical evils as promiscuously and universally extend to the whole, so "_That there is no knowing good or evil by all that is before us, for all is vanity_."”

Ethan Allen (1738–1789) American general

It was not among the number of possibles, that animal life should be exempted from mortality: omnipotence itself could not have made it capable of eternalization [sic] and indissolubility; for the self same nature which constitutes animal life, subjects it to decay and dissolution; so that the one cannot be without the other, any more than there could be a compact number of mountains without vallies [sic], or that I could exist and not exist at the same time, or that God should effect any other contradiction in nature...

Ch. III Section IV - Of Physical Evils
Reason: The Only Oracle Of Man (1784)

Life, Death, God, Pain

“...our progenitors, the kings of England, have before these times been lords of the English sea on every side...and it would very much grieve us if in this kind of defence our royal honour should be lost.”

Edward III of England (1312–1377) King of England

Letter to his admirals (18 August 1336), quoted in Ian Mortimer, The Perfect King: The Life of Edward III, Father of the English Nation (Vintage, 2008), p. 130

Time

“You wretches detestable on land and sea: you who seek equality with lords are unworthy to live. Give this message to your colleagues: rustics you were, and rustics you are still; you will remain in bondage, not as before, but incomparably harsher. For as long as we live we will strive to suppress you, and your misery will be an example in the eyes of posterity. However, we will spare your lives if you remain faithful and loyal. Choose now which course you want to follow.”

Richard II of England (1367–1400) King of England

Speech to the peasants at Waltham, Essex (22 June 1381) according to Thomas Walsingham, quoted in Nigel Saul, Richard II (Yale University Press, 1999), p. 74

Faith

“Surround me with your boundless love
Confound me with your boundless love
I was drowning in the sea,
Lost as I could be
When you found me
With your boundless love”

John Prine (1946–2020) American country singer/songwriter

Boundless Love (co-written with Dan Auerbach and Pat McLaughlin)
Song lyrics, The Tree of Forgiveness (2018)

Love, Making love

“[W]hen our country shall have got a good and cheap government, we can, with clear consciences, recommend the paring of their nails, and the making of them bow to that power which, freed from infernal boroughmongering, will again claim and enforce her dominion of the seas. No American that ever conversed with me upon this subject will deny, that I always said, that I should never die in peace without making them again bow to England; and that bow to her again they should, whenever we shook off the power of the hellish boroughmongers. ... ENGLAND is my country: I must share in all her glory and in all her disgrace; and when it is a question of her honour and well-being, I must cast aside all private recollections and feelings. ... I always said...I never would rest until I saw the Americans acknowledge, explicitly our right to dominion on the seas. I wish them all the happiness that men can enjoy in this world; but a nation may be very happy without being permitted to swagger about and be saucy to England.”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

Political Register (2 June 1832), p. 545
1830s

Men, Happiness, World, Making love

“I am no citizen of the world. It is quite enough for me to think about what is best for England, Ireland and Scotland. I do not like those whose philanthropy is so enlarged as to look, as Rousseau said, to Tartary for objects of affection and commiseration, while their own countrymen are starving, or existing on sea-weed and nettles. I do not approve of any efforts to urge our Government to interfere at all in the affairs even of Poland: it is too distant, too out of the way of our affairs, that we should take one single meal from a weaver or a ploughman for the sake of doing good to the Poles.”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

‘Belgium and Poland’, Political Register (20 August 1831), p. 496
1830s

World, Way, Thinking, Effort

“It was that I felt that I'd done as much as I could do there [in England]. I didn't know what direction I could go, apart from across the sea.”

Dusty Springfield (1939–1999) English singer and record producer

On why she relocated to the United States in the late 1960s
Old Grey Whistle Test interview (1978)

“The river of time flowed unmarked, towards the endless seas of timelike infinity.”

Stephen Baxter book Ring

Source: Ring (1994), Chapter 35 (p. 891; closing words)

Time

“The whites have driven us from the sea to the lakes. We can go no further... unless every tribe unanimously combines to give a check to the ambition and avarice of the whites they will soon conquer us apart and disunited and we will be driven from our native country and scattered as autumn leaves before the wind.”

Tecumseh (1768–1813) Native American leader of the Shawnee

Quoted in Seeking a Nation Within a Nation, CBC Canada https://www.cbc.ca/history/EPCONTENTSE1EP5CH12LE.html

Autumn, Country

“Sell a country! Why not sell the air, the clouds and the great sea, as well as the earth? Did not the Great Spirit make them all for the use of his children?”

Tecumseh (1768–1813) Native American leader of the Shawnee

Quoted in Seeking a Nation Within a Nation, CBC Canada https://www.cbc.ca/history/EPCONTENTSE1EP5CH12LE.html

Children, Making love, Country

“Proud over the rest, with splendid wealth arrayed,
As crown on, Europe's head
The Lusitania reign,
Where the land ends and seas begins.”

Luís de Camões (1524–1580) Portuguese poet

Epic poetry, Os Lusíadas (1572), Canto III
Original: (pt) Eis aqui, quase cume da cabeça
De Europa toda, o Reino Lusitano,
Onde a terra se acaba e o mar começa.

Stanza 20, lines 1–3 (tr. William Julius Mickle)

Wealth

“..at home [in Brussels, 1869] I was messing around all winter long with a painting; it was a coast, but painted so primitive. Then I said: you must see the sea in front of you, every day, you have to live with it, otherwise it doesn't work. Then we went to The Hague.”

Hendrik Willem Mesdag (1831–1915) painter from the Northern Netherlands

translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek

(original Dutch: citaat van Hendrik Willem Mesdag, in het Nederlands:) ..thuis [in Brussel, 1869] had ik een heelen winter aan een werkstuk zitten scharrelen; 't was een kust, maar zo naiëf geschilderd. Toen zei ik: je moet de zee voor je zien, elken dag, er mee leven, anders wordt het niets. En toen gingen we naar Den Haag.

Quote of Mesdag, as cited by J.D. in 'Een Zeerob', in De Nieuwste Courant, 9 March, 1901
after 1880

Home, Winter, Painting

“Dear Brother-in-Law - Sister. We are ailing again rather well through the winter, always busy and working. It is a pity that the opportunity for [making] new studies has not yet come, it is always a nice variation. Now it is every time again sea and pinks, etc. [subjects in his paintings].”

Hendrik Willem Mesdag (1831–1915) painter from the Northern Netherlands

For Paris I am very busy - To Vienna a painting will be send.. .A second large painting has gone to Brussels - A [xxxx?] will offer drawings of us [drawings of him and his wife] and , at this moment they are crossing the Great Water, with destination to New York where they will be exhibited - we hope with success - Two beautiful paintings has enriched our collection again, one of Dupre and one of Rousseau. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek) (original Dutch: citaat van Hendrik Willem Mesdag, in het Nederlands:) Waarde Zwager – Zuster. Wij sukkelen ook weder de winter goed door, altijd bezig en werkende. Jammer dat de gelegenheid tot nieuw studien [maken] nog niet is gekomen het is altijd een aardige afwisseling. Nu is het altijd zee en pinken enz. [de onderwerpen in zijn schilderijen] - Voor Parijs ben ik druk bezig - Naar Weenen gaat een schilderij.. .Naar Brussel is een tweede groote schilderij gegaan – Een [xxxx?] zal teekeninge van ons [van hem en vrouw Sientje] bieden, zijn op dit oogenblik op den wijden Oeveren met bestemming naar New York waar ze geexposeerd zullen worden – naar wij hopen met succes – Een paar prachtige schilderijen een van Dupre en een van nl:Théodore RousseauRousseau onze collectie weder verrijkt In a letter from The Hague, 15 Feb 1882 to Brother-in-law and Sister (Hindrik van Houten and Alida Cornelia Christina van Houten ten Bruggencate) from the original text in Dutch R.K.D. Archive, The Hague https://rkd.nl/explore/excerpts/707073 after 1880

Making love, Law, Business, Sister

“At the coast you can see the most beautiful sea. I also made my panorama there. I regard it as my most important work; because it gives such a huge impression of nature. But I don't like to start it all again; to paint sixteen hundred meters of canvas there..”

Hendrik Willem Mesdag (1831–1915) painter from the Northern Netherlands

translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek

(original Dutch: citaat van Hendrik Willem Mesdag, in het Nederlands:) Aan de kust zie je de mooiste zee. Daar heb ik ook mijn panorama gemaakt. Dat beschouw ik als mijn belangrijkste werk; omdat 't zoo'n groote impressie geeft van de natuur. Maar'k zou 't niet graag nog's weer beginnen; daar zestien honderd meter doek te schilderen..

Quote of Mesdag (after 1881), cited by Godfried Bomans?, in magazine De Volkskrant, 23 July, 1966
after 1880

Beauty, Nature, Painting

“We are as near to heaven by sea as by land!”

Humphrey Gilbert (1539–1583) English explorer, politician and soldier

Dying words as his frigate Squirrel sank in the Atlantic Ocean near the Azores, 5 August 1583, Quoted in Richard Hakluyt Third and Last Volume of the Voyages of the English Nation, 1600. Dictionary of Quotations, p. 353

“Then you must tell ’em dat love ain’t somethin’ lak uh grindstone dat’s de same thing everywhere and do de same thing tuh everything it touch. Love is lak de sea. It’s uh movin’ thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it’s different with every shore.”

Zora Neale Hurston book Their Eyes Were Watching God

Source: Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), Ch. 20

Love, Making love

“He is older than the seas,
Older than the plains and hills,
And older than the light that spills
From the sun's hot wheel on these.
He wakes the gale that tears your trees,
He sings to you from window sills.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

"The God Called Poetry"
Country Sentiment (1920)

Tear, Tree, Light, Singing

“Each day you hear the sand as it moves and whispers,
Come and sail on my golden sea,
Maybe one day you’ll be just like me,
And that’s free.”

Ronnie James Dio (1942–2010) American singer

"Egypt (The Chains Are On)" on The Last in Line (1984)
Lyrics

“[Within two years of the death of Muhammad bin Qasim ], the people of India rebelled, and threw off their yoke, and the country from Debalpur to the salt sea only remained under the dominions of the Khalifa.”

Muhammad bin Qasim (695–715) Umayyad general

Quotes from The History of India as told by its own Historians
Source: Tarikh-i-Maasumi. Elliot & Dowson I, 438. quoted in Misra, R. G. (2005). Indian resistance to early Muslim invaders up to 1206 A.D. p.24

Death, People, Country

“In this sea where rise up storms of 'me' and 'we',
some of the population find escaping not so easy.
No one's should be burdened by carrying another,
every wave is a bridge, to be crossing over...'me.'”

Abdul-Qādir Bedil (1644–1720) Persian writer,poet

Stanza
Source: Bedil: Selected Poems, p. 62

“That the stars are celestial bodies with no mind or soul. They neither know the future nor affect people. Their effect on people however can be through their physical characteristics, such as the effect of the sun’s heat and rays on the planets and the effect of the moon on the tides of seas.”

Ibn Hazm (994–1064) Arab theologian

Al-Fassl Fil Milal, vol 5, pp 35-39

People, Soul, Star, Sun

“Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land,Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.”

Matthew Arnold Dover Beach

St. 1
Dover Beach (1867)

Sadness, Drawing

“Tall windows show Infinity;
And, hard reality,
The candles weep and pry and dance
Like lives mocked at by Chance. The rooms are vast as Sleep within;
When once I ventured in,
Chill Silence, like a surging sea,
Slowly enveloped me.”

Edith Sitwell (1887–1964) British poet

"Clowns' Houses"
Clowns' Houses (1918)

Reality, Sleep, Silence, Chance

“We tend to forget that when we enter the sea, we’re entering a foreign environment. It’s not ours. We can’t breathe underwater. When we enter the sea, it’s a wilderness experience. In any wilderness experience, there are potential dangers to be involved in that environment. Luckily for us, the sea is a pretty benevolent place. Each year, millions of people enter the sea and come out unscratched and unscathed and oblivious to the notion that they’ve had a wilderness experience. But we all need to remember that, especially if we go in areas where large predators such as white shark live.”

George H. Burgess (1949) American biologist

Source: George Burgess on the Science of Shark Attacks https://www.outsideonline.com/1911871/george-burgess-science-shark-attacks (December 18, 2012)

People, Forgetting

“Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.”

John Lewis (civil rights leader) (1940) American politician and civil rights leader

Source: A tweet https://twitter.com/repjohnlewis/status/1011991303599607808 from June 2018 Source: Quoted in Get in good trouble, necessary trouble': Rep. John R. Lewis in his own words https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/07/18/rep-john-lewis-most-memorable-quotes-get-good-trouble/5464148002/ Joshua Bote, USA Today (18 July 2020)

Making love, Hope, Despair

“When day comes we ask ourselves where can we find light in this never-ending shade?
The loss we carry. A sea we must wade.
We’ve braved the belly of the beast.
We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace.
In the norms and notions of what "just is" isn’t always justice.
And yet, the dawn is ours before we knew it.
Somehow we do it.
Somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished.”

Amanda Gorman The Hill We Climb

The Hill We Climb (2020)

Peace, Justice, Light, Learning

“I try to think about ways to draw the public to the story of the planet, and seashells are something we’ve always wanted to listen to. It’s sort of irresistible to pick a shell up to the ear and listen to what it’s trying to tell us — and they are telling us a profound story about what we’re doing to the ocean. The tiniest shells are beginning to disintegrate in the acidifying sea. It really is a metaphor for something much bigger.”

Cynthia Barnett (1966) American journalist

Source: https://www.jou.ufl.edu/2019/01/30/cynthia-barnett-we-can-change-and-its-up-to-us-to-do-so/

Way, Thinking, Drawing

“Then there is the other secret. There isn't any symbolysm [sic]. The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish. The shark are all sharks no better and no worse. All the symbolism that people say is shit. What goes beyond is what you see beyond when you know.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Letter to Bernard Berenson (13 September 1952); published in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961 (1981) edited by Carlos Baker

People, Secret, Boy, Fish

“Wanderer, your footprints are
the path, and nothing else;
wanderer, there is no path,
the path is made by walking.
Walking makes the path,
and on glancing back
one sees the path
that will never trod again.
Wanderer, there is no path—
Just steles in the sea.”

Antonio Machado book Kampos di Kastilia

Caminante, son tus huellas
el camino, y nada más;
caminante, no hay camino,
se hace camino al andar.
Al andar se hace camino,
y al volver la vista atrás
se ve la senda que nunca
se ha de volver a pisar.
Caminante, no hay camino,
sino estelas en la mar.
"Proverbios y cantares XXIX" [Proverbs and Songs 29], Campos de Castilla (1912); trans. Betty Jean Craige in Selected Poems of Antonio Machado (Louisiana State University Press, 1979)

Making love

“There is always more growing to be done”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

“I was born in Europe and I've traveled all over the world. I can tell you that there is no place, no country, more compassionate more generous more accepting and more welcoming than the United States of America.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger (1947) actor, businessman and politician of Austrian-American heritage

“Such laughter, like sunshine on the deep sea, is very beautiful to me.”

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

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

Beauty, Laughter

“Comrades, I've voyaged long and far on sea and soul,
my eyes have seen disease, gods, ghosts, and men, and yet
in no land have I seen a more false, murderous siren
than that wind-headed, babbling, blind bitch-hound called Hope!”

Nikos Kazantzakis (1883–1957) Greek writer

Odysseus, Book X, line 892
The Odyssey : A Modern Sequel (1938)

Men, God, Disease, Hope

“The question what to believe is perhaps the most momentous that anyone can put to himself. Our beliefs are not to be classed among the luxuries, but among the necessaries of existence. They become particularly important in times of trouble. They are like the life-boats carried by ocean ships. As long as the sea is smooth and there is every appearance of a prosperous voyage, the passengers seldom take note of the boats or inquire into their sea-worthiness. But when the storm breaks and danger approaches, then the capacity of the boats and their soundness become matters of the first importance.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Section 9 : Ethical Outlook
Life and Destiny (1913)

Life, Question, Appearance, Relation ships

“When we saw the most beautiful fishes of the sea, the dolphin and bonito, in pursuit of the flying fish, and when these forsook their native element to seek for shelter in air, the application to human nature was obvious. What empire is not like a tumultuous ocean, where the great in all the magnificence and pomp of power, continually persecute and contrive the destruction of the defenceless?”

Georg Forster book A Voyage Round the World

Sometimes we saw this picture continued still farther, when the poor fugitives met with another set of enemies in the air, and became the prey of birds, by endeavouring to escape the jaws of fishes.
Book I, ch. II, The Passage from Madeira to the Cape Verd Islands, and from thence to the Cape of Good Hope.
A Voyage Round the World (1777)

Beauty, Nature, Fish, Flying

“When you are out on a voyage, the tranquillity does not depend upon the ship, but upon the sea... It is not a policy, it is a yawn.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

On the Conservative leader Bonar Law's election slogan, "Tranquillity"; speech in the Stoll Picture Theatre, Kingsway (4 November 1922), quoted in John Campbell, Lloyd George: The Goat in the Wilderness, 1922–1931 (1977), p. 34
Leader of the National Liberal Party

Dependency

“When I was a child, love to me was what the sea is to a fish: something you swim in while you are going about the important affairs of life.”

P. L. Travers (1899–1996) Australian-British novelist, actress and journalist

From "I Never Wrote for Children," by P. L. Travers, in the New York Times Magazine, July 2, 1978.

Love, Life, Fish

“I know a ‘swimming pool’ where these ‘young people who disturb’ can go and swim separately following their ‘own schedule’: the Mediterranean Sea.”

Sam Van Rooy (1985)

Vlaams Belang MP shocks and angers with “swimming pool tweet” https://www.brusselstimes.com/brussels-2/60104/vlaams-belang-mp-shocks-and-angers-with-swimming-pool-tweet/. referring to a press article according to which a swimming pool in Utrecht, introduced different schedules for youngsters and families, fearing the former would upset the latter.

People

“People who look down from some high peak on a vast sea below, probably feel what my mind has felt, looking out from the sublime words of the Lord as from a mountain-top at the inexhaustible depth of their meaning.”

Gregory of Nyssa (335–395) bishop of Nyssa

Homilies on the Beautitudes VI: 1, tr. S. Hall, in H. R. Drobner and A. Viciano (edd.), Gregory of Nyssa: Homilies on the Beatitudes: An English Version and Supporting Studies (Brill, Leiden, 2000).

People, Feeling, Mountain

“At sea your men will be as far inferior to Greeks as women are to men.”

Herodotus book Histories

By Artemisa, the best persian warrior in Salamina, a very courageous woman. A superbe irony!
Book 8, Ch. 68.
The Histories

Women, Men

“God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.”

Frank Borman (1928) NASA astronaut

And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you — all of you on the good Earth. Last lines of the Apollo 8 Genesis reading, and adding his own closing to the message from Apollo 8 crew, as they celebrated becoming the first humans to enter lunar orbit, Christmas Eve (24 December 1968) http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/apollo8_xmas.html

God, Water

“If I'm not working, I'll go on my boat and have a few drinks. Most of my friends are outside the movie business. It's too much to mix with other celebrities. When I go out I prefer no one talk about movies. I'd rather talk about waterskiing, the sea, beaches, seafood...”

Tony Leung (1962) Hong Kong actor

"I Told Kar-wai I Couldn't Move, Couldn't Breathe" in TIME Asia (11 October 2000) http://edition.cnn.com/ASIANOW/time/features/interviews/2000/10/11/int.tony_leung.html

Drink, Business

“We must free ourselves of the hope that the sea will ever rest. We must learn to sail in high winds.”

Aristotle Onassis (1906–1975) Greek shipping magnate

Hope, Learning, Hope

“If life is a mixture of drained rivers / which carry to the sea echoes of water, / we are nothing but shadows – / reflected lights of dead bodies without no possible outlet or shore.”

Menotti Lerro (1980) Italian poet

From The Poetry of Menotti Lerro, p. 37

Life, Light, Water, Dead

“Cathedral cities, market towns, ports forgotten by the sea, spas long out of fashion, all these can decay beautifully, and often their charm increases as the life ebbs out of them. Industrial towns, like steam-engines, are only even tolerable if they are in working order and puffing away.”

J.B. Priestley (1894–1984) English writer

Bk 2, Ch. 6. ii
The Good Companions (1929)

Life, Fashion

“Look up! the proof is round you written large;
Your Faith is in the balance wanting found;
Your shipless seas confess it; bridgeless streams;
Your wasted wealth of ore, and moor, and bay.
Beneath the Upas shade of Faith depraved
All things lie dead -- wealth, comfort, freedom, power.”

Aubrey Thomas de Vere (1814–1902) Irish poet and critic

"The Sisters; or, Weal in Woe: An Irish Tale" in The Sisters, Inisfail, and Other Poems (1861), pp. 3-42.

Lie, Faith, Freedom, Dead

“Thou whose deep ways are in the sea,
Whose footsteps are not known,
To-night a world that turned from Thee
Is waiting — at Thy Throne.The towering Babels that we raised
Where scoffing sophists brawl,
The little Antichrists we praised —
The night is on them all.”

Alfred Noyes (1880–1958) English poet

Dedication, later published as " A Prayer in Time of War http://www.poetseers.org/poets/alfred_noyes/a_prayer_in_time_of_war/" A Belgian Christmas Eve (1915)

World, Way, Waiting, Night

“The slave trade has another character; it is the very denial of every law, of all social order. Man-hunting constitutes a crime of high treason against humanity. It ought to be repressed wherever it can be reached, on land as well as by sea.”

Auguste, Baron Lambermont (1819–1905) Belgian politician

Source: New Africa; an essay on government civilization in new countries, and on the foundation, organization and administration of the Congo Free State, THE ORIENTAL SLAVE-TRADE, Page 132. https://archive.org/details/newafricaessayon00desciala/page/152/mode/2up Lambermont at the Berlin Conference.

Law

“In the military perspective, fighting is the last resort while before it there must be production on a large scale and with high enthusiasm and large-scale production on the sea.”

Zhang Zhaozhong (1952) Chinese admiral

"China boasts of strategy to “recover” islands occupied by Philippines" in China News https://chinanews.net.au/2013/05/28/china-boasts-of-strategy-to-recover-islands-occupied-by-philippines/ (28 May 2013)

Fight

“Take it from me, underwater deep sea diver extraordinaire, driving with my Mom on the freeway is far more dangerous.”

Tania Raymonde (1988) American actress

Source: Interview: Tania Raymonde, Star Of Deep Blue Sea 3 https://thedailyjaws.com/blog/2020/7/7/interview-tania-raymonde-star-of-deep-blue-sea-3 (July 27, 2020)

Moms

“There are people who seriously think sea rescue activists like me rescue Black lives because we hate white people. Some white people feel personally threatened by the fact that human rights apply to everyone equally. White priviledge needs to end if we want justice, ever.”

Carola Rackete (1988) German merchant navy captain

Source: Twitter https://twitter.com/CaroRackete/status/1276852825432166401 (27 June 2020)

Hate, People, Justice, Feeling

“In geophysical circles, the question is not so much why the sea is salty, but why it remains just as salty as it is, no more, no less.”

Shawna Vogel science writer

Naked Earth: the New Geophysics (1995)

Question

“Oh, rolling round the ocean,
From a far and foreign land,
May suit the common notion
That a sailor's life is grand.
But as for me, I'd sooner be
A roaring here at home
About the rolling, roaring life
Of them that sails the foam.
For the homeward-bounder's chorus,
Which he roars across the foam,
Is all about chucking a sailor's life,
And settling down at home.
Home, home, home,
That's the song of them that roam,
The song of the roaring, rolling sea
Is all about rolling home.”

Norman Lindsay book The Magic Pudding

The Salt Junk Sarah
The Magic Pudding (1918)

Life, Home

“I have lived my whole life on the stage and screen before you. I found purpose and meaning in your response. For an actor that is no greater loss than the loss of his audience. I can part the Red Sea, but I can't part with you, which is why I won't exclude you from this stage in my life.
For now, I'm not changing anything. I will insist on work when I can; the doctors will insist on rest when I must. If you see a little less spring in my step, if your name fails to leap to my lips, you will know why. And if I tell you a funny story for the second time, please laugh anyway.”

Charlton Heston (1923–2008) American actor

Winning the Cultural War (1999), Video farewell (2002)

Life, Spring, Change, Loss

“The stars are caught in our hair
The stars are on our fingers
A veil of diamond dust
Just reach up and touch it
The sky's above our heads
The sea's around our legs
In milky, silky water
We swim further and further...”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Aerial (2005), A Sky of Honey (Disc 2)

Star, Water

“Could be in a dream
Our clothes are on the beach
These prints of our feet
Lead right up to the sea
No one, no one is here
No one, no one is here
We stand in the Atlantic
We become panoramic...”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Source: Song lyrics, Aerial (2005), A Sky of Honey (Disc 2)

Dreams, Clothes

“If Great Britain lost her Empire and India and her share in world trade and her sea power, she would be like a vast whale stranded in one your Scottish bays, which swam in upon the tide and then was left to choke and rot upon the sands. We should be like a great shop emporium in a district from which prosperity has for ever departed. We least of all peoples and races can afford to fail. Failure to us does not mean merely that we shall not improve. It means that we shall be ruined and frozen out.”

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

Source: Rectorial address ("The present decline of Parliamentary government in Great Britain") to Edinburgh University (5 March 1931), quoted in The Times (6 March 1931), p. 19

People, World, Failure

“Are you a man? Then you should have an human heart. But have you indeed? What is your heart made of? Is there no such principle as Compassion there? Do you never feel another's pain? Have you no Sympathy? No sense of human woe? No pity for the miserable? When you saw the flowing eyes, the heaving breasts, or the bleeding sides and tortured limbs of your fellow-creatures, was you a stone, or a brute? Did you look upon them with the eyes of a tiger? When you squeezed the agonizing creatures down in the ship, or when you threw their poor mangled remains into the sea, had you no relenting? Did not one tear drop from your eye, one sigh escape from your breast? Do you feel no relenting now? If you do not, you must go on, till the measure of your iniquities is full. Then will the Great GOD deal with You, as you have dealt with them, and require all their blood at your hands.”

John Wesley (1703–1791) Christian theologian

Source: 1770s, Thoughts Upon Slavery (1774)

God, Pain, Feeling, Sense

“The heart has a resiliency. Strained to breaking, it can contract again. Even the waiting women, Iseult and Penelope, learned, as they sat sorrowing and watching, to sing to the swing of the sea.”

Fannie Hurst (1889–1968) novelist

Gaslight Sonatas (1918)

Women, Learning, Singing, Waiting

“The clouds, never expect it,
When it rains
But the sea changes color,
But the sea does not change,
, And so with the slow graceful
Flow of age, I went forth with an,
Age old desire to please,
On the edge of seventeen.”

Stevie Nicks (1948) American singer and songwriter, member of Fleetwood Mac

Edge of Seventeen
Bella Donna (album) (1981)

Age, Color, Change

“There's perfect harmony
In the rising and the falling of the sea.
And as we sail along,
I never fail to be astounded by
The things we'll do for promises
And a song.”

Ronnie James Dio (1942–2010) American singer

"All the Fools Sailed Away" on Dream Evil (1987)
Lyrics

Perfection

“It’s on all of us to stand up, to speak out when you see someone being abused. This is an organization that’s defined American — excuse me, defeated American enemies on land, sea, and air, and been defined by the way we treat others.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

2021, February 2021, Remarks by President Biden to Department of Defense Personnel, February 10, 2021

Way

“Let me tell you, if anyone in the past has spoken
ill of women, or speaks so now or will speak so
in the future, I’ll sum it up for him: Neither sea
nor land has ever produced a more monstrous
creature than woman.”

Euripidés book Hecuba

Hecuba, lines 1178-1182 ( tr. Jay Kardan and Laura-Gray Street (2010) http://didaskalia.net/issues/8/32/) Variant ( tr. E. P. Coleridge (1938) http://data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0006.tlg007.perseus-eng1:1145-1186): [I]f any of the men of former times have spoken ill of women, if any does so now, or shall do so hereafter, I will say all this in one short sentence; for neither land or sea produces such a race, as whoever has had to do with them knows.

Women, Past, Future

“Be as happy as the sea of Monaco, as the spoil tips of Donbas!”

Viktor Yanukovych (1950) Ukrainian politician who was the President of Ukraine

Source: [2011-09-14, Янукович: я був у Монте-Карло – Донбас круче! - Укрaїнa - ТСН.ua, https://web.archive.org/web/20110914001604/http://tsn.ua/ukrayina/yanukovich-ya-buv-u-monte-karlo-donbas-kruche.html, 2022-06-12, web.archive.org]

Happiness