“There can be times at sea when a ship is tossed
by two different winds, one of which propels
it forward while the other one is crossed
or retrograde, and among the powerful swells
it turns and yaws as if the crew were lost.”

“Two eyes our souls possess:
While one is turned on time,
The other seeth things
Eternal and sublime”

“The little cares that fretted me,
I lost them yesterday
Among the fields above the sea,
Among the winds at play.”

“Laughter and tears are meant to turn the wheels of the same machinery of sensibility; one is wind-power, and the other water-power; that is all.”

“In the sea of grief, there were islands of grace, moments in time when one could remember what was left rather than all that had been lost.”

“Yesterday and tomorrow cross and mix on the skyline. The two are lost in a purple haze. One forgets, one waits.”

“The soldiers stumbled forward doggedly, cursing the bite of the wind while reminding one another that generals are seldom of sound mind and unbesmirched ancestry. They would not be generals if they were.”

“Only a seaman realises to what great extent an entire ship reflects the personality and ability of one individual, her Commanding Officer. To a landsman, this is not understandable—and sometimes it is even difficult for us to comprehend—but it is so! A ship at sea is a different world in herself, and in consideration of the protracted and distant operations of the fleet units, the Navy must place great power, responsibility and trust in the hands of those leaders chosen for command. In each ship there is one man who, in the hour of emergency or peril at sea, can turn to no other man. There is one who alone is ultimately responsible for the safe navigation, engineering performance, accurate gunfire and morale of the ship. He is the Commanding Officer. He is the ship. This is the most difficult and demanding assignment in the Navy. There is not an instant during his tour as Commanding Officer that he can escape the grasp of command responsibility. His privileges, in view of his obligations, are almost ludicrously small; nevertheless, this is the spur which has given the Navy its great leaders. It is a duty which richly deserves the highest, time-honoured title of the seafaring world—Captain.”

“Life is short,
and pleasures few,
and holed the ship,
and drowned the crew,
But O! But O!
How very blue
the sea is!”

“As a little skiff attached to a great ship, when the storm blows high, takes in her small share of the raging waters and tosses in the same south wind.”
Immensae veluti conexa carinae cumba minor, cum saevit hiems, pro parte furentis parva receptat aquas et eodem volvitur austro.