“Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea.”
April 10, 1778
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol III
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Samuel Johnson 362
English writer 1709–1784Related quotes

“For I have been a man, and that means to have been a fighter.”
West-östlicher Diwan, Buch des Paradies (1819)

“The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.”
Source: The Mirror of the Sea (1906), Ch. 35
Context: For all that has been said of the love that certain natures (on shore) have professed to feel for it, for all the celebrations it had been the object of in prose and song, the sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.

On the morality of the firebombing campaign http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/bomb/peopleevents/pandeAMEX61.html)

Interview with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (3 December 2018) https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-46434147
2010s

As quoted in General James Longstreet: The Confederacy's Most Controversial Soldier: A Biography https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0671709216 (1993), by Jeffry D. Wert, New York: Simon & Schuster, p. 283
Source: MARC her Words: An Interview with Henriette Avram, 1989, p.861

“I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.”
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915)
Source: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Other Poems