“So fine was the morning except for a streak of wind here and there that the sea and sky looked all one fabric, as if sails were stuck high up in the sky, or the clouds had dropped down into the sea.”

—  Virginia Woolf , book To the Lighthouse

Source: To the Lighthouse

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Virginia Woolf photo
Virginia Woolf 382
English writer 1882–1941

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“If all the sky was made of gold leaf, and the air was starred with fine silver, and treasure borne on all the winds, and every drop of sea-water was a florin, and it rained down, morning and evening, riches, goods, honours, jewels, money, till all the people were filled with it, and I stood there naked in such rain and wind, never a drop of it would fall on me.”

Eustache Deschamps (1346–1406) French poet

Se tout le ciel estoit de feuilles d'or,
Et li airs fust estellés d'argent fin,
Et tous les vens fussent pleins de tresor,
Et les gouttes fussent toutes florin
D'eaue de mer, et pleust soir et matin
Richesses, biens, honeurs, joiaux, argent,
Tant que rempli en fust toute la gent,
La terre aussi en fust mouillee toute,
Et fusse nu, – de tel pluie et tel vent
Ja sur mon cors n'en cherroit une goutte.
"Se tout le ciel estoit de feuilles d'or", line 1; text and translation from Brian Woledge (ed.) The Penguin Book of French Verse, 1: To the Fifteenth Century (Harmondsworth: Penguin, [1961] 1968) p. 236.

John Masefield photo

“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"

Simon Munnery photo

“Look at the sea and remember the past. Look at the sky and imagine the future. Look at the land and think of the present. And in the most profound place where land, sea and sky are one - there ye shall play volleyball.”

Simon Munnery (1967) British comedian

Attention Scum! (2001), How To Live (2005)

Tanith Lee photo

“There were clouds like sharks with open jaws in the sky that morning.”

Tanith Lee (1947–2015) British writer

Source: Short fiction, The Winter Players (1976), Chapter 6, “Blue Cave” (p. 170)

Victor Hugo photo

“There is one spectacle grander than the sea, that is the sky; there is one spectacle grander than the sky, that is the interior of the soul.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Aristotle Onassis photo

“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
Robert Seymour Bridges photo

“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)

A.E. Housman photo

“Stars, I have seen them fall,
But when they drop and die
No star is lost at all
From all the star-sown sky.
The toil of all that be
Helps not the primal fault;
It rains into the sea
And still the sea is salt.”

A.E. Housman book A Shropshire Lad

Source: A Shropshire Lad

Samuel Taylor Coleridge photo

“There is not wind enough to twirl
The one red leaf, the last of its clan,
That dances as often as dance it can,
Hanging so light, and hanging so high,
On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Christabel

Part I, l. 48
Christabel (written 1797–1801, published 1816)

Richard Henry Horne photo

“Far out at sea,—the sun was high,
While veer'd the wind and flapped the sail,
We saw a snow-white butterfly
Dancing before the fitful gale,
Far out at sea.”

Richard Henry Horne (1802–1884) English poet and critic

Genius; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 88.

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