
“I have seen old ships sail like swans asleep.”
The Old Ships (l. 1)
Letter to Le Ray de Chaumont (16 November 1778), as quoted in The Naval History of the United States (1890) by Willis John Abbot, p. 82
“I have seen old ships sail like swans asleep.”
The Old Ships (l. 1)
“I am a slow reader, and fast eater; I wish it were the other way around.”
Source: Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life
“I hate a Barnacle as no man ever did before, not even a Sailor in a slow-sailing ship.”
volume I, chapter IX: "Life at Down", page 385 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=405&itemID=F1452.1&viewtype=image; letter http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/entry-1489 to William Darwin Fox (24 October 1852)
quoted in At Home: A Short History of Private Life (2011) by Bill Bryson
The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (1887)
This saying appears to be due to John Augustus Shedd; it was quoted in "Grace Hopper : The Youthful Teacher of Us All" by Henry S. Tropp in Abacus Vol. 2, Issue 1 (Fall 1984) ISSN 0724-6722 . She did repeat this saying on multiple occasions, but she called it "a motto that has stuck with me" and did not claim coinage. Additional variations and citations may be found at Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/12/09/safe-harbor/
Misattributed
“Every ship is a romantic object, except that we sail in.”
1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), Experience
Thomas More's Account, in a letter to his daughter Margaret Roper, of his Second Interrogation
“One does not attain everything he wishes for.
Winds blow counter to what the ships desire.”
From the poem Bima At-Taʿallulu http://www.almotanabbi.com/poemPage.do?poemId=272
“Like ships, that sailed for sunny isles,
But never came to shore.”
The Devil's Progress (1849)