Quotes about sail
page 2

“THE Moon is sailing o'er the sky,
But lonely all, as if she pined
For somewhat of companionship,
And felt it was in vain she shined:
Earth is her mirror, and the stars
Are as the court around her throne;
She is a beauty and a queen;
But what is this? she is alone.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Moon from The London Literary Gazette (25th March 1826)
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Beauty, Star

“And we're sailing, we're sailing,
Way up to Caledonia,
We're from Denmark.”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

Listen to the Lion
Song lyrics, Saint Dominic's Preview (1972)

Way

“As the wind and quarter-sea had mounted the Indomitable, big though she was, had seemed to bound from trough to trough like the lion she followed, sail and spindrift pouring from the bulging canvas like tropical rain.”

Douglas Reeman (1924–2017) British author

For My Country's Freedom, Cap 6 "Cross of St George"

Sea

“I wanted to break the record, of course, and become the youngest person to sail around the world solo and unassisted.”

Abby Sunderland (1993) Camera Assistant, Inspirational Speaker and Sailor

Source: Unsinkable: A Young Woman's Courageous Battle on the High Seas (2011), p. 27

World, Personality

“I have found a boat, small with two sails, that would make me happy. Unfortunately, I need one hundred francs.... and I haven't got it! If you want, I could give you two canvases which you could sell, just to make you some many and you could give me the hundred francs... Kahnweiler [Paris' art-dealer] is the only one who gives me money, and just what we need to live on.”

André Derain (1880–1954) French painter and engraver

Quote from Derain's letter, 23 August 1909 to Maurice de Vlaminck, in Lettres à Vlaminck, p. 205; as cited and translated in 'Report: André Derain's 'Trees by a Lake', by F. Whitlum-Cooper and Cleo Nisse http://courtauld.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Report-Derain-by-F-Whitlum-Cooper-and-Cleo-Nisse.compressed.pdf, p. 10 - note 8

Money, Art, Happiness

“The first Christian who can write decent Latin is Minucius Felix, whose Octavius, written in the first half (possibly the first quarter) of the Third Century must have done much to make Christianity respectable. He concentrates on ridiculing pagan myths that no educated man believed anyway and on denying that Christians (he means his kind, of course!) practice incest (a favorite recreation of many sects that had been saved by Christ from the tyranny of human laws) or cut the throats of children to obtain blood for Holy Communion (as some groups undoubtedly did). He argues for a monotheism that is indistinguishable from the Stoic except that the One God is identified as the Christian deity, from whose worship the sinful Jews are apostates, and insists that Christians have nothing to do with the Jews, whom God is going to punish. What is interesting is that Minucius has nothing to say about any specifically Christian doctrine, and that the names of Jesus or Christ do not appear in his work. There is just one allusion: the pagans say that Christianity was founded by a felon (unnamed) who was crucified. That, says Minucius, is absurd: no criminal ever deserved, nor did a man of this world have the power, to be believed to be a god (erratis, qui putatis deum credi aut meruisse noxium aut potuisse terrenum). That ambiguous reference is all that he has to say about it; he turns at once to condemning the Egyptians for worshipping a mortal man, and then he argues that the sign of the cross represents (a) the mast and yard of a ship under sail, and (b) the position of man who is worshipping God properly, i. e. standing with outstretched arms. If Minucius is not merely trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the gullible pagans, it certainly sounds as though this Christian were denying the divinity of Christ, either regarding him, as did many of the early Christians, as man who was inspired but was not to be identified with God, or claiming, as did a number of later sects, that what appeared on earth and was crucified was merely a ghost, an insubstantial apparition sent by Christ, who himself prudently stayed in his heaven above the clouds and laughed at the fools who thought they could kill a phantom. Of course, our holy men are quite sure that he was "orthodox."”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

The Jewish Strategy, Chapter 12 "Christianity"
1990s, The Jewish Strategy (2001)

Men, God, Children, World

“You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then. You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since, — on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with. The stones of which the strongest London buildings are made are not more real, or more impossible to be displaced by your hands, than your presence and influence have been to me, there and everywhere, and will be. Estella, to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but remain part of my character, part of the little good in me, part of the evil. But, in this separation, I associate you only with the good; and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you must have done me far more good than harm, let me feel now what sharp distress I may. O God bless you, God forgive you!”

Charles Dickens book Great Expectations

Source: Great Expectations (1860-1861), Ch. 44

Life, God, Feeling, Boy

“If thou art sailing upon the sea of God’s Names, which are reflected in all things, know thou that He is exalted and sanctified from being known through His creatures, or being described by His servants. Everything thou beholdest hath been called into being through the operation of His Will. How can such a created thing, therefore, be indicative of His essential oneness? God’s existence in itself testifieth to His Own oneness, while every created thing, by its very nature, beareth evidence that it hath been fashioned by God. Such is the proof of consummate wisdom in the estimation of those who sail the ocean of divine Truth.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

Dalá’Il-I-Sab‘ih

Wisdom, God, Truth, Art

“Would scientific distribution send the alien where he is most needed? On the surface, such an expediency seems a way cut of our dilemma. The land is broad, and population is unevenly distributed. But once a person is here— beyond the bars of Ellis Island, or any other port of entry—he has a right, under our law, to go whither he phases. To limit him suggests a return to medievalism, to vassalage. It aims a blow at personal liberty and challenges opposition. What the economist and sociologist call the 'law of status' is usually applied to the weak and incapable—not to the fit. The man who would lift himself to a higher goal desires freedom of movement, freedom of choice. Our Constitution guarantees this to him; it offers him opportunities. What opportunities he takes advantage of depends on what he is. It might be wise to examine closely our immigration agencies abroad, and test the alien before he sails, suggesting a locality which needs him, and where he will take root to the best advantage.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Whose Country Is This? (1921)

Law, Way, Freedom, Dependency

“Go now, go, but forget not the land that first folded you to its peaceful bosom; and from Colchis' conquered shores bring back hither thy sails, I pray thee, by this Jason whom thou leavest in my womb.”
I, memor i terrae, quae vos amplexa quieto prima sinu, refer et domitis a Colchidos oris vela per hunc utero quem linquis Iasona nostro.

Gaius Valerius Flaccus book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica, Book II, Lines 422–424

Peace, Forgetting

“It was as we were sailing out onto the wide chinchilla sea that I noticed how every chinchilla looked exactly like Marlboro, the chinchilla I had owned as a ten-year-old and which I had put inside a popcorn machine to see what would happen. Then the boat ran aground on the biggest chinchilla ever.”

Ben Croshaw (1983) English video game journalist

Source: Fullyramblomatic Novels, Fog Juice, Chapter Two

Sea

“We live well in the houses—well enough. But we are ruled utterly by fear. There was a time we sailed in ships between the stars, and now we dare not go a hundred miles from home. We keep a little knowledge, and do nothing with it. But once we used that knowledge to weave the pattern of life like a tapestry across night and chaos. We enlarged the chances of life. We did man’s work.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, City of Illusions (1967), Chapter 1

Life, Fear, Home, Star

“Full of great changes
My three and fifty years have been.
I commented on the holy writ - a heavy sin
That echoes to the skies.
Now I will sail on the lake of lotus blooms
And break into the skies within the water.”

Tetsugen Doko (1630–1682) Japanese Zen Master

Japanese Death Poems. Compiled by Yoel Hoffmann. ISBN 978-0-8048-3179-6)

Water, Change

“There was a time indeed when it was not so, when the bold mariner, Roger Williams, sailed beyond the Boston Light of two centuries ago, and asked of the wilds of the Seekonk and the Mawshawsuc, 'What cheer? What cheer?' And the friendly solitudes answered, 'A truer liberty than you left behind'. And if Boston Light cheers the world to-day it is because the spirit of Roger Williams feeds the flame.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

World, Solitude, Light, Time

“In political activity, then, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea; there is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place nor appointed destination. The enterprise is to keep afloat on an even keel; the sea is both friend and enemy; and the seamanship consists in using the resources of a traditional manner of behaviour in order to make a friend of every hostile occasion.”

Michael Oakeshott (1901–1990) British philosopher

Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (1962)

Men, Hostility, Sea

“They sailed away for a year and a day
To the land where the bong-tree grows.”

Edward Lear The Owl and the Pussycat

St. 2.
The Owl and the Pussycat (1871)

Tree

“…magisteeerial…the corner kick sails in…and Ramos leaps…like a fresh salmon from a summer stream…it's an exquisite header…with power and accuracy measured down to a pixel!”

Ray Hudson (1955) English footballer

[Mandis, Steven G., The Real Madrid Way: How Values Created the Most Successful Sports Team on the Planet, 2016, BenBella Books, https://books.google.fi/books/about/The_Real_Madrid_Way.html?id=IEbQDAAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y, 978-1-942952-54-1]
After Sergio Ramos' 93rd-minute header, which cancelled out Diego Godín's first-half goal.
2014 UEFA Champions League Final

Summer

“Arms and the Heroes, who from Lisbon's shore,
Through Seas where sail was never spread before,
Beyond where Ceylon lifts her spicy breast,
And waves her woods above the watery waste,
With prowess more than human forced their way
To the fair kingdoms of the rising day:
What wars they waged, what seas, what dangers passed,
What glorious empire crowned their toils at last!”

Luís de Camões (1524–1580) Portuguese poet

As armas e os Barões assinalados
Que da Ocidental praia Lusitana
Por mares nunca de antes navegados
Passaram ainda além da Taprobana,
Em perigos e guerras esforçados
Mais do que prometia a força humana,
E entre gente remota edificaram
Novo Reino, que tanto sublimaram.
Stanza 1 (as translated by William Julius Mickle, 1776)
Epic poetry, Os Lusíadas (1572), Canto I

War, Way, Sea

“There was this book I read and loved,
The story of a ship
Who sailed around the world and found
That nothing else exists
Beyond its own two sails
And wooden shell
And what is held within.
All else is sure to pass.
We clutch and grasp
And debate what's truly permanent.”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

Oh, You Are the Roots That Sleep Beneath My Feet and Hold the Earth in Place
Don't Be Frightened of Turning the Page (2001)

Love, Books, World, Reading

“Thus I steer my bark, and sail
On even keel, with gentle gale.”

Matthew Green (1696–1737) British writer

The Spleen (1737)

“Much of what we do as adults is based on this imitative absorption during our childhood years. Frequently we imagine that we are behaving in a particular way because such behaviour accords with some abstract, lofty code of moral principles, when in reality all we are doing is obeying a deeply ingrained and long 'forgotten' set of purely imitative impressions (along with out carefully concealed instinctive urges) that makes it so hard for societies to change their customs and their 'beliefs'. Even when faced with exciting, brilliantly rational new ideas, based on the application of pure, objective intelligence, the community will still cling to its old home-based habits and prejudices. This is the cross we have to bear if we are going to sail through our vital juvenile 'blotting-paper' phase of rapidly mopping up the accumulated experiences of previous generations. We are forced to take the biased opinions along with the valuable facts.”

Desmond Morris book The Naked Ape

(2010), p. 86
The Naked Ape (1967)

Way, Home, Imagination, Intelligence

“As the English sailed forward, they looked towards Sluys and saw such a huge number of ships that their masts resembled a forest.”

Jean Froissart (1337–1405) French writer

Li rois d'Engleterre et li sien, qui s'en venoient tout singlant, regardent et voient devers l'Escluse si grant quantité de vaissiaus que des mas ce sambloient droitement uns bos.
Book 1, p. 62.
Chroniques (1369–1400)

“Handsome, strong, gay … She felt again the thro and lilt of her blood. She had loved Kameni in that moment. She loved him now. Kameni could take the place that Khay had held in her life. She thought: "We shall be happy together - yes, we shall be happy. We shall live together and take pleasure in each other and we shall have strong, handsome children. There will be busy days full of work … and days of pleasure when we sail on the River…Life will be again as I knew it with Khay…What could I ask more than that? What do I want more than that?"”

Agatha Christie book Death Comes as the End

Death Comes as the End (1945)

Love, Life, Children, Pleasure

“When rowan leaves are dank and rusting
And rowan berries red as blood,
When in my palm the hangman's thrusting
The final nail with bony thud,
When, over the foul flooding river,
Upon the wet grey height, I toss
Before my land's grim looks, and shiver
As I swing here upon the cross,
Then, through the blood and weeping, stretches
My dying sight to space remote;
I see upon the river’s reaches
Christ sailing to me in a boat.”

Alexander Blok (1880–1921) poet

"Autumn Love" (1907); translation from C. M. Bowra (ed.) A Book of Russian Verse (London: Macmillan, 1943) p. 99.

Christ

“I trust my readers will join me in grandly ignoring the complaints of sour-faced and grumpish scholars that "no such person" ever existed and that his Boke of Voiages and Travailes is a hoax and a forgery. What do they know, the old frumps, who have never dared emerge from their dusty libraries to tread the heaving quarterdeck and raise sail for Golden Ind, and Far Cathay, and the Islands of Prester John?”

John Mandeville (1300–1372) writer

Lin Carter Dragons, Elves, and Heroes (1969; New York: Ballantine, 1971) p. 127.
Criticism

Personality

“Stamping around, waiting, I cursed England aloud, hands dug deep into pockets, dancing to the wind that knocked in vain at the Sunday shops. Cigarette-packets, football fixtures, bus-tickets sailed by in dust-ghosts of Saturday. A woman with a puce face and a blancmange-coloured prayer-book was waiting also for The Priest and Pig, and she looked puce disapproval at me. Twenty minutes late, the bus yawned in from town, near-empty, and it swallowed us in a gape of Sunday ennui. So we sundayed along, rattling and creaking in Sunday hollowness, I upstairs, tearing my elevenpenny ticket while I read the prospectus of Winter Commercial Classes stuck on the window.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Right to an Answer (1960)

Books, Tear, Winter, Waiting

“The man who sailed around his soul
From East to West, from pole to pole
With ego as his drunken captain
Greed, the mutineer, had trapped all reason in the hold”

Andy Partridge (1953) British musician

"The Man Who Sailed Around His Soul".
Skylarking (1986)

Soul

“It is very easy to sail along with the majority -- easy to sail the way the boats are going -- easy to float with the stream; but when you come to swim against the tide, with the men on the shore throwing rocks at you, you will get a good deal of exercise in this world.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)

Men, World, Way, Exercises

“Seventy sail of transports and ships fell down to Red Hook. They were bound for Rhode Island, and had on board about three thousand troops. They also inform, that after the Sunday action an officer of Distinction was brought into the city, badly wounded.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (31 October 1776)

“After more than five years of the bitterest war in human experience, the last great stronghold of force surrendering to the demands of America and her allies agreed to cast aside the sword and live under the law. America decided that the path of the Mayflower should not be closed. She decided to sail the seas. She decided to sail not under an Edict of Potsdam, cramped in narrow lands, seeking safety in unarmed merchant men painted in fantastic hues as the badge of an infinite servitude; but she decided to sail under the ancient Declaration of Independence, choosing her own course, maintaining security by the guns of her ships of the LINE, flying at the mast the stars and stripes forever, the emblem of a militant liberty.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, America and the War (1920)

Men, War, Law, Star

“So, when my Days of Impotence approach,
And I’m by Pox and Wine’s unlucky chance
Driv'n from the pleasing Billows of debauch
On the dull Shore of lazy Temperance;My Pains at least some Respite shall afford
While I behold the Battles you maintain
When Fleets of Glasses sail about the Board,
From whose Broad-sides Volleys of Wit shall rain.”

John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester (1647–1680) English poet, and peer of the realm

The Maim'd Debauchee, ll. 13–20.
Other

Pain, Wine, Chance

“We are already facing growing catastrophes due to climate change. It is too late to avoid soaring temperatures, scarce water, and extreme weather. That ship has in many ways already sailed. The earth is going to be much less hospitable to human beings in the future.”

John Bellamy Foster (1953) Sociology professor and Marxist writer

Interview with Left Voice (2017)

Way, Water, Change, Future

“And what this could mean, as illustrated by what happened in 1854, the first real test of the Fugitive Slave Act? There was a slave named Anthony Burns in Virginia who stowed away on board a coastal vessel that then sailed to Boston. And Anthony Burns, who was apparently quite literate but not very smart, wrote a letter to his brother back in Virginia telling him where he was. Well, before Anthony Burns was returned to the State of Virginia, the President, Franklin Pierce, had sent an artillery regiment of marines to Boston. He had federalized the National Guard of Boston. He had 3,000 soldiers surrounding them, making sure that nobody could break the jail and let Anthony Burns out. This was an example of the way in which the federal police power would be used to make sure that slaves were returned to their masters or that slaves couldn’t escape from their masters. So this is the real issue.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), The Right of Secession Is Not the Right of Revolution

Way

“Noah said "Nay; I'll make thee an offer,
The same as I did t'other day.
A penny a foot and a free ride.
Now, come on, lad, what does tha say?"

"Three ha'pence a foot," came the answer.
So Noah 'is sail 'ad to hoist,
And sailed off again in a dudgeon,
While Sam stood determined, but moist.”

Marriott Edgar (1880–1951) British poet

"Three Ha'pence a Foot", line 61.
Albert, 'Arold and Others (1938)

“…the American's upper yards and punctured sails rose above the fog of gunfire like a cliff.”

Douglas Reeman (1924–2017) British author

For My Country's Freedom, Cap 11 "Like Father, Like Son"

“Build me a tomb for when I die, build it 50,000 feet into the sky… Build me a boat I want to discover America, build me a boat to take me to the edge of the seven seas, build me a boat and you can sail along with me, we’ll spread our money, power, religion and disease. …Who are they to say that we own nothing and our lives have gone astray?”

Dawud Wharnsby (1972) Canadian musician

"Wood and Nails"
Blue Walls and The Big Sky (1995)

Money, Disease, Religion, Sea

“Instead of a wild, hatless little savage jumping into the house, and rushing to squeeze us all breathless, there lighted from a handsome black pony a very dignified person with brown ringlets falling from the cover of a feathered beaver, and a long cloth habit which she was obliged to hold up with both hands that she might sail in.”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Nelly Dean on Catherine Earnshaw (Ch. VII).
Wuthering Heights (1847)

Light, Housing, Personality, Clothes

“We finally saw the sea, the horizonless sea – how odd for a mountaindweller. We saw the beautiful boats that sail on it. It is too inviting, one feels carried away, one would leave to see the whole world.”

Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) French painter

Quote from Courbet's letter to his parents (1841); as quoted in Image of the Sea: Oceanic Consciousness in the Romantic Century, Howard F. Isham, publisher: Peter Lang, 2004, Chapter 'Waterworlds', p. 307
reporting his experiences of a boat-trip with a friend over the Seine to the port of Le Havre; he made also a sketchbook of this trip in the Summer of 1841
1840s - 1850s

World, Beauty, Feeling, Sea

“They sniffed, poor things, for their green fields,
They cried so loud I could not sleep:
For fifty thousand shillings down
I would not sail again with sheep.”

William Henry Davies (1871–1940) British poet

Sheep.

Sleep

“She held the car grimly to the road as it negotiated the bends with considerable difficulty and the straight sections with only slightly less. The car had landed her in court on one occasion when one of its front wheels had sailed off on a little expedition of its own and nearly caused an accident. The police witness in court had referred to her beloved Citroën as "the alleged car" and the name had subsequently stuck. She was particularly fond of the alleged car for many reasons. If one of its doors, for instance, fell off she could put it back on herself, which is more than you could say for a BMW.”

Douglas Adams The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Source: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), Ch. 12

Cars

“There are many marvellous stories told of Pherecydes. For it is said that he was walking along the seashore at Samos, and that seeing a ship sailing by with a fair wind, he said that it would soon sink; and presently it sank before his eyes. At another time he was drinking some water which had been drawn up out of a well, and he foretold that within three days there would be an earthquake; and there was one.”

Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers

Pherecydes, 2.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 2: Socrates, his predecessors and followers

Drink, Water, Time

“[Judy, 8, is watching TV] He tells Judy, "Better pack it in, sweetie. Another big day tomorrow: we're going to go to the beach and sailing." But his voice comes out listless, and perhaps that is the saddest loss time brings, the lessening of excitement about anything.”

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

Loss, Time

“Have you ever fall'n into one of those Cometary Dazes, with the way the Object grows brighter and brighter each night? These Apparitions in the Sky, we never observe them but in Motion, — gone in seconds, and if they return, we do not see them. Once safely a part of the Night Sky, they may hang there at their Pleasure, performing whatever their Work corresponds to shifting jibs and stay-sails, keeping perfectly upon Station, mimicking any faint, unnam'd Star you please. Do they watch us? Are they visits from the past, from an Age of Faith, when Miracles still literally happen'd?”

Thomas Pynchon Mason & Dixon

Source: Mason & Dixon (1997), Chapter 74

Pleasure, Age, Faith, Way

“No wonder the lookout was amazed. There were deozens of them, some moored in pairs, others, possibly gun-brigs or bombs, anchored separately, a veritable armada of small ships […. ] and there they were, like a phalanx of Roman soldiers on the march, six lines of small vessels under sail. In the bright glare even the pendants and ensigns looked stiff, like lances.”

Douglas Reeman (1924–2017) British author

A Tradition of Victory, Cap 7 "The Secret"

“There she was, Beer's Unity, with almost every sail set and filled so that she appeared to be leaning forward into the surging spray beneath her beakhead. The huge broad-pendant straight out like painted metal, a picture of naval strength at its best.”

Douglas Reeman (1924–2017) British author

For My Country's Freedom, Cap 17 "And For What?"

Beer, Appearance, Painting

“The teacher offers guidance here and there, but the primary factor, the driving force, in your relationship and work together is the student's own commitment and desire to learn. Teaching is like sailing: The wind and the sails give the boat its motion. Your role (as a teacher) is to steer and guide.”

Yehudi Menuhin (1916–1999) American violinist and conductor

Violinist Yehudi Menuhin

Learning, Teachers

“Like ships, that sailed for sunny isles,
But never came to shore.”

Thomas Kibble Hervey (1799–1859) British poet and critic

The Devil's Progress (1849)

“At two o'clock in the morning the land was discovered, at two leagues' distance; they took in sail and remained under the square-sail lying to till day, which was Friday, when they found themselves near a small island, one of the Lucayos, called in the Indian language Guanahani. Presently they descried people, naked, and the Admiral landed in the boat, which was armed, along with Martin Alonzo Pinzon, and Vincent Yanez his brother, captain of the Nina. The Admiral bore the royal standard, and the two captains each a banner of the Green Cross, which all the ships had carried; this contained the initials of the names of the King and Queen each side of the cross, and a crown over each letter Arrived on shore, they saw trees very green many streams of water, and diverse sorts of fruits.”

Cristoforo Colombo (1451–1506) Explorer, navigator, and colonizer

Variant translation: At two hours after midnight appeared the land, at a distance of two leagues. They handed all sails and set the treo, which is the mainsail without bonnets, and lay-to waiting for daylight Friday, when they arrived at an island of the Bahamas that was called in the Indians' tongue Guanahani.
As translated in Journals and Other Documents on the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (1963) by Samuel Eliot Morison, p. 64
Journal of the First Voyage

People, Lying, Tree, Water

“Stately as a galleon, I sail across the floor,
Doing the military two-step, as in the days of yore.”

Joyce Grenfell (1910–1979) British comedian, singer, actress

Stately as a Galleon (1978), " Stately as a Galleon http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1241.html"

“The end result of our current path is the extinction of Homo sapiens. It is imperative that we cherish and protect wild places and the creatures they harbour. To harm them is to harm ourselves. All of us are sailing through space together on the same fragile, leaky ark. We are dependent on our shipmates for far more than their meat and hides, their horns and scales. Both our continued existence, and the wellbeing of our souls, hinge on the complex matrix of life around us.
We must affirm that the wilderness is not for sale. Its creatures are not commodities, and must never be viewed as mere ‘natural resources’. Even a single pangolin scale should be treasured. Each one is, in fact, priceless.”

Justin D. Fox (1967) South African author, photojournalist, lecturer and editor

The Impossible Five (2015)

Life, Soul, Nature, Dependency

“In my last I communicated to your Excellency the departure of the Count D Estaing with his fleet, for Boston. This disagreeable event has, as I apprehend, ruined all our operations. It struck such a panic among the militia and volunteers, that they began to desert by shoals. The fleet no sooner set sail, than they began to be alarmed for their safety. This mis fortune damped the hopes of our army, and gave new spirits to that of the enemy.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (August 1778)

Hope, Communication, Departure

“Moons waxed and waned, the lilacs bloomed and died,
In the broad river ebbed and flowed the tide,
Ships went to sea, and ships came home from sea,
And the slow years sailed by and ceased to be.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

Lady Wentworth.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Home, Sea

“To me [Sydney Opera House] looks like a portable typewriter full of oyster shells, and to the contention that it echoes the sails of yachts on the harbour I can only point out that the yachts on the harbour don't waste any time echoing opera houses.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'Postcard from Sydney'
Essays and reviews, Flying Visits (1984)

Time, Housing

“My experience thus far had been to win matches and not lose them. I remember that in 1932, after our return from the Olympic tour, we beat Delhi by 12 goals to nil. I never recognised Delhi as a big hockey playing center, but on this day they were right on top of us and completely outplayed us. The news of this defeat created adverse opinions about us, and while touring other centers before we finally sailed from Mumbai. This particular defeat kept worrying me. For the first time I was captaining the Olympic team; will India lose the title under my charge?”

Dhyan Chand (1905–1979) Indian field hockey player

In the game of January-February 1936 before sailing for the Berlin Olympics in page =59.
Quote, Olympics - The India Story

Time, Hockey

“After seven years of marriage,
He wanted out.
Now after seven months of freedom,
It's clear that there's no doubt.She's gonna make it,
And he never will.
He's at the foot of the mountain,
And she's over that hill.
He's sinkin' at sea,
And her sails are filled.
She's gonna make it,
And he never will.”

Garth Brooks (1962) American country music artist

She's Gonna Make It, written by Kent Blazy, Kim Williams, and G. Brooks.
Song lyrics, Sevens (1997)

Marriage, Mountain, Freedom, Sea

“For what avail the plough or sail,
Or land or life, if freedom fail?”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Boston
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Life, Freedom

“I leaned right over to kiss your stoney book
A little jealous of the ships with whom you flirt
A billion lovers with their cameras
Snap to look and in my fantasy
I sail beneath your skirt”

Andy Partridge (1953) British musician

"Statue of Liberty".
White Music (1978)

Books, Lovers, Kiss

“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.

Sun, Dance, Sea

“Up the River of Death
Sailed the Great Admiral!”

Henry Howard Brownell (1820–1872) American writer and historian

The River Fight (published 1864).

Death

“Sweet Memory! wafted by thy gentle gale,
Oft up the stream of Time I turn my sail.”

Samuel Rogers (1763–1855) British poet

II, l. 1-2.
The Pleasures of Memory (1792)

Memory, Time

“"Whither hast thou fled, O wind?" said the king of Morven. "Dost thou rustle in the chambers of the south? pursuest thou the shower in other lands? Why dost thou not come to my sails? to the blue face of my seas?"”

James Macpherson (1736–1796) Scottish writer, poet, translator, and politician

"Lathmon"
The Poems of Ossian

Sea

“He must hoyst Sail, and fly.”

John Ogilby (1600–1676) Scottish academic

The Works of Publius Virgilius Maro (2nd ed. 1654), Virgil's Æneis

Flying

“When raging love with extreme pain
Most cruelly distrains my heart;
When that my tears, as floods of rain,
Bear witness of my woful smart;
When sighs have wasted so my breath
That I lie at the point of death:
I call to mind the navy great
That the Greeks brought to Troyè town:
And how the boisterous winds did beat
Their ships, and rent their sails adown;
Till Agamemnon's daughter's blood
Appeased the gods that them withstood.”

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1516–1547) English Earl

"The Lover Comforteth Himself with the Worthiness of his Love", line 1.

Love, Death, God, Pain

“As is so often the case with butlers, there was a good deal of Beach. Julius Caesar, who liked to have men about him who were fat, would have taken to him at once. He was a man who had made two chins grow where only one had been before, and his waistcoat swelled like the sail of a racing yacht.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Galahad at Blandings

Galahad at Blandings (1965)

Men

“But America is a great, unwieldy Body. Its Progress must be slow. It is like a large Fleet sailing under Convoy. The fleetest Sailors must wait for the dullest and slowest. Like a Coach and six—the swiftest Horses must be slackened and the slowest quickened, that all may keep an even Pace.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Letter to Abigail Adams (17 July 1775); in L. H. Butterfield, ed., Adams Family Correspondence (1963), vol. 1, p. 216
1770s

Waiting, Horse

“When my grandfather was born there were barely two thousand people living in the capital; in my own childhood there were nearly five thousand. In grandfather's childhood the only people who counted were a few government officials and a few foreign merchants, mainly Jews from Schleswig and Holstein who spoke Low German and called themselves Danes... The rest of the town's inhabitants were cottagers who went out to the fishing and sometimes owned a small share in a cow, or had a few sheep. They had little rowing-boats, on which they could sometimes hoist a sail.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Brekkukotsannáll (The Fish Can Sing) (1957)

People, Fish, Childhood

“The Liner she's a lady, an' she never looks nor 'eeds—
The Man-o'-War's 'er 'usband, an' 'e gives 'er all she needs;
But, oh, the little cargo-boats, that sail the wet seas roun',
They're just the same as you an' me a-plyin' up an' down!”

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

The Liner She's a Lady, Stanza 1 (1895).
The Seven Seas (1896)

War, Sea

“As ships becalmed at eve, that lay
With canvas drooping, side by side,
Two towers of sail, at dawn of day
Are scarce, long leagues apart, descried.”

Arthur Hugh Clough (1819–1861) English poet

Qua Cursum Ventus. Compare: "Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing", Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863-1874), Pt. III, The Theologian's Tale: Elizabeth, sec. IV.

“Melancholy and remorse form the deep leaden keel which enables us to sail into the wind of reality; we run aground sooner than the flat-bottomed pleasure-lovers but we venture out in weather that would sink them and we choose our direction.”

Cyril Connolly book The Unquiet Grave

Part III: La Clé des Chants (p.115)
The Unquiet Grave (1944)

Pleasure, Lovers, Reality, Weather

“There's a man who came to stay
The boy he replaced, disappeared without a trace.
Stole all my songs and my style away
No-one would say what they wanted to say
So he was king for a day.
If you sail into the sun
Beware the eyes of green
And if the whole world tells you 'you are the one'
I defy you not to believe them, my son…”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

"The Man Who Came to Stay"
Lyrics and poetry

World, Boy, Sun

“Forth from his dark and lonely hiding place
(Portentous-sight!) the owlet Atheism,
Sailing an obscene wings athwart the noon,
Drops his blue-fringèd lids, and holds them close,
And hooting at the glorious sun in Heaven,
Cries out, "Where is it?"”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

" Fears in Solitude http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/stc/Coleridge/poems/Fears_in_Solitude.html", l. 81 (1798)

Sun

“Raphael paints wisdom, Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakespeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Society and Solitude, Art
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Wisdom, Singing, Painting

“Those who spread their sails in the right way to the winds of the earth will always find themselves born by a current towards the open seas.”

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin (1881–1955) French philosopher and Jesuit priest

The Divinisation of Our Activities, p. 72
The Divine Milieu (1960)

Way, Sea

“I put down the oars and float endlessly as if to the eternal shore. Blue light of the moon shines on my sail. My boat is gliding to a secure haven. Only silent waves break against it. Deepest silence surrounds me and my soul builds a golden bridge to a star.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Ich lege die Ruder ein und fahre endlos, wie einem ewigen Gestade zu. Mondlicht spielt blau auf meinem Segel. Mein Nachen gleitet in einen sicheren Hafen. Nur leise schlagen die Wellen an meinen Kahn. Die tiefste Stille ist um mich, und meine Seele spannt eine goldene Brücke zu einem Stern.
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)

Soul, Star, Light, Silence

“Thus did the Holy Harlots unhinge the brains of man,
and when they met and clashed with the pure Mountain Maidens,
they raised their white arms high, their armpits smelled of musk,
and, as the rites decreed, both fought their verbal war:
"God swoops from mountain peeks to eat and play on earth;
we are his food and drink and even his sacred toys —
and learn, O sterile maids, we are his soft, sweet mates.
Let her now leave who fears to merge with her dread God!"
The scornful savage mouth of Krino flashed reply:
"We will not leave! We guard the innocent soul of man!
God is a spirit with pure white wings, a soul that sails,
light, disembodied, deep in our thoughts, without embrace.
It's we who keep the world in bloom with virgin souls!"”

Nikos Kazantzakis (1883–1957) Greek writer

From the Bull Ritual, Book VI, line 197
The Odyssey : A Modern Sequel (1938)

God, War, World, Fear

“The sky spread over with one continuous cloud, whitened by the light of the moon, which, though her dim shape was seen, did not throw forth so strong a light as to chequer the earth with shadows. At once the clouds seemed to cleave asunder, and left her in the centre of a black-blue vault. She sailed along, followed by multitudes of stars, small, and bright, and sharp.”

Dorothy Wordsworth (1771–1855) English author, poet and diarist

January 25, 1798 <br class="br">Compare Wordsworth's "A Night-Piece", lines 1-16 http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww123.html. <br class="br">Diaries

Star, Light, Strong

“New things always have to experience difficulties and setbacks as they grow. It is sheer fantasy to imagine that the cause of socialism is all plain sailing and easy success, without difficulties and setbacks or the exertion of tremendous efforts.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People
Source: (zh-CN) 任何新生事物的成长都是要经过艰难曲折的。在社会主义事业中，要想不经过艰难曲折，不付出极大努力，总是一帆风顺，容易得到成功，这种想法，只是幻想。

Imagination, Effort, Success

“Marriage makes a man more vulnerable by doubling the expanse of sail exposed to the tempests of social life.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Marriage

Life, Marriage

“Let the winds blow! a fiercer gale
Is wild within me! what may quell
That sullen tempest? I must sail
Whither, O whither, who can tell!”

Edmund Clarence Stedman (1833–1908) American poet, critic, and essayist

"Amavi".

“To study the phenomenon of disease without books is to sail an uncharted sea, while to study books without patients is not to go to sea at all.”

William Osler (1849–1919) Canadian pathologist, physician, educator, bibliophile, historian, author, cofounder of Johns Hopkins Hospi…

"Books and Men" in Boston Medical and Surgical Journal (1901).

Books, Disease, Study, Sea

“The boat set sail upon the great river
whose swollen waters stretched to sky's edge.
Sky and waves split apart suddenly—
the district capital's thousands of homes.
Moving on, I can see the town market
and vaguely make out mulberry and hemp.
I turn to gaze back toward my homeland—
only vast floods that stretch to the clouds.”

Wang Wei (699–759) a Tang dynasty Chinese poet, musician, painter, and statesman

"Written Crossing the Yellow River to Qing-he" (渡河到清河作)

Home, Water

“Five sail of British ships have got into Newport within two days past. We have heard nor seen no thing of the fleet of transports your Excellency mentioned, in your letter to General Sullivan of the 23d. If they arrive with a large reenforcement, our expedition is at an end, unless it is by way of blockade, and that will depend upon the French fleet's being superior to that of the British, General Sullivan has done every thing that could be expected, and had the fleet cooperated with us as was at first intended, and agreeably to the original plan of the expedition, we must have been successful.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (August 1778)

Way, Success, Past, Dependency

“Chorus: O suitably attired in leather boots
Head of a traveller, wherefore seeking whom
Whence by what way how purposed art thou come
To this well-nightingaled vicinity?
My object in inquiring is to know.
But if you happen to be deaf and dumb
And do not understand a word I say,
Nod with your hand to signify as much.
Alcmaeon: I journeyed hither a Boeotian road.
Chorus: Sailing on horseback or with feet for oars?
Alcmaeon: Plying by turns my partnership of legs.
Chorus: Beneath a shining or a rainy Zeus?
Alcmaeon: Mud's sister, not himself, adorns my shoes.
Chorus: To learn your name would not displease me much.
Alcmaeon: Not all that men desire do they attain.”

A.E. Housman (1859–1936) English classical scholar and poet

"Fragment of a Greek Tragedy". This parody was first written in 1883, but quoted here from a revised version of 1927.

Men, Art, Shoe, Way

“Red sails in the sunset,
Way out on the sea,
Oh carry my loved one
Home safely to me.”

Jimmy Kennedy (1902–1984) Irish songwriter

Song Red Sails in the Sunset
Song lyrics

Love, Way, Home, Sea

“We were trying to monitor the sailboat, trying to help us keep it upright and optimized, and it turned out that sailing became an incredible practical laboratory.”

Philippe Kahn (1952) Entrepreneur, camera phone creator

http://www.wired.com/2013/07/sailor-philippe-kahn/ Wired July 12th, 2013, on how his passion for sailing inspired the creation of some MotionX sensors].

Optimism, Help

“He was reminded of a Dutch book whose moral he often returned to: De Schoonheid van hoogspanningslijnen in het Hollandse landschap, written by a couple of academics in Rotterdam University, Anne Kieke Backer and Arij de Boode. The Beauty of Electricity Pylons in the Dutch Landscape was a defence of the contribution of transmission engineering to the visual appeal of Holland, referencing the often ignored grandeur of the towers on their march from power stations to cities. Its particular interest for Ian, however, lay in its thesis about the history of the Dutch relationship to windmills, for it emphasised that these early industrial objects had originally been felt to have all the pylons’ threateningly alien qualities, rather than the air of enchantment and playfulness now routinely associated with them. They had been denounced from pulpits and occasionally burnt to the ground by suspicious villagers. The re-evaluation of the windmills had in large part been the work of the great painters of the Dutch Golden Age, who, moved by their country’s dependence on the rotating utilitarian objects, gave them pride of place in their canvases, taking care to throw their finest aspect into relief, like their resilience during storms and the glint of their sails in the late afternoon sun. … It would perhaps be left to artists of our own day to teach us to discern the virtues of the furniture of contemporary technology.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (2009), p. 212.

Books, Age, Beauty, History

“Flags, rags, ferryboats, scimitars and scarves
every precious dream and vision underneath the stars
You climbed on the ladder
with the wind in your sails
you came like a comet
blazing your trail
too high, too far, too soon
You saw the whole of the moon!”

Mike Scott (1958) songwriter, musician

"The Whole Of The Moon"
This Is the Sea (1985)

Dreams, Star

“That life had been one without excitement, with no adventure. It had been too safe. All the elements that made it up were right there before his eyes, and nothing new could ever be expected. It was like, he had once thought, a little plastic boat that would sail on forever, without incident, until it finally sank, which would be a secret relief to all.”

Philip K. Dick book A Scanner Darkly

Source: A Scanner Darkly (1977), Chapter 4 (p. 64)

Life, Secret

“It is vital now to see this [Brexit] moment for what it is. This is not a time to quail, it is not a crisis, nor should we see it as an excuse for wobbling or self-doubt, but it is a moment for hope and ambition for Britain. A time not to fight against the tide of history, but to take that tide at the flood, and sail on to fortune.”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

During the announcement that he would not run to become Britain's prime minister. A reference to Brutus's "There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune" in Julius Caesar. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/01/world/europe/britain-conservative-party.html (June 30, 2016) <br class="br">2010s, 2016

Hope, History, Time, Fight

“Every ship is a romantic object, except that we sail in.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson book Experience

1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), Experience

“I am sure every Englishman who has a heart in his breast and a feeling of justice in his mind, sympathizes with those unfortunate Danes (cheers), and wishes that this country could have been able to draw the sword successfully in their defence (continued cheers); but I am satisfied that those who reflect on the season of the year when that war broke out, on the means which this country could have applied for deciding in one sense that issue, I am satisfied that those who make these reflections will think that we acted wisely in not embarking in that dispute. (Cheers.) To have sent a fleet in midwinter to the Baltic every sailor would tell you was an impossibility, but if it could have gone it would have been attended by no effectual result. Ships sailing on the sea cannot stop armies on land, and to have attempted to stop the progress of an army by sending a fleet to the Baltic would have been attempting to do that which it was not possible to accomplish. (Hear, hear.) If England could have sent an army, and although we all know how admirable that army is on the peace establishment, we must acknowledge that we have no means of sending out a force at all equal to cope with the 300,000 or 400,000 men whom the 30,000,000 or 40,000,000 of Germany could have pitted against us, and that such an attempt would only have insured a disgraceful discomfiture—not to the army, indeed, but to the Government which sent out an inferior force and expected it to cope successfully with a force so vastly superior. (Cheers.) … we did not think that the Danish cause would be considered as sufficiently British, and as sufficiently bearing on the interests and the security and the honour of England, as to make it justifiable to ask the country to make those exertions which such a war would render necessary.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Speech at Tiverton (23 August 1864) on the Second Schleswig War, quoted in ‘Lord Palmerston At Tiverton’, The Times (24 August 1864), p. 9.
1860s

Men, War, Peace, Justice

“Once she kidnapped me and drug me to the Methodist Church. I goes in, pious as Widow Bogart, and sits still and never cracks a smile while the preacher is favoring us with his misinformation on evolution. But afterwards, when the old stalwarts were pumphandling everybody at the door and calling 'em 'Brother' and 'Sister,' they let me sail right by with nary a clinch.”

Sinclair Lewis book Main Street

Main Street (1920)

Smile, Sister

“The glare of that much-mentioned brilliance, love,
Broke out, to show
Its bright incipience sailing above,
Still promising to solve, and satisfy,
And set unchangeably in order. So
To pile them back, to cry,
Was hard, without lamely admitting how
It had not done so then, and could not now.”

Philip Larkin book The Whitsun Weddings

"Love Songs in Age" (1 January 1957)
The Whitsun Weddings (1964)

Love, Cry

“Sail forth into the sea of life,
O gentle, loving, trusting wife,
And safe from all adversity
Upon the bosom of that sea
Thy comings and thy goings be!
For gentleness and love and trust
Prevail o'er angry wave and gust;
And in the wreck of noble lives
Something immortal still survives.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Building of the Ship

Source: The Building of the Ship (1849), Line 368.

Love, Life, Sea

“I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it,—but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

Josephus Daniels, ambassador to Mexico, sent this quotation to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, January 1, 1936, in a note of New Year greetings, with this comment: "Here is an expression from Holmes which, if it has missed you, is so good you may find a use for it in one of your 'fireside' talks". Reported in Carroll Kilpatrick, ed., Roosevelt and Daniels (1952), p. 159.
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)

Lie, World

“In the spring of 1920, General Motors found itself, as it appeared at the moment, in a good position. On account of the limitation of automotive production during the war there was a great shortage of cars. Every car that could be produced was produced and could be sold at almost any price. So far as any one could see, there was no reason why that prosperity should not continue for a time at least. I liken our position then to a big ship in the ocean. We were sailing along at full speed, the sun was shining, and there was no cloud in the sky that would indicate an approaching storm. Many of you have, of course, crossed the ocean and you can visualize just that sort of a picture yet what happened? In September of that year, almost over night, values commenced to fall. The liquidation from the inflated prices resulting from the war had set in. Practically all schedules or a large part of them were cancelled. Inventory commenced to roll in, and, before it was realized what was happening, this great ship of ours was in the midst of a terrific storm. As a matter of fact, before control could be obtained General Motors found itself in a position of having to go to its bankers for loans aggregating $80,000,000 and although, as we look at things from today's standpoint, that isn't such a very large amount of money, yet when you must have $80,000,000 and haven't got it, it becomes an enormous sum of money, and if we had not had the confidence and support of the strongest banking interests our ship could never have weathered the storm.”

Alfred P. Sloan (1875–1966) American businessman

Source: Alfred P. Sloan in The Turning Wheel, 1934, p. 185-6; Retrospective vein President Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., addressing the automobile editors of American newspapers at the Proving Ground at Milford, Michigan in 1927.

Money, War, Cars, Confidence