Sailing Quotes

“I really don't know why it is that all of us are so committed to the sea, except I think it's because in addition to the fact that the sea changes, and the light changes, and ships change, it's because we all came from the sea. And it is an interesting biological fact that all of us have in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea - whether it is to sail or to watch it - we are going back from whence we came.

[Remarks at the Dinner for the America's Cup Crews, September 14 1962]”
― John F. Kennedy

“Hark, now hear the sailors cry,
Smell the sea, and feel the sky,
Let your soul & spirit fly, into the mystic.

- Into the Mystic”
― Van Morrison, Lit Up Inside: Selected Lyrics

“To reach a port we must set sail –
Sail, not tie at anchor
Sail, not drift.”
― Franklin D. Roosevelt

“I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“What she really loved was to hang over the edge and watch the bow of the ship slice through the waves. She loved it especially when the waves were high and the ship rose and fell, or when it was snowing and the flakes stung her face.”
― Kristin Cashore, Graceling

“And I shall watch the ferry boats, and they'll get high,
On a bluer ocean against tomorrow's sky,
And I will never grow so old again,
And I will walk and talk, in gardens all wet with rain.

- Sweet Thing”
― Van Morrison, Lit Up Inside: Selected Lyrics

“She watched the gap between ship and shore grow to a huge gulf. Perhaps this was a little like dying, the departed no longer visible to the others, yet both still existed, only in different worlds.”
― Susan Wiggs, The Charm School

“A war of ideas can no more be won without books than a naval war can be won without ships. Books, like ships, have the toughest armor, the longest cruising range, and mount the most powerful guns.”
― Franklin Delano Roosevelt

“We clear the harbor and the wind catches her sails and my beautiful ship leans over ever so gracefully, and her elegant bow cuts cleanly into the increasing chop of the waves. I take a deep breath and my chest expands and my heart starts thumping so strongly I fear the others might see it beat through the cloth of my jacket. I face the wind and my lips peel back from my teeth in a grin of pure joy.”
― L.A. Meyer, Under the Jolly Roger: Being an Account of the Further Nautical Adventures of Jacky Faber

“You can’t believe how bleeding scary the sea is! There’s, like, whales and storms and shit! They don’t bloody tell you that!”
― Libba Bray, Beauty Queens

“I can't control the wind but I can adjust the sail.”
― Ricky Skaggs

“Bad, or good, as it happens to be, that is what it is to exist! . . . It is as though I have been silent and fuddled with sleep all my life. In spite of all, I know now that at least it is better to go always towards the summer, towards those burning seas of light; to sit at night in the forecastle lost in an unfamiliar dream, when the spirit becomes filled with stars, instead of wounds, and good and compassionate and tender. To sail into an unknown spring, or receive one's baptism on storm's promontory, where the solitary albatross heels over in the gale, and at last come to land. To know the earth under one's foot and go, in wild delight, ways where there is water.”
― Malcolm Lowry, Ultramarine

“...this beginning motion, this first time when a sail truly filled and the boat took life and knifed across the lake under perfect control, this was so beautiful it stopped my breath...”
― Gary Paulsen, Caught by the Sea

“Go small, go simple, go now”
― larry pardey, Cruising in Seraffyn

“Possibly a man who hates the land should dwell on shore forever. Alienation and the long voyages at sea will compel him once again to dream of it, torment him with the absurdity of longing for something that he loathes.”
― Yukio Mishima, The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

“Just about a month from now I'm set adrift, with a diploma for a sail and lots of nerve for oars.”
― Richard Halliburton

“She found out that having something to do prevented you from feeling seasick, and that even a job like scrubbing a deck could be satisfying, if it was done in a seamanlike way. She was very taken with this notion, and later on she folded the blankets on her bunk in a seamanlike way, and put her possessions in the closet in a seamanlike way, and used 'stow' instead of 'tidy' for the process of doing so. After two days at sea, Lyra decided that this was the life for her.”
― Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass

“When I'm all grown up, come what may,
I'll build a boat to carry me away”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Tigana

“Thing about boats is, you can always sell them if you don't like them. Can't sell kids.”
― Lin Pardey, Bull Canyon: A Boatbuilder, a Writer and Other Wildlife

“One takes what the river offers, both good and bad. The joy of living by running water far outweighs the sorrow.”
― Matthew Goldman, The Journals of Constant Waterman: Paddling, Poling, and Sailing for the Love of It

“I grew to judge every purchase by how many bronze screws I could buy for the boat if I didn't spend on this or made do without that.”
― Lin Pardey, Bull Canyon: A Boatbuilder, a Writer and Other Wildlife

“Keep your hand on the helm.”
― Matthew Goldman, The Journals of Constant Waterman: Paddling, Poling, and Sailing for the Love of It

“Back on the ferry, I sip some vodka on the rocks and have a chat with God.

Me: (desperately) What the *&%$# am I going to do?

God:

Me: (surprised) Really? After all those Sundays of being a back up singer for Jesus, you got nothing to say?

God:

Me: (humbly) Help me out here.”
― Lexis De Rothschild, The Cat Letters: A Tale of Longing, Adventure and True Love

“Just because I am paranoid does not mean that someone is not out to get me”
― Don Darkes, 6692 Pisces the Sailfish

“With this idea, being a man with long experience of the sea (and they certainly have a great advantage over other men in any sort of task)...”
― GarciLaso De la Vega, Royal Commentaries of the Incas and General History of Peru, Part One

“The hair of his face, on the contrary, carroty and flaming, resembled a growth of copper wire clipped short to the line of the lip; while, no matter how close he shaved, fiery metallic gleams passed, when he moved his head, over the surface of his cheeks.”
― Joseph Conrad, Tales of the Sea

“One of the reasons there are so many terms for conditions of ice is that the mariners observing it were often trapped in it, and had nothing to do except look at it.”
― Alec Wilkinson, The Ice Balloon: S. A. Andrée and the Heroic Age of Arctic Exploration

“The men nodded vigorously at me. When they took hold of me and lifted me in their strong arms, I thought nothing of it. I thought they were helping me. I was so full of trust in them that I felt grateful as they carried me in the air. Only when they threw me overboard did I begin to have doubts.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“With a frigate’s anchors for my bridle-bitts and fasces of harpoons for spurs, would I could mount that whale and leap the topmost skies, to see whether the fabled heavens with all their countless tents really lie encamped beyond my mortal sight!”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“What is time to a water rat? What is time to the river? Only we humans obsess over days and minutes, hours and seasons.”
― Matthew Goldman, The Journals of Constant Waterman: Paddling, Poling, and Sailing for the Love of It