Sailor Quotes

“A sailor chooses the wind that takes the ship from a safe port. Ah, yes, but once you're abroad, as you have seen, winds have a mind of their own. Be careful, Charlotte, careful of the wind you choose.”
― Avi, The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle

“Life may be an arcane riddle, a play with many complementary acts or an unfinished chronicle with odd sequences. Still and all, whatever we might think or do, let us above all be attentive and expectant, since everyone is waiting for the pieces to fall into place, at one time or another. ("Drunken sailor" )”
― Erik Pevernagie

“The Voyager

We are all lonely voyagers sailing on life's ebb tide,
To a far off place were all stripling warriors have died,
Sometime at eve when the tide is low,
The voices call us back to the rippling water's flow,
Even though our boat sailed with love in our hearts,
Neither our dreams or plans would keep heaven far apart,
We drift through the hush of God's twilight pale,
With no response to our friendly hail,
We raise our sails and search for majestic light,
While finding company on this journey to the brighten our night,
Then suddenly he pulls us through the reef's cutting sea,
Back to the place that he asked us to be,
Friendly barges that were anchored so sweetly near,
In silent sorrow they drop their salted tears,
Shall our soul be a feast of kelp and brine,
The wasted tales of wishful time,
Are we a fish on a line lured with bait,
Is life the grind, a heartless fate,
Suddenly, "HUSH", said the wind from afar,
Have you not looked to the heavens and seen the new star,
It danced on the abyss of the evening sky,
The sparkle of heaven shining on high,
Its whisper echoed on the ocean's spray,
From the bow to the mast they heard him say,
"Hope is above, not found in the deep,
I am alive in your memories and dreams when you sleep,
I will greet you at sunset and with the moon's evening smile,
I will light your path home.. every last lonely mile,
My friends, have no fear, my work was done well,
In this life I broke the waves and rode the swell,
I found faith in those that I called my crew,
My love will be the compass that will see you through,
So don't look for me on the ocean's floor to find,
I've never left the weathered docks of your loving mind,
For I am in the moon, the wind and the whale's evening song,
I am the sailor of eternity whose voyage is not gone.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“There's always a siren, singing you to shipwreck. Some of us may be more susceptible than others are, but there's always a siren. It may be with us all our lives, or it may be many years or decades before we find it or it finds us. But when it does find us, if we're lucky we're Odysseus tied up to the ship's mast, hearing the song with perfect clarity, but ferried to safety by a crew whose ears have been plugged with beeswax. If we're not at all lucky, we're another sort of sailor stepping off the deck to drown in the sea.”
― Caitlín R. Kiernan, The Drowning Girl

“Only you could have won me away from the sea. I came back from the ends of the earth for you.”
― George R.R. Martin, Fire & Blood

“You've got to think of the fine times you had with your mate, not the moment of his perishin'. Every tear you shed now only wets his windin' sheet and disturbs his rest”
― L.A. Meyer, Bloody Jack

“She accepts the world as it is and the world accepts her thus. She is not mastered. What is done to her cannot confine what she will do.”
― Seth Dickinson, The Monster Baru Cormorant

“Says O'Sullivan to me, "Mr. Fay, I'll have a word wid yeh?" "Certainly," says I; "what can I do for you?" "Sell me your sea- boots, Mr. Fay," says O'Sullivan, polite as can be. "But what will you be wantin' of them?" says I. "'Twill be a great favour," says O'Sullivan. "But it's my only pair," says I; "and you have a pair of your own," says I. "Mr. Fay, I'll be needin' me own in bad weather," says O'Sullivan. "Besides," says I, "you have no money." "I'll pay for them when we pay off in Seattle," says O'Sullivan. "I'll not do it," says I; "besides, you're not tellin' me what you'll be doin' with them." "But I will tell yeh," says O'Sullivan; "I'm wantin' to throw 'em over the side." And with that I turns to walk away, but O'Sullivan says, very polite and seducin'-like, still a-stroppin' the razor, "Mr. Fay," says he, "will you kindly step this way an' have your throat cut?" And with that I knew my life was in danger, and I have come to make report to you, sir, that the man is a violent lunatic.”
― Jack London, The Mutiny of the Elsinore

“Tain Shir walks the deck of RNS Sulane between the bombs and incendiaries and steel-tipped barbs. A weapon among weapons but she alone is free. The tragedy of the knife is the hilt. The tragedy of the crossbow is the trigger. Shir has neither. She cannot be gripped nor fired.
She is unmastered.
The sailors are rude with her. So be it. Etiquitte is the domain of those whose power is conditional upon the respect of others, and Shir is unconditional. If she drifted alone in the void beyond the moon or if she walked among the monarchs of the ancient Cheetah Palaces she would not be altered in her capabilities or her intentions, for not one truth of her resides within a relationship to any other thing.”
― Seth Dickinson, The Monster Baru Cormorant

“A wind that howled like a drowning man.”
― Kevin Ansbro, Kinnara

“Since dark antiquity the words have been spoken by women of every caste to sailors in every port; words of docile acceptance of the horizon's authority, of reckless homage to that mysterious azure boundary; words never failing to bestow on even the haughtiest woman the sadness, the hollow hopes, and the freedom of the whore: 'You'll be leaving in the morning, won't you?...”
― Yukio Mishima, The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

“She is the nymph who keeps enticing me the sailor evey time!”
― Avijeet Das

“Art is an ocean and I am a dream sailor.”
― Biju Karakkonam, Nature and Wildlife Photographer

“I am Abdumasi of the House of Abd, master of ships, champion cat gambler, and I challenge you to mortal up-fuckery!”
― Seth Dickinson, The Monster Baru Cormorant

“She was the mermaid enrapturing me the sailor with all her charms!”
― Avijeet Das

“She is the mermaid enrapturing me the sailor with all her charms!”
― Avijeet Das

“She is the nymph who keeps enticing me the sailor every time!”
― Avijeet Das

“The sailor dies in what makes him live. We will die in the air and in hope. (Marin meurt dans ce qui le fait vivre. Nous mourrons dans l’air et dans l’espoir)”
― Charles de Leusse

“His father, a civil servant, had raised him and his sister singlehanded after their mother’s death; the sickly old man had worked overtime in order to send Ryuji to school; despite everything, Ryuji had grown up into a strong, healthy man; late in the war his home had been destroyed in an air raid and his sister had died of typhus shortly after; he had graduated from the merchant-marine high school and was just starting on his career when his father died too; his only memories of life on shore were of poverty and sickness and death, of endless devastation; by becoming a sailor, he had detached himself from the land for ever. ... It was the first time he had talked of these things at such length to a woman.”
― Yukio Mishima, The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

“Sailors lived on stories as much as sea air and cheap liquor.”
― V.E. Schwab, A Gathering of Shadows

“It was that hour that turns seafarers' longings homeward- the hour that makes their hearts grow tender upon the day they big sweet friends farewell...”
― Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio (Deluxe)

“your eyes are stars guiding me
your heart is the ocean of love
i am the sailor looking for my mermaid
are you the mermaid i see in my dreams?”
― Avijeet Das

“கடல் பயணத்தில் வலிமையை ஒப்பிட வேண்டியது பிற கடலோடிகளோடு அல்ல, எழும் அலைகளுடனும் வீசும் காற்றுடனும் இழுத்துச் செல்லும் நீரோட்டங்களுடனும்தான்.”
― Su. Venkatesan, வீரயுக நாயகன் வேள்பாரி, முதல் தொகுதி

“And never break a sailor's heart, he might leave and sail all his life alone, all days all nights with a broken heart and no compass.”
― Neymat Khan, Our Parted Ways

“May this marriage be the sign of compassion and the approval of happiness here and hereafter;
May this marriage be fair of fame, fair of face and fair of omen as the moon in the azure sky.”
― Nana Adu-Boafo Jnr

“Sie sagten man solle und dürfe niemanden aufs Wasser weisen. Wer den Weg nach dem Schiff nicht von selbst finde, aus dem könne doch kein Seemann werden.”
― Gorch Fock, Seefahrt is not!

“He looked like a homeless convalescent in his light blue T-shirt that had known better days, his navy-blue seaman’s jacket with the black leather buttons, purchased at some second-hand clothing store in a Baltic port, and the rebellious, grayying locks of his unconquerable hair escaping at the sides of his black sailor’s cap. His slightly protruding eyes had the wary look of a man who has seen more than humans are permitted to see, and he carried his eternal duffel bag, with two changes of clothing as threadbare as those he was wearing, a few talismans, each a reservoir of memories of indelible sentiments or miraculous rescues from unspeakable dangers, and the three or four books that always accompanied him.”
― Álvaro Mutis, The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll

“A sleeping sailor makes no gains but a heavy weight upon the ship.”
― Aegelis, X Captain Ruik's Adventure

“Nighty Night Sailboat answered, “Well, Juni, home is where I am.”
Juni thought, “You are so right. I am always home with you.”
“Nighty Night, Juni.”
“Nighty Night, Sailboat.”
― Renne Siewers

“¿Ya me olvidaste? ¿Ya me has dejado de amar?
Por supuesto que no: ¡el marino que navega
nunca puede olvidarse de su amado mar
ni mucho menos de su adorado navío,
la playa no se olvida de la ola que llega
ni el mar de la montaña mientras fluya un río!”
― Elvis Dino Esquivel, Sólo lloré en otoño