Quotes by Sailors

Safety is an illusion and perhaps it's better to challenge it sometimes, to see how far we can go, to learn about the stuff we are made of.
Tania Aebi
Charter boats are like books with no covers.
Tania Aebi
Thing about boats is, you can always sell them if you don't like them. Can't sell kids.
Lin Pardey
I wish I could describe the feeling of being at sea, the anguish, frustration, and fear, the beauty that accompanies threatening spectacles, the spiritual communion with creatures in whose domain I sail. There is a magnificent intensity in life that comes when we are not in control but are only reacting, living, surviving. I am not a religious man per se. My own cosmology is convoluted and not in line with any particular church or philosphy. But for me, to go to sea is to glimpse the face of God. At sea i am reminded of my insignificance-- of all men's insignificance. It is a wonderful feeling to be so humbled.
Steve Callahan
Teach me, O Lord, to glory in my cross. Teach me the value of my thorns. Show me how I have climbed to You through my path of pain. Show me that it is through my tears that I have seen rainbows.
George Matteson
... beginnings are always reserved for anxiety, middles are for experience, problems and troubleshooting, and only once the beginning and middle have been combined to form a past can room be made for the ending, and relief.
Tania Aebi
It’s better to be the rooster than the feather duster.
Jimmy Spithill
The determination that is his biggest strength . . . is also at times his fatal flaw. Like an unthinking machine, he'll just keep shoving, not realizing a step back, a one-night pause, could let some obstacle move out of the way and smooth his path.
Lin Pardey
I think this is something we all can relate to: experiences that may start out as good ideas until suddenly, they become ordeals, no longer adventures, no matter the attitude.
Tania Aebi
Moreover, they who returned, if any, would be flogged, as seemed proper, after due examination. And though the news of their beatings might help all others to hesitation, ere they did foolishly, in like fashion, yet was the principle of the flogging not on this base, which would be both improper and unjust; but only that the one in question be corrected to the best advantage for his own well-being; for it is not meet that any principle of correction should shape to the making of human signposts of pain for the benefit of others; for in verity, this were to make one pay the cost of many's learning; and each should owe to pay only so much as shall suffice for the teaching of his own body and spirit. And if others profit thereby, this is but accident, however helpful. And this is wisdom, and denoteth now that a sound Principle shall prevent Practice from becoming monstrous.
William Hope Hodgson
He himself set the example, throwing away, with a spectacular gesture, a gold watch, a gold cigarette case, and several golden sovereigns. Naturally, after witnessing this action, which brought home to me at any rate the shifting values in life and the knowledge that there are times when gold can be a liability instead of an asset
Frank A. Worsley
The years thunder by.The dreams of youth grow dimwhere they liecaked in dust on the shelves of patience.Before we know it, the tomb is sealed.Where, then lies the answer?In choice.Which shall it be:Bankruptcy of Purseor Bankruptcy of Life?
Sterling Hayden
And then, suddenly, an extraordinary question rose in my mind, whether this stupendous globe of green fire might not be the vast Central Sun—the great sun, round which our universe and countless others revolve. I felt confused. I thought of the probable end of the dead sun, and another suggestion came, dumbly—Do the dead stars make the Green Sun their grave? The idea appealed to me with no sense of grotesqueness; but rather as something both possible and probable.
William Hope Hodgson
There had stood a great house in the centre of the gardens, where now was left only that fragment of ruin. This house had been empty for a great while; years before his—the ancient man's—birth. It was a place shunned by the people of the village, as it had been shunned by their fathers before them. There were many things said about it, and all were of evil. No one ever went near it, either by day or night. In the village it was a synonym of all that is unholy and dreadful.
William Hope Hodgson
Still, I could find no good reason for not going. So I decided to go.
Nicolette Milnes Walker
When a great adventure is launched with a powerful thrust, fatigue in the muscles and doubts in the mind are swept away by a fullness that moves life along like a breath from the depths of the soul.
Bernard Moitessier
Our sole illumination was a dim and foul-smellingblubber lamp, which really only served to make thedarkness visible.
Frank A. Worsley
Even in Sri Lanka, the worst only happened in my imagination, I'd say, and this is so because we live on a planet where good people outnumber bad.
Tania Aebi
The dreams of youth grow dim where they lie caked with dust on the shelves of patience. Before we know it, the tomb is sealed.
Sterling Hayden
I am what I might term an unprejudiced sceptic. I am not given to either believing or disbelieving things 'on principle,' as I have found many idiots prone to be, and what is more, some of them not ashamed to boast of the insane fact.
William Hope Hodgson
The only way to see true reality is in solitude. One of the tragedies of human existence is that reality cannot be shared. What's real to you may not be to someone else.
Tristan Jones
I read, and, in reading, lifted the Curtains of the Impossible that blind the mind, and looked out into the unknown.
William Hope Hodgson
My sister, the one who knows everything and pulls out facts out of a bottomless hat, told me people aren't afraid of snakes or water upon birth. It is only once we hear the snake and water stories, she says, once we are exposed to fear, that we deny our primal instincts and make room for the dread to take root and mature.
Tania Aebi
I had already found that it was not good to be alone, and so made companionship with what there was around me, sometimes with the universe and sometimes with my own insignificant self; but my books were always my friends, let fail all else.
Joshua Slocum
... no matter how we go about it, we are never poorer for the experiences that teach us how to write our own manuals.
Tania Aebi
The truth is not so important as the leaving of it behind.
Clare Francis