Sailing Quotes

On September 6, 1522, a battered ship appeared on the horizon … A small pilot boat was dispatched to lead the strange ship over the reefs … The vessel they were guiding into the harbor was manned by a skeleton crew of just eighteen sailors and three captives, all of them severely malnourished. … Their captain was dead, as were the officers, the boatswains, and the pilots; in fact, nearly the entire crew had perished … the ship, Victoria, … had departed three years earlier. No one knew what had become of her … Despite the journey’s hardships, Victoria and her diminished crew accomplished what no other ship had ever done before. By sailing west until they reached the East, and then sailing on in the same direction, they had fulfilled an ambition as old as the human imagination, the first circumnavigation of the globe

Laurence Bergreen

My wife and I said good-bye the next morning in a little sheltered place among the lumber on the wharf; she was one of your women who never like to do their crying before folks.She climbed on the pile of lumber and sat down, a little flushed and quivery, to watch us off. I remember seeing her there with the baby till we were well down the channel. I remember noticing the bay as it grew cleaner, and thinking that I would break off swearing; and I remember cursing Bob Smart like a pirate within an hour.("Kentucky's Ghost")

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

Charter boats are like books with no covers.

Tania Aebi

Maybe you're getting into the rhythm of sailing life," says James. He looks out at the waves that are rolling in to lap against the dock. "You know, the tides going in and then out, the wind blowing east and then west, the high of a perfect day out on the water, the low of a thunderstorm or a wind that won't go your way.

Melissa C. Walker

They loved the sea. They taught themselves to sail, to navigate and read the weather. Without their mother's knowledge and long before she thought them old enough to sail outside the harbor, they were piloting their catboat all the way to the Isles of Shoals. They were on the return leg of one such excursion when the fickle weather of early spring took an abrupt turn and the sky darkened and the sun vanished and the wind came squalling off the open sea. They were a half mile from the harbor when the storm overtook them. The rain struck in a slashing torrent and the swells hove them so high they felt they might be sent flying--then dropped them into troughs so deep they could see nothing but walls of water the color of iron. They feared the sail would be ripped away. Samuel Thomas wrestled the tiller and John Roger bailed in a frenzy and both were wide-eyed with euphoric terror as time and again they were nearly capsized before at last making the harbor. When they got home and Mary Margaret saw their sodden state she scolded them for dunces and wondered aloud how they could do so well in their schooling when they didn't have sense enough to get out of the rain.

James Carlos Blake

That's what sailing is, a dance, and your partner is the sea. And with the sea you never take liberties. You ask her, you don't tell her. You have to remember always that she's the leader, not you. You and your boat are dancing to her tune.

Michael Morpurgo

Paradise” is a suffering word, grossly overused and ineptly devalued in everyday hype and blurb. Yet, tired as it is, it will have to do. Nothing else conveys that sense of place that can inspire a blissful contentment.

Andrew Rayner

We of the sea come to know each other quickly; our loves, like our hates, are born of sudden dangers.

Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

She loved the sea. She liked the sharp salty smell of the air, and the vastness of the horizons bounded only by a vault of azure sky above. It made her feel small, but free as well.

George R.R. Martin

The warmly cool, clear, ringing, perfumed, overflowing, redundant days, were as crystal goblets of Persian sherbet, heaped up—flaked up, with rose-water snow.

Herman Melville

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

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

Thing about boats is, you can always sell them if you don't like them. Can't sell kids.

Lin Pardey

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

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

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

...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

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

Now I remembered a captain's honor and his only duty: to bring his crew back alive.

Carsten Jensen

Flying might not be all plain sailing, but the fun of it is worth the price.

Amelia Earhart

We are all born in a little port but not all of us sail the vast oceans! Majority remains in the port!

Mehmet Murat ildan

A ship on the port always waits for you to sail to the oceans!

Mehmet Murat ildan

My belief assumed a form that it commonly assumes among the educated people of our time. This belief was expressed by the word "progress." At the time it seemed to me that this word had meaning. Like any living individual, I was tormented by questions of how to live better. I still had not understood that in answering that one must live according to progress, I was talking just like a person being carried along in a boat by the waves and the wind; without really answering, such a person replies to the only important question-"Where are we to steer?"-by saying, "We are being carried somewhere.

Leo Tolstoy

I can't control the wind but I can adjust the sail.

Ricky Skaggs

It’s better to be the rooster than the feather duster.

Jimmy Spithill

To reach a port we must set sail –Sail, not tie at anchorSail, not drift.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

I wrapped my fingers around the first light I saw and felt all at once so happy and so sad and so free. My hand was cold somehow as I lifted the tiny star out of the water and brought its trembling, burning form to my face. I kissed it gently and laughed like a child as my face seemed to become angelic for a few moments. The star laughed back at me in little sweet notes, and I released it back to the sea. I can still feel the star in my hands to this day. You can have your noctiluca scintillans, your petty protists in the sea. I prefer to sail among the stars.

K.B. Ezzell

Life is a voyage across troubled waters where our days are often spent clinging to the top of the highest mast, scouting for a comforting glimpse of shore.

Richelle E. Goodrich

Calm sailing doesn't come from calm waters, it comes from having a good navigator; a good crew and a good vessel.

Anthony T.Hincks

If lighthouse becomes a burning candle, flickered upon ocean's insanity.Your sailing heart there anchors to handle the obsessed breeze towards sand dune's vanity.

Munia Khan

my mine ,I searching for you ..long time in the trip time walls,searching you in was me..I never felt lonely,this world always singeven at grave heart'sbeing numb to hearyour song is ..What the dealt of this life saidso breathe in wind singingsinking sailing in waves,and breathe out find me..in the rain and riversbut you and me are the ocean,you know ? in long time agothe time in this room make you forget..keep searching time with me and i.put the name your mine to heart of golduntil you coming home,behind the tumble light waiting.

Ridwan Nurwansyah

She holds you like a whore in the night, but she'll take your soul and not think twice.

Micheal Rivers

So exquisitely perfect was the darkness of the heavens above that one would have difficulty believing it was a prison to the passengers and crew of The Black Witch.

Micheal Rivers

Vast tracts of ocean, whether Polynesia, Micronesia or Melanesia, contain island populations that remain outside the modern world. They know about it, they may have traveled to it, they appreciate artifacts and medical help from it, but they live their daily lives much as hundreds of generations of ancestors before them, without money, electricity, phones, TV or manufactured food.

Andrew Rayner

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

For I say there is no other thing that is worse than the sea is for breaking a man, even though he may a very strong one.

Homer

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

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...

Van Morrison

hark, now hear the sailors cry, smell the sea, and feel the sky let your soul & spirit fly, into the mystic...

Van Morrison

I have a hunch the world is darker than I could ever imagine and there is less reason for hope than I am able to see. It makes me grateful there is only so much I can see, and I am left mostly with questions. Grateful, also, that hope is not a reasonable thing. Though I have seen my share of darkness, I am spared perceiving much of it. And here is why I hope beyond a reasonable doubt: I think that as the darkness grows, it makes the dim lights that are left seem brighter. And the darker it gets, the brighter the light appears, until it is so luminous, eventually, even falling shadows are filled with it.

Brian K. Friesen

You don't throw a compass overboard because the ocean is calm.

Matshona Dhliwayo

A small boat that sails the river is better than a large ship that sinks in the sea.

Matshona Dhliwayo

Turn over the rudder in God's name, and sail with the wind heaven sends us.

Catherine of Siena

Simply sailing in a new direction you could enlarge the world

Allen Curnow

Maria didn’t fear the sea but, as taught by her father, she respected its power. In her experience the ocean had no intent to drown travellers.

Sara Sheridan

At the end of the day…we are anchoring into the peaceful lagoon, smiling at the majestic sun and its flirting rays, slowly slipping into the glittering ballroom of immense night skies, sipping on the platinum moon liquor under the blues of rippling waves kissing my golden foot hanging over the board of gently rocking boat, and diving into the bed of galaxies whispering magical stories of their eternal lives connecting souls…till the dawn…

Oksana Rus

13. If you’re going through difficult times today, hold steady. It will change soon. If you are experiencing smooth sailing and easy times now, brace yourself. It will change soon. The only thing you can be certain of is change.

James C. Dobson

The winds of fortune tend to favour the sails of those who politely yell out to it, 'Nice to meet you!

Nabil Sabio Azadi

You don’t command wind in the direction it blows, but you command a ship in the direction it sails.

Matshona Dhliwayo

A sailor is not defined as much by how many seas he has sailed than by how many storms he has overcome.

Matshona Dhliwayo

There have been times on this trip I’ve been convinced that GPS was wrong.

Chris Robb

There is no more thrilling sensation I know of than sailing. It comes as near to flying as man has got to yet - except in dreams.

Jerome K. Jerome

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 D. Roosevelt

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

John F Kennedy

An alternative — and better — definition of reality can be found by naming some of its components: air, sunlight, wind, water, the motion of waves, the patterns of clouds before a coming storm. These elements, unlike 20th-century office routines, have been here since before life appeared on this planet, and they will continue long after office routines are gone. They are understood by everyone, not just a small segment of a highly advanced society. When considered on purely logical grounds, they are more real than the extremely transitory lifestyles of the modern civilization the depressed ones want to return to.If this is so, then it follows that those who see sailing as an escape from reality have their understanding of sailing and reality backward. Sailing is not an escape, but a return to and a confrontation of a reality from which modern civilization is itself an escape. For centuries, man suffered from the reality of an Earth that was too dark or too hot or too cold for his comfort, and to escape this he invented complex systems of lighting, heating and air conditioning.Sailing rejects these and returns to the old realities of dark and heat and cold. Modern civilization has found radio, television, movies, nightclubs and a huge variety of mechanized entertainment to titillate our senses and help us escape from the apparent boredom of the Earth and the Sun, the wind and the stars. Sailing returns to these ancient realities.

Robert M. Pirsig

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

Richard Halliburton

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

Sailing Quotes

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