OCEAN QUOTES III

quotations about the ocean

Ocean quote

Hail, thou multitudinous ocean! Thy fluctuating waters wash the varied shores of the world, and while they disjoin nations whom a nearer connection would involve in eternal war, they circulate their arts and their labors, and give health and plenty to mankind.

CHRISTOPH STURM

attributed, Day's Collacon


What are the wild waves saying,
Sister, the whole day long,
That ever amid our playing
I hear but their low, lone song?

JOSEPH E. CARPENTER

What Are the Wild Waves Saying?


To their inhabitants the sea is every thing. Their hopes and fears, their gains and losses, their joys and sorrows, are linked with it; and the largeness of the ocean has moulded their feelings and their characters. They are in a measure partakers of its immensity and its mystery. The commonest of their men have wrestled with the powers of the air, and the might of wind, and wave, and icy cold. The weakest of their women have felt the hallowing touch of sudden calamity, and of long, lonely, life-and-death, watches.

AMELIA E. BARR

A Daughter of Fife

Tags: Amelia E. Barr


Miles of ocean, and oh, the vastness of it, shadows and salt, fierce dark water filled with alien emptiness and the monsters that lived there. Imagine falling into that water and knowing it was below you, even as you treaded water, desperately trying to remain on the surface; the terror of the realization of what was under you--miles and miles of nothingness and monsters, blackness stretching away everywhere and the sea floor so far below--would tear your mind apart.

CASSANDRA CLARE

Lady Midnight


There is an energy to the ocean in particular, an element of danger that requires a giving over of self, that makes swimming in heavy water a kind of holy communion. I see swimming as a way to get to know a place with an intimacy that I otherwise wouldn't have. To swim in the ocean is to immerse myself in wildness, to feel the way the water rises and falls like breath.

BONNIE TSUI

"In Hawaii, a Swimmer's Communion With the Wild Ocean", New York Times, February 2, 2017


The great depths of the ocean are entirely unknown to us; soundings cannot reach them. What fanes in those remote depths, what beings live twelve or fifteen miles beneath the surface of the waters, what is the organization of the animals we can scarcely conjecture?

JULES VERNE

Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea


Nor is there in the whole range of nature a grander or more magnificent scene than the ocean in a storm, when deep calls unto deep, and its liquid mountains roll and break against each other, when it dashes to pieces, in the wantonness of its power, the strongest, structures which man can rear for the purpose of floating over its billows; then it is that the proudest and bravest tremble and quail at the roaring and thunder of its waters.

PETER WHITTLE

Marina; or, An historical and descriptive account of Southport, Lytham, and Blackpool


The breaking waves dashed high
On a stern and rock-bound coast,
And the woods against a stormy sky,
Their giant branches toss'd.

FELICIA HEMANS

The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers in New England


And oh! if the wave could speak in any other language than that of its own harsh thunder, how many tales of agony and suffering might it unfold!

PETER WHITTLE

Marina; or, An historical and descriptive account of Southport, Lytham, and Blackpool


I turned away from the ocean
as not to fall for its plea
for it used to seduce and consume me
and there was this one night
a few years back and I was not yet accustomed to farewells
and just like now I stood waving long after the ship was gone.
But I was younger then and easily fooled
and the ocean was deep and dark and blue
and I took my shoes off to let the water freeze my bones.
I waded until I could no longer walk and it was too cold to swim but still
I kept on walking at the bottom of the sea for I could not tell the
difference between the ocean and the lack of someone I loved and I had
not yet learned how the task of moving on is as necessary as survival.

CHARLOTTE ERIKSSON

attributed, goodreads


The ocean is home to all of us, and some part of us knows that.

SHEILA HURST

"Author's Book Inspired By Woods Hole And The Ocean", Cape News, January 18, 2017


The ocean and the wind and the stars and the moon will all teach you many things.

JANE ROBERTS

Emir's Education In The Proper Use of Magical Powers


It is said by the Eldar that in water there lives yet the echo of the Music of the Ainur more than in any substance that is in this Earth; and many of the Children of Ilúvatar hearken still unsated to the voices of the Sea, and yet know not for what they listen.

J. R. R. TOLKIEN

The Silmarillion

Tags: J. R. R. Tolkien


The ocean is powerful, but not invincible. It is rich, but not inexhaustible. For humans to thrive in the coming centuries, we will have to be smarter about how we approach the 70 percent of our planet the ocean covers.

GARY E. KNELL

"Securing a Bold, Blue, and Prosperous Future for Our Ocean", National Geographic, January 27, 2017


The ocean is a big place, even for a whale.

KIERAN MULVANEY

"The loneliest whale in the world", Taranaki Daily News, January 27, 2017


Past are three summers since she first beheld
The ocean; all around the child await
Some exclamation of amazement here:
She coldly said, her long-lasht eyes abased,
Is this the mighty ocean? is this all?

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR

Gebir

Tags: Walter Savage Landor


I never was on the dull, tame shore,
But I loved the great sea more and more.

BARRY CORNWALL

The Sea


Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

Thanatopsis

Tags: William Cullen Bryant


We were born before the wind
Also younger than the sun
Ere the bonnie boat was won as we sailed into the mystic
Hark, now hear the sailors cry
Smell the sea and feel the sky
Let your soul and spirit fly into the mystic

VAN MORRISON

Into the Mystic


Tut! the best thing I know between France and England is the sea.

DOUGLAS JERROLD

Jerrold's Wit