Shipwreck Quotes

“The only sea I saw Was the seesaw sea With you riding on it. Lie down, lie easy. Let me shipwreck in your thighs.”
― Dylan Thomas, Under Milk Wood

“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

“Well, father, in the shipwreck of life, for life is an eternal shipwreck of our hopes, I cast into the sea my useless encumbrance, that is all, and I remain with my own will, disposed to live perfectly alone, and, consequently, perfectly free. (Eugenie to her father)”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“You see yourself as a shipwreck, but we see your treasure glowing inside, beneath the oceans in your eyes.”
― Curtis Tyrone Jones

“My thoughts are drowned, and shipwreck seems sweet to me in this sea.”
― Giacomo Leopardi

“You don't have to be a graduate of Saint-Cyr to know that all wrecks end up on shore.”
― Henri Charrière, Papillon

“Life is, in itself and forever, shipwreck. To be shipwrecked is not to drown. The poor human being, feeling himself sinking into the abyss, moves his arms to keep afloat. This movement of the arms which is his reaction against his own destruction, is culture — a swimming stroke.... But ten centuries of cultural continuity brings with it — among many advantages the great disadvantage that man believes himself safe, loses the feeling of shipwreck, and his culture proceeds to burden itself with parasitic and lymphatic matter. Some discontinuity must therefore intervene, in order that man may renew his feeling of peril, the substance of his life. All his life-saving equipment must fail, then his arms will once again move redeemingly.”
― José Ortega y Gasset

“There are some secret moving Springs in the Affections, which when they are set a going by some Object in View, or be it some Object, tho’ not in View, yet render’d present to the Mind by the Power of Imagination, that Motion carries out the Soul by its Impetuosity to such violent eager Embracings of the Object, that the Absence of it is insupportable.”
― Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe

“So how long do I have to pack?”
― Don Darkes, 6692 Pisces the Sailfish

“Rosamund, taken hold of by an emotion stronger than her own--hurried along in a new movement which gave all things some new, awful, undefined aspect--could find no words, but involuntarily she put her lips to Dorothea's forehead which was very near her, and then for a minute the two women clasped each other as if they had been in a shipwreck.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch

“There is a shipwreck somewhere inside me”
― N.L. Shompole

“Wave after wave, Ralph followed the rise and fall until something of the remoteness of the sea numbed his brain. Then gradually the almost infinite size of this water forced itself oh his attention. This was the divider, the barrier. On the other side of the island, swathed at midday with mirage, defended by the shield of the quiet lagoon, one might dream of rescue; but here, faced by the brute obtuseness of the ocean, the miles of division, one was clamped down, one was helpless, one was condemned, one was-”
― William Golding, Lord of the Flies

“The greatest ideas are the simplest. Now there was something to be done they worked with passion.”
― William Golding, Lord of the Flies

“Tendrils of mist began to creep into the landscape, like the slow fingers of a dream. They covered the river's surface and blanketed the air so thoroughly that Musashi had to reach down with a pole to reassure himself that he was still on the Nile.”
― F.J. Doucet, Short Tales from Earth's Final Chapter: Book 4

“Shipwreck, as seen by a survivor, is the figure of an initial philosophical experience.”
― Hans Blumenburg

“That was creepy, honestly. Pirates and shipwrecks and graveyards, oh my.”
― Rebecca Behrens, Summer of Lost and Found

“But shipwrecks were rarely like that, she’d learned later, proud and upright, perched whimsically on the seafloor. Wrecks were wrecked, sure and violent. Shattered and flattened, rotting edges under sand. There was no lovely way for something meant to conquer the sea to instead be torn apart by it.”
― Phoebe Rowe, Swan Light

“Det va bra dokker kom. Æ satt just her og tænkte på om ho Hilvarda huska på å læmpe ut monsen før ho la sæ i går, så han ikkje pessa i kråa.”
― Arthur Arntzen, Dokker kan flire

“Thi Søen tager saa mangen;
Her sidder en Encke, som Manden har mist
Og hisset en anden, har Skilsmisse frist
Hvis Mand er fordrugnet for langen.
Man spørger en Fader, som Sønner har stoor,
Hvor er dine Sønner? de blev udi Fior,
Man fritter en Søn om sin Fader;
Strax skal hand dig grædende svare med hast,
Min Fader blev borte med Tackel og Mast,
Den Sorg mig saa snart icke lader.”
― Petter Dass, The Trumpet of Nordland

“Mig mindes vel og den u-lyckelig Stund,
Da henved fem hundrede Kroppe til Grund,
Omkomme for U-veyr paa Folden
Hvor ey kunde føres en Traad eller Klud;
Af tusinde Siele, som seilede ud,
Kom neppe tre hundred beholden.”
― Petter Dass, The Trumpet of Nordland

“Saa kan hver Fornuftig vel dømme ved sig,
Naar Mennisker friske maa legges i Liig;
Hvad Ynk da maa være paa færde!
En Broder ey anden at frelse formaar,
Den stercke, den svage, har ligedan Kaar,
Dem hielper ey Læg eller Lærde.”
― Petter Dass, The Trumpet of Nordland

“Her flyter en Aare, her Tilger og Vrag,
Her Tofter saa mange som Steene paa Tag,
Her Kropper og Legemer døde.”
― Petter Dass, The Trumpet of Nordland

“Life is, in itself and forever, shipwreck. To be shipwrecked is not to drown. The poor human being, feeling himself sinking into the abyss, moves his arms to keep afloat. This movement of the arms which is his reaction against his own destruction is culture - a swimming stroke...”
― Raf Simons

“A good swimmer is one who knows how to swim through the river of life without drowning.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, Song of a Nature Lover

“There were eighty-four men aboard the Ocean Ranger when it sank. Of these, sixty-nine were Canadians and fifteen were Americans. Of the sixty-nine Canadians, fifty-six were from Newfoundland, five from Alberta, four from Ontario, three from Nova Scotia and one from Québec. Not a single one was rescued.”
― Tony F. Powell, Against the Wind: Hope Sees The Invisible

“The only illumination came from the countless stars in the sky above. Not even the moon was there to witness the devastation.”
― Charlotte Anne Hamilton, The Breath Between Waves

“There was no sure, steady decline into the water, but rather it felt like something was pulling them down. As if the titans the ship had been named after had wrapped a hand around her, and were drawing her deep into the depths of the ocean.”
― Charlotte Anne Hamilton, The Breath Between Waves

“On January 23, Master Thomas Clark, who had so devotedly protected his young son, died, and the following day his son died, too. Two days later, the cook, Thomas Maclean - the oldest man on the voyage, who had endured hurricanes and scurvy and shipwreck - took his last breath. He was eighty-two.”
― David Grann, The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder

“The ship is arranged with the greatest nicety; her decks are as white as snow - her hammocks are stowed with care - her ropes are taught - her yards square - her guns run out - and a guard of marines, under the orders of a lieutenant, prepared to receive every member of the court with the honour due to his rank... The great cabin is prepared, with a long table covered with a green cloth. Pens, ink, paper, prayer-books, and the Articles of War are laid round to every member.”
― David Grann, The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder

“When a ship sinks in a storm, if you don't blame the captain, the crew, the weather analysts, or the engineers who built the ship, then you have to blame the storm and take it to court!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan