The Sea Quotes

“The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul. Not drowned entirely, though. Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of the unwarped primal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes; and the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps; and among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters heaved the colossal orbs. He saw God’s foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad. So man’s insanity is heaven’s sense; and wandering from all mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“Tell her this
And more,—
That the king of the seas
Weeps too, old, helpless man.
The bustling fates
Heap his hands with corpses
Until he stands like a child
With surplus of toys.”
― Stephen Crane, The Complete Poems of Stephen Crane

“The sea is better than a mother. You can love your mother, and she still might leave you. You can love or hate the sea, but it will always be there. Forever. The sea has been the center of her life. It has nurtured her and stolen from her, but it has never left.”
― Lisa See, The Island of Sea Women

“Later, when she sees the photographs for the first time, she will be surprised at how calm her face looks - how steady her gaze, how erect her posture. In the picture her eyes will be slightly closed, and there will be a shadow on her neck. The shawl will be draped around her shoulders, and her hands will rest in her lap. In this deceptive photograph, she will look a young woman who is not at all disturbed or embarrassed, but instead appears to be rather serious. And she wonders if, in its ability to deceive, photography is not unlike the sea, which may offer a benign surface to the observe even as it conceals depths and current below.”
― Anita Shreve, Fortune's Rocks

“You're wasting your time
Giving me that speech
you try to don't reach:
your smile <3

You're holding your tears
Your insides are dead
You're eating your fears,
In a cigarette.

You've waited too long,
to finally see...

Sunshine in the rain
is as deep as the sea.”
― Ed Sheeran

“For all that has been said of the love that certain natures (on shore) have professed for it, for all the celebrations it has been the object of in prose and song, the sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.”
― Joseph Conrad

“Chester stood on the shore watching the waves. Some rose, broke and were subsumed by those that followed. Some danced, their white frothy tops rising and falling rhythmically like a ballerina’s white tutu and in their joy they made progress. Others lazily rolled in and fell short of any prize. Occasionally one roared and raced in as if to capture as much of the land as possible.”
― Anna Faversham, Immortality: This Is Probably a Novel

“My greatest enemies are Women and the Sea.”
― Iain Banks, The Wasp Factory

“Beneath us lie the lights of the herring fleet. The cliffs vanish. Rippling small, rippling grey, innumerable waves spread beneath us. I touch nothing. I see nothing. We may sink and settle on the waves. The sea will drum in my ears. The white petals will be darkened with sea water. They will float for a moment and then sink. Rolling me over the waves will shoulder me under. Everything falls in a tremendous shower, dissolving me.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves

“It ended a few feet from where he sat. The sea, broad and vast, with all its mighty force, ended right there before his eyes. Be it the edge of time or space, there is nothing so awe-inspiring as a border. To be here at this place with his three companions, at this marvellous border between land and sea, struck him as being very similar to being alive as one age ending and another beginning, like being part of a great moment in history. And then too the tide of their own era, in which he and Kiyoaki lived, also had to have an appointed time and ebb, a shore on which to break, a limit beyond which it could not go.

The sea ended right there before his eyes. As he watched the final surge of each wave as it drained into the sand, the final thrust of mighty power that had come down the countless centuries, he was struck by the pathos of it all. At that very point, a grand pan-oceanic enterprise that spanned the world went awry and ended in annihilation.”
― Yukio Mishima, Spring Snow

“البحر هو مصدر الالهام الاول والمطر قطرات الوحي”
― Mahmoud Khaliel

“You do not know', said the Princess of Augustenberg to Herr Gottingen, 'what a place this is for making you clean. That sea breeze has blown straight through my bonnet and my clothes, and through the very flesh and the bones of me, until my heart and spirit are swept, sun-dried, and salted.”
― Isak Dinesen, Seven Gothic Tales

“Some men die at ebb tide; some at low water; some at the full of the flood;—and I feel now like a billow that’s all one crested comb, Starbuck. I am old;—shake hands with me, man.”

Their hands met; their eyes fastened; Starbuck’s tears the glue.

“Oh, my captain, my captain!—noble heart—go not—go not!—see, it’s a brave man that weeps; how great the agony of the persuasion then!”

“Lower away!”—cried Ahab, tossing the mate’s arm from him. “Stand by the crew!”

In an instant the boat was pulling round close under the stern.

“The sharks! the sharks!” cried a voice from the low cabin-window there; “O master, my master, come back!”

But Ahab heard nothing; for his own voice was high-lifted then; and the boat leaped on.”
― Herman Melville, Moby - Dick: or the Whale

“He tugged on Cinders’ reins and guided her to Nerissa’s right. If looks could kill, he’d be as melted as a candle placed on a hunk of red-hot iron. Something about him just rubbed her the wrong way, he supposed.


It wouldn’t the first time someone disliked him, and he doubted it would be the last.”
― Madisyn Carlin, Key

“it is the end of july and
the idle breeze of gentle childhood
befogs my mind once more,
as the foreign dull heat holds my body
so close i feel it’s scarce and quiet breathing
brush against my stomach.
i have not written since paris
and i feel true in my youth at last.
the sun strips me of my fatigued masquerading while summer
feeds me plump peaches and wrinkly with ripeness figs ;
softly reciting the writings of sylvia plath and patti smith.
my bare feet greedily absorb the coolness of the cerulean tiles carpeting the guest bathroom floor.
the sea covers my ears
it’s waves plaiting my hair with the pacific touch of a mother
lulling me to a somnolent state
as the lenient light of the afternoon
blinks through my fluttering eyes
and the sparse flare of wind relieves
the creases between my eyebrows.”
― adina s.

“To bear witness to the fury of the sea, to have your life held entirely in its hands—to live or die depending on its whim—must be terrifying, indeed.”
― Kell Woods, Upon a Starlit Tide

“It is said the Sea has no mercy. It is said the Sea is heartless, the breaker of all ties, the unmoorer of all hopes, the queen of despair. And these are all true, but never let it be said that the Sea lies.”
― Sarah K.L. Wilson, Dance With The Sword

“Sometimes, leaving the road, I would walk into the sea and pull it voluptuously over my head and stand momentarily drowned in the cool blind silence, in a salt-stung neutral nowhere.”
― Laurie Lee, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning

“I remember explaining explaining what I saw to one brother who couldn't see the sea.

"I see an endless body of blue," I said, "with a soul that courses through the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean, and the Suez Canal, all the way to the Red Sea and the western coast of Yemen, where in the seaside town of Hudaydah, my father is at the market buying fish for a special meal. And when the tide comes in and the air is heavy with salt, my mind takes me straight to the port city of Aden and weekends I spent there with friends after high school. We'd lie on the beach and imagine our lives and the wives and families we would one day have.”
― Mansoor Adayfi, Don't Forget Us Here: Lost and Found at Guantanamo

“Bahr sang in Arabic, Pashto, Persian, and English, but even if our brothers or the guards didn't understand the words, his voice was enough to free us all from our caged lives, even if only for a moment. Music and poetry are the soul's languages, and when Bahr sang, all the blocks quieted down so they could listen. His voice and his songs carried with me into solitary confinement, where I listened to Bahr and the sea in my head.”
― Mansoor Adayfi, Don't Forget Us Here: Lost and Found at Guantanamo

“She was meant to spend the rest of her life doing her part to remind people that Earth was not so much land as water, that this planet was a living thing to be cared for and protected and used with care, not to be drained and littered to the point of extinction.
Machines are sophisticated but they cannot read love. They cannot tell researchers what it feels like to be part of the sea, to be a blip of arms and legs, a small cavern of a mouth, skimming the briny surfaces of the world. Some people wonder what it would be like to fly. Etta already knows. So she keeps flying through the water and she will keep on fighting to protect it”
― Charmaine Wilkerson, Black Cake

“A view of the sea drives people crazy—in a positive sense, it calms them, but it disturbs them too. There must be some atavistic link between the eye, the soul and water, extensive waters of mystic depths and an inaccessible, dark bottom. Some connections quiver, are inexplicable.”
― Daša Drndić, EEG

“The ocean is truly an immeasurably beautiful thing for a man to see," the old man thought. "There are times when she is cruel, but those times are easily forgotten when she is kind and gentle as she is now, or when the sun is on her, warming her and lulling her to sleep.”
― T.M Cicinski, Where The Waves Break Upon The Shore

“The old man liked the waves and felt a strange companionship with them, though he was jealous of them also. They were travelling to the same place that he was, yet they would be there long before him and there was nothing along the way that could endanger them or prevent them reaching it.”
― T.M Cicinski, Where The Waves Break Upon The Shore

“It is not a garment I cast off this day, but a skin that I tear with my own hands.
Nor is it a thought I leave behind me, but a heart made sweet with hunger and with thirst.
Yet I cannot tarry longer.
The sea that calls all things unto her calls me, and I must embark.
For to stay, though the hours burn in the night, is to freeze and crystallize and be bound in a mould.”
― Kahlil Gibran

“It is death's || sad sleep || that I grieve.
For the court, || and Cunedda's || shroud.
I long for || a sea inlet, || for the sea's flow,
For the herd || and hearth || I'm longing.”
― Taliesin, The Book of Taliesin: Poems of Warfare and Praise in an Enchanted Britain

“Father,” it said on the side facing up…“The sea!” the note said. “The sea!” It was not signed, and said nothing of where he was going or when he would be back or why he must leave. Still, Ned’s father knew all the same. The sea meant I love you. The sea meant I will one day return. The sea meant I must find the world and hold the world and live in the world. And I must love the world….As much as I love you.”
― Kelly Barnhill, The Witch's Boy

“One morning, you will wake up
And the ocean will be calm
You will shed all of those other skins
And step into the water, fresh and new”
― Sarah Thompson, Murmurations

“The sea was beautiful, and unchanged, and its beauty was part of its fidelity. It was just as I remembered it, and this made it seems as if I too were being remembered by it.”
― Hisham Matar, My Friends

“The sea soaks my ankles and then recedes, it soaks my knees, then my thighs; it wraps its tender arm around my waist and caresses my breasts; it embraces my neck and presses against my shoulders. I immerse myself in the sea, fully. I give myself over to its steady force, its gentle possession, holding nothing back”
― Juan Rulfo, Pedro Páramo