OCEAN QUOTES III
quotations about the ocean
Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean--roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin--his control
Stops with the shore.
LORD BYRON
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
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
He laid his hand upon "the Ocean's mane,"
And played familiar with his hoary locks.
ROBERT POLLOK
The Course of Time
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
The ocean is the throbbing heart of the universe, and its every wave a mound over those who have no graves.
MISS C. TALBOTT
attributed, Day's Collacon
I will mount a long wind some day and break the heavy waves,
And set my cloudy sail straight and bridge the deep, deep sea.
LI BAI
"The Hard Road"
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
There was a magic about the sea. People were drawn to it. People wanted to love by it, swim in it, play in it, look at it. It was a living thing that was as unpredictable as a great stage actor: it could be calm and welcoming, opening its arms to embrace it's audience one moment, but then could explode with its stormy tempers, flinging people around, wanting them out, attacking coastlines, breaking down islands. It had a playful side too, as it enjoyed the crowd, tossed the children about, knocked lilos over, tipped over windsurfers, occasionally gave sailors helping hands; all done with a secret little chuckle.
CECELIA AHERN
The Gift
In front of the ocean, man faces infinity, life, death.
ALAIN CARAYOL
"The sea is not another country", The Eye of Photography, January 28, 2017
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
Those who live by the sea can hardly form a single thought of which the sea would not be part.
HERMANN BROCH
foreword, The Spell
But to the lover of nature--and who has the courage to avow himself aught else?--the sea-shore can never be monotonous. The swirl and sweep of ever-shifting waters, the flying mist of foam breaking away into a gray and ghostly distance down the beach, the eternal drone of ocean, mingling itself with one's talk by day and with the light dance-music in the parlors by night--all these are active sources of a passive pleasure. And to lie at length upon the tawny sand, watching, through half-closed eyes, the heaving waves, that mount against a dark blue sky wherein great silvery masses of cloud float idly on, whiter than the sunlit sails that fade and grow and fade along the horizon, while some fair damsel sits close by, reading ancient ballads of a simple metre, or older legends of love and romance--tell me, my eater of the fashionable lotus, is not this a diversion well worth your having?
GEORGE ARNOLD
"Why Thomas Was Discharged", Stories by American Authors
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
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
What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams.
WERNER HERZOG
attributed, Beowulf on Film: Adaptations and Variations
The land is dearer for the sea,
The ocean for the shore.
LUCY LARCOM
On the Beach
Once more upon the waters! yet once more!
And the waves bound beneath me as a steed
That knows his rider.
LORD BYRON
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
The ocean is a big place, even for a whale.
KIERAN MULVANEY
"The loneliest whale in the world", Taranaki Daily News, January 27, 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
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