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ocean quotes

  • I'll love you dear, I'll love you Till China and Africa meet And the river jumps over the mountain And the salmon sing in the street, I'll love you till the ocean Is folded and hung up to dry And the seven starsgo squawking Like geese about the sky.

    -W(ystan) H(ugh) Auden
      'As I  Walked Out One Evening'.

  • En vano te hemos prodigado el oce  ano, En vano el sol, que vieron los maravillados ojos de Whitman; Has gastado los an‹  os y te has gastado, Y todav|a no has escrito el poema. We have lavished the ocean on you in vain, In vain the sun that was seen by Whitman's astounded eyes; You have spent your years and you have spent yourself, But you haven't written the poem yet.

    -Jorge Luis Borges
      El otro, el mismo,'Mateo XX V, 30' ('Matthew 25:30').

  • Now Sark rins o'er the Solway sands, An' Tweed rins to the ocean, To mark where England's province stands, Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!

    - Robert Burns
      'Such a parcel of rogues in a nation', stanza1.

  • Where rose the mountains, there to him were friends; Where rolled the ocean, thereon was his home; Where a blue sky, and glowing clime, extends, He had the passion and the power to roam.

    -Rochdale
    ^18  Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto 3, stanza13.

  • As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean.

    - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
      'The Rime of the  Ancient Mariner', pt.2.

  • We are like icebergs in the ocean: one-eighth part consciousness and the rest submerged beneath the surface of articulate apprehension.

    -William Alexander Gerhardie
      Polyglots, ch.14.

  • She hears the ocean protesting against separation, but she hears the sea protesting against union. She follows therefore her physical destination when she protests against the two situations, both equally unnatural separation and union.

    - Henry Grattan
    Of Ireland. Quoted in Conor Cruise O'Brien Parnell and His Party (1957).

  • Full manya gem of purest ray serene The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear: Full manya flower is born to blush unseen And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

    -Thomas Gray
    Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, l.52^6.

  • We are†a one-and-a-half ocean navy with a three- ocean commitment.

    -Thomas Bibb Hayward
      Congressional testimony, reported in the NewYork Times, 11  Apr.

  • Oceanracing islikestandingundera coldshower tearing up »5 notes.

    -William Randolph Hearst
    Quoted in Colin  Jarman The Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).

  • The movie-makers are able to put more reality into a picture about theterrors of life at the ocean bottom than into a tale of two Milwaukeeans in love.

    - Ben Hecht
      In news reports,13  Jun.

  • From earth's wide bounds, from ocean's farthest coast, Through gates of pearl streams in the countless host, Singing to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, Alleluia!

    -WilliamWalsham How
      'For  All the Saints', in Earl Nelson Hymns for Saints' Days.

  • The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run, we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again.

    -John Maynard, 1st Baron Keynes (of Tilton)
      A  Tract on Monetary Reform.

  • Oui, quel est le plus profond, le plus impe  ne  trable des deux: l'oce  an ou le c½ur humain? What is deeper, more impenetrable: the ocean or the human heart?

    - Comte de properly Isidore Ducasse Lautre  amont
      Les Chants de Maldoror, pt.1.

  • Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness; So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another, Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.

    - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
      Tales of a Wayside Inn, pt.3.'The Theologian's Tale: Elizabeth'.

  • Mairg an t-so' i l a ch |' air fairge ian mo r  marbh na h-albann. Pity the eye that sees on the ocean the great dead bird of Scotland.

    - Sorley Gaelic name Somhairle MacGill-Eain MacLean
      'An t-Eilean','The Island'.

  • I'll have them fly to India for gold, Ransack the ocean for orient pearl. 552

    - Christopher Marlowe
    c.1592  Doctor Faustus (published1604), act1, sc.1.

  • How am I glutted with conceit of this! Shall I make spirits fetch me what I please, Resolve me of all ambiguities, Perform what desperate enterprise I will? I'll have them fly to India for gold, Ransack the ocean for orient pearl, And search all corners of the new found world For pleasant fruits and princely delicates.

    - Christopher Marlowe
    c.1592  Doctor Faustus (published1604), act1, sc.1.

  • But peaceful was the night Wherein the Prince of Light His reign of peace upon the earth began: The winds, with wonder whist, Smoothly the waters kissed, Whispering new joys to the mild ocea'  n, Who now hath quite forgot to rave, While birds of calm sit brooding on the charme'  d wave.

    -John Milton
      'On the Morning of Christ's Nativity','The Hymn', stanza 3.

  • Weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep no more, For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead, Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor, So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed, And yet anon repairs his drooping head, And tricks his beams, and with new spangled ore, Flames in the forehead of the morning sky: So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high, Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves.

    -John Milton
      Lycidas, l.165^73.

  • When I consider how my light is spent, E're half my days, in this dark world and wide, And that one talent which is death to hide, Lodg'd with me useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, least he returning chide, Doth God exact day-labour, light denied, I fondly ask; But patience to prevent That murmur, soon replies,God doth not need Either man's work or his own gifts, who best Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best, his state Is kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed And post o'er land and ocean without rest: Theyalso serve who only stand and wait.

    -John Milton
    c.1652  Sonnets, no.16,'When I Consider'.

  • I know not what I mayappear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

    - Sir Isaac Newton
    Quoted in D Brewster (ed) Memoirs of Newton (1855), vol.2, ch.27.

  • I have crossed an ocean I have lost my tongue from the root of the old one a new one has sprung

    - Grace Nichols
      i is a long memoried woman, epilogue.

  • If the ocean was pure mind and I was a wave, I would be in terror if Itried to distinguish myself fromthe water that produced me.What is a wave without water, and what is a mind without God?

    - Hugh Prather
      The Quiet Answer.

  • I saw dawn upon them like the sun a vision of a time when all men walk proudly through the earth and the bombs and missiles lie at the bottom of the ocean like the bones of dinosaurs buried under the shale of eras.

    - Dudley Randall
      Cities Burning,'Roses and Revolutions'.

  • Beneath is spread like a green sea The waveless plain of Lombardy, Bounded by the vaporous air, Islanded by cities fair; Underneath Day's azure eyes, Ocean's nursling,Venice lies, A peopled labyrinth of walls, Amphitrite's destined halls.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      'Lines written amongst the Euganean Hills', l.90^7.

  • Sun-girt city, thou hast been Ocean's child, and then his queen; Now is come a darker day, And thou soon must be his prey.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      'Lines written amongst the Euganean Hills', l.115^18.

  • I am the daughter of Earth and Water, And the nursling of the Sky; I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores; I change, but I cannot die, For after the rain when with never a stain The pavilion of Heaven is bare, And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams Build up the blue dome of air, I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, And out of the caverns of rain, Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, I arise and unbuild it again.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      'The Cloud'.

  • The fountains mingle with the river, And the rivers with the ocean; The winds of heaven mix for ever With a sweet emotion; Nothing in the world is single; All things, bya law divine, In one spirit meet and mingle. Why not I with thine?

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      'Love and Philosophy'.

  • An admiral red, whose only notion, (A butterfly poised on a pigtailed ocean) Is of the peruked sea whose swell Breaks on the flowerless rocks of Hell.

    - Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell
      Fa c° ade,'En Famille'.

  • On one side lay the Ocean, and on one Laya great water, and the moon was full.

    -Tennyson
      Idylls of the King,'The Passing of Arthur', l.179^80.

  • For I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth; but hearing often-times The still, sad music of humanity, Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue. And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man.

    -William Wordsworth
      'Lines composed a few miles aboveTintern Abbey, on revisiting the banks of theWye', l.88^99.

  • What soul was his, when, from the naked top Of some bold headland, he beheld the sun Rise up, and bathe the world in light! He looked Ocean and earth, the solid frame of earth And ocean's liquid mass, in gladness lay Beneath him:Far and wide the clouds were touched, And in their silent faces he could read Unutterable love.

    -William Wordsworth
      'The Excursion', bk.1, l.198^205.

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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