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sea quotes

  • Far away from where I am now there is a little gap in the hills, and beyond it the sea; and 'tis there I do be looking the whole day long, for it's the nearest thing to yourself that I can see.

    -Anonymous
    c.1900  Letter from an unidentified Irish postboy to his beloved, quoted in Maurice Healy  The Old Munster Circuit.

  • The sea of faith Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world.

    - Matthew Arnold
      'Dover Beach', stanza 3.

  •    Yes! in the sea of life enisled, With echoing straits between us thrown, Dotting the shoreless watery wild, We mortal millions live alone.

    - Matthew Arnold
      Empedocles on Etna and Other Poems,'To MargueriteContinued', l.1^4.

  • A God, a God their severance ruled! And bade betwixt their shores to be The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea.

    - Matthew Arnold
      Empedocles on Etna and Other Poems,'To MargueriteContinued', l.22^4.

  • Theyare ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.

    - Francis,Viscount St Albans Bacon
      The Advancement of Learning, bk.2, ch.7, section 5.

  • 'I saw the new moon late yestreen, Wi' the auld moon in her arm; And if we gang to sea, master, I fear we'll come to harm.'

    -Ballads
    'Sir Patrick Spens'.

  • There lived a wife at Usher's Well, And a wealthy wife was she; She had three stout and stalwart sons, And sent them o'er the sea.

    -Ballads
    'The Wife of Usher's Well', opening lines.

  • O beautiful for spacious skies, For amber waves of grain, For purple mountain majesties Above the fruited plain! America! America! God shed Hisgrace on thee. And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea.

    - Katharine Lee Bates
      'America the Beautiful', opening lines.

  • Homme libre, toujours tu che  riras la mer. Free man! You shall always cherish the sea.

    - Charles Baudelaire
      Les Fleurs du mal,'L'Homme et la mer'.

  • Everywhere the sea is a teacher of truth. I am not sure that the best thing I find in sailing is not this salt of reality.

    - (Joseph) Hilaire Pierre Belloc
    c.1910  The Cruise of the Nona.

  • I emerged at last, stumbled a few steps in the mud and then I saw it: an ethereal mountain emerging from a tossing sea of clouds framed between two dark barracksa massive, blue-black tooth of sheer rock inlaid with azure glaciers, austere yet floating fairy-like on the near horizon. It was the first17,000-foot peak I had ever seen. I stood gazing until the vision disappeared among the shifting cloud banks. For hours afterwards I remained spell-bound. I had definitely fallen in love.

    - Felice Benuzzi
      No Picnic on Mount Kenya.

  • Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? It is as high asheaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know? The measurethereof islonger thanthe earth, and broader than the sea.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Job11:7^9.

  • Soisthisgreat and widesea, whereinarethings creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts. There go the ships: there is that leviathan, whom thou hast made to play therein. These wait all upon thee; that thou mayest give them their meat in due season.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Psalms104:25^7.

  • They that go down to thesea in ships, that do business in great waters; These see the works of the L, and his wonders in the deep.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    ORDPsalms107:23^4.

  •    Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. If Isay, Surely the darknessshall cover me; even thenight shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Psalms139:7^12.

  • All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Ecclesiastes1:7.

  • The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw likethe ox. And thesucking child shall playonthehole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice'den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the L, as the waters cover the sea.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    ORDIsaiah11:6^9.

  •   Behold, the days come, saith the Lord G, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the L: And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the L, and shall not find it.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    ODORDORDAmos 8:11^12.

  • By this also ye must know that women have dominion over you: doye not labourand toil, and give and bring all to the woman? Yea, a man taketh his sword, and goeth his way to rob and to steal, to sail upon the sea and upon rivers; And looketh upon a lion, and goeth in the darkness; and when he hath stolen, spoiled, and robbed, he bringeth it to his love.

    -Bible (Apocrypha)
    Esdras 4:22^4.

  • And his disciples came to him, and awoke him, saying, Lord,saveus: weperish. And hesaithuntothem,Whyare ye fearful,O ye of littlefaith? Thenhearose, and rebuked St Matthew the winds and the sea; and there was a great calm. But the men marvelled, saying,What manner of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him!

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    St Matthew 8:25^7.

  • And in the fourth watch of the night Jesus went unto them, walking on the sea. And when the disciples saw himwalking onthesea, they weretroubled, saying,It is a spirit; and they cried out for fear. But straightway Jesus spake unto them, saying, Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    St Matthew14:25^7.

  • And whoso shall receive onesuch little child in my name receiveth me.But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    St Matthew18:5^6.

  • And before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal: and in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four beasts full of eyes before and behind.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    Revelation 4:6^7.

  • And I saw as it were a sea of glass mingled with fire. Revelation

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    Revelation15:2.

  • And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And thesea gave up the dead whichwere in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. And deathand hell were cast intothelake of fire.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    Revelation 20:11^14.

  • And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. And IJohn saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    Revelation 21:1^2.

  • Ma  s grande es el odio que nos ha inspirado la Pen|nsula, que el mar que nos separa de ella; menos dif|cil es unir los dos continentes, que reconciliar los esp|ritus de ambos pa|ses. The hate that the Iberian peninsula has inspired in us is broader than the sea which separates us from it; it is less difficult to join both continents than to join both countries'souls.

    - Simo  n Bol|  var
      'Carta de  Jamaica' (translated as The Jamaica Letter,1977).

  • Ocome, let ussing untothe Lord; let usheartily rejoice in the strength of our salvation. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving; and shew ourselves glad in him with psalms. For the Lord is a great God; and a great King above all gods. In his hand are all the corners of the earth; and the strength of the hills is his also. The sea is his, and he made it; and his hands prepared the dry land. O come, let us worship and fall down, and kneel before the Lord our Maker. For he is the Lord our God; and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.

    -Book of Common Prayer
    Psalm 95:1^7.

  • We therefore commit his body to the deep, to be turned into corruption, looking for theresurrection of the body, (when the Sea shall give up her dead).

    -Book of Common Prayer
    Forms of Prayer to be Used at Sea,  At the Burial of their Dead at Sea.

  •    'The time has come,'the Walrus said, 'To talk of many things: Of shoesand shipsand sealing-wax Of cabbagesand kings And why the sea is boiling hot And whether pigs have wings.'

    -Dodgson
      Tweedledee. Through the Looking-Glass, ch.4, 'Tweedledum and Tweedledee'.

  • The sun was shining on the sea, Shining with all his might: He did his very best to make The billows smooth and bright And this was odd, because it was The middle of the night. 196

    -Dodgson
      Tweedledee. Through the Looking-Glass, ch.4, 'Tweedledum and Tweedledee'.

  • My only great qualification for being put at the head of the navy is that I am wholly at sea.

    - Edward Henry, Baron Carson
    c.1916  Quoted in I Colvin Life of Lord Carson (1936), vol.3, ch.23.

  • New places you will not find, you will not find another sea The city will follow you.

    -Kava  fis
      'The Town' (translated by E Keeley and P Sherrard).

  • I tell you naught for your comfort, Yea, naught for your desire, Save that the sky grows darker yet And the sea rises higher.

    - G(ilbert) K(eith) Chesterton
    Ballad of the White Horse, bk.1.

  • We only know the last sad squires ride slowly towards the sea, And a new people takes the land: and still it is not we.

    - G(ilbert) K(eith) Chesterton
      'The Secret People'.

  • The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.

    - Kate (Katherine) ne  e  O'Flaherty Chopin
      The Awakening, ch.6.

  • We make this wide encircling movement in the Mediterranean, having for its primary object the recovery of the command of that vital sea, but also having for its object the exposure of the under-belly of the Axis, especially Italy, to heavyattack.

    - Lord Randolph Henry Spencer Churchill
      Speech in the House of Commons,11 Nov.

  • We were the first that ever burst Into that silent sea.

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

  • Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink. The very deep did rot: O Christ! That ever this should be! Yes, slimy things did crawl with legs Upon the slimy sea.

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

  •    In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.

    - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
      'Kubla Khan', opening lines.

  •    A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls

    -Korzeniowski

  •    The sea is the universal sewer.

    -JacquesYves Cousteau
    Testimony before the House Committee on Science and Astronautics, 28  Jan.

  •    The dominion of the sea, as it is an ancient and undoubted right of the crown of England, so it isthe best security of the land† The wooden walls are the best walls of this kingdom.

    -Thomas, 1st Baron Coventry
      Speech to the Star Chamber,17  Jun.'Wooden walls'refers to ships.

  • God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform; He plants his footsteps in the sea, And rides upon the storm.

    -William Cowper
      Olney Hymns,'Light Shining out of Darkness'.

  • I am monarch of all I survey, My right there is none to dispute; From the centre all round to the sea, I am lord of the fowl and the brute. O Solitude! where are the charms That sages have seen in thy face? Better dwell in the midst of alarms, Than reign in this horrible place.

    -William Cowper
      Poems,'Verses Supposed to be Written by Alexander Selkirk, During His Solitary Abode in the Island of  Juan Fernandez'.

  •    The bottom of the sea is cruel.

    - (Harold) Hart Crane
      White Buildings,'Voyages', pt.1.

  • O Sleepless as the river under thee, Vaulting the sea, the prairies'dreaming sod, Unto us lowliest sometime sweep, descend And of the curveship lend a myth to God.

    - (Harold) Hart Crane
      'To Brooklyn Bridge', in The Dial,  Jun.

  • What is Africa to me: Copper sun or scarlet sea, Jungle star or jungle track, Strong bronzed men, or regal black Women from whose loins I sprang When the birds of Eden sang?

    - Countee Cullen
      On These I Stand,'Heritage'.

  • for whatever we lose (like a you or a me) it's always ourselves we find in the sea

    - e e pen name of  Edward Estlin Cummings cummings
    'maggie and milly and molly and may'.

  • A wet sheet and a flowing sea, A wind that follows fast, And fills the white and rustling sail, And bends the gallant mast

    - Allan Cunningham
      'A  Wet Sheet and a Flowing Sea', stanza1.

  • Lead us, Heavenly Father, lead us O'er the world's tempestuous sea.

    -John Edmeston
    Sacred Lyrics, Set 2,'Lead us, Heavenly Father'.

  • A current under sea Picked his bones in whispers.

    -T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
      The Waste Land, pt.4,'Death by Water'.

  • The river is within us, the sea is all about us.

    -T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
    Four Quartets,'The Dry Salvages', pt.1.

  • On the Last Day the wrecks will surface over the sea.

    - Gavin Buchanan Ewart
      'Resurrection'.

  • Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night Sailed off in a wooden shoe Sailed on a river of crystal light, Into a sea of dew.

    - Eugene Field
      'Wynken, Blynken, and Nod'.

  • The dragon-green, the luminous, the dark, the serpent- haunted sea.

    -James Elroy Flecker
      'The Gates of Damascus'.

  • A ship, an isle, a sickle moon With few but with how splendid stars The mirrors of the sea are strewn Between their silver bars!

    -James Elroy Flecker
      'A Ship, an Isle, a Sickle Moon'.

  • Why, I hold fate Clasped in my fist, and could command the course Of time's eternal motion, hadst thou been One thought more steady than an ebbing sea.

    -John Ford
      ' Tis Pity She's a Whore, act 5, sc.4.

  •    The land may vary more; But wherever the truth may be The water comes ashore, And the people look at the sea.

    - Robert Lee Frost
      'Neither Far Out Nor in Deep'.

  • We are as near to heaven by sea as by land!

    - Sir Humphrey Gilbert
      Dying words as his frigate Squirrel sank in the  Atlantic Ocean near the Azores, 5  Aug. Quoted in Richard Hakluyt Third and Last Volume of the Voyages†of the English Nation (1600).

  • I am the monarch of the sea, The Ruler of the Queen's Navee, Whose praise Great Britain loudly chants And we are his sisters, and his cousins, and his aunts!

    - Sir W(illiam) S(chwenck) Gilbert
      HMS Pinafore, act1.

  • With lack of sleep and too much understanding I grow a little crazy,Ithink, likeall menat seawho livetoo closeto each other and too close thereby to all that is monstrous under the sun and moon.

    - Sir William (Gerald) Golding
      Rites of Passage, closing words.

  •    I would that with sleepy, soft embraces The sea would fold mewould find me rest In luminous shades of her secret places, In depths where her marvels are manifest; So the earth beneath her should not discover My hidden couchnor the heaven above her As a strong love shielding a weary lover, I would have her shield me with shining breast.

    - Adam Lindsay Gordon
    'The Swimmer', stanza 5, collected in Bush Ballads and Galloping Rhymes (1870).

  • 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).

  • Say, it's onlya paper moon, Sailing over a cardboard sea.

    - E(dgar) Y(ip) Harburg
      'It's Only a Paper Moon' (with Billy Rose, music by Harold Arlen).

  • The dark notes rose everywhere, so dark, so sombre, they broke into a fountainlight as the rainbow sparkling and immaterial as invisible sources and echoes. The savannahs grew lonelyas the sea and broke again into a wave and forest. Tall trees with black marching boots and feet were clad in the spurs and sharp wings of a butterfly.

    - Rolf Harris
      The Palace of the Peacock, ch.11.

  • He that will learn to pray, let him go to sea.

    - George Herbert
    Jacula Prudentum (published posthumously,1651).

  • Just occasionally you find yourself in an odd situation. You get into it bydegrees and inthemost natural way, but when you are right in the midst of it you are suddenly astonished and ask yourself how in the world it all came about. If, for example, you put to sea on a wooden raft with a parrot and five companions, it is inevitable that sooner or later you will wake up one morning out at sea, perhaps a little better rested than ordinarily, and begin to think about it.

    -Thor Heyerdahl
      The Kon-Tiki Expedition: By Raft  across the South Seas (translated by F H Lyon).

  • I have desired to go Where springs not fail, To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail And a few lilies blow And I have asked to be Where no storms come, Where the green swell is in the havens dumb, And out of the swing of the sea.

    -Gerard Manley Hopkins
      'Heaven-Haven'.

  • Time has three dimensions and one positive pitch or direction. It is therefore not so much like any river or any sea as like the Sea of Galilee, which has the Jordan running through it and giving a current to the whole.

    -Gerard Manley Hopkins
      'Creation and Redemption: The Great Sacrifice'. Collected in C Devlin (ed)  The Sermons and Devotional Writings of Gerard Manley Hopkins (1959), ch.8.

  • America the beautiful, Let me sing of thee; Burger King and Dairy Queen From sea to shining sea.

    - Ada Louise ne  e Landman Huxtable
      'Goodbye History, Hello Hamburger', in the NewYork Times, 21 Mar.

  • The best thing I know between France and England isthe sea.

    - Douglas William Jerrold
    The Wit and Opinions of Douglas Jerrold (published1859),'The Anglo-French  Alliance'.

  • The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea.

    -James Augustine Aloysius Joyce
      Ulysses.

  • By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin'eastward to the sea, There's a Burma girl a-settin', and I know she thinks o' me; For thewind isinthepalmtrees, an'thetemplebellsthey say: 'Come you back, you British soldier'; come you back to Mandalay!'

    - (Joseph) Rudyard Kipling
      'Mandalay'.

  • We have fed our sea for a thousand years And she calls us, still unfed, Though there's never a wave of all her waves But marks our English dead.

    - (Joseph) Rudyard Kipling
      'A Song of the Dead'.

  • Who hath desired the Sea?the sight of salt water unbounded The heave and the halt and the hurl and the crash of the comber wind-hounded? The sleek-barrelled swell before storm, grey, foamless, enormous, and growing Stark calm on the lap of the Line or the crazy-eyed Hurricane blowing.

    - (Joseph) Rudyard Kipling
      'The Sea and the Hills'.

  • Each to his choice, and I rejoice The lot has fallen to me In a fair groundin a fair ground Yea, Sussex by the sea! See Book of Common Prayer142:42.

    - (Joseph) Rudyard Kipling
      'Sussex'.

  • They went to sea in a sieve, they did In a sieve they went to sea.

    - Edward Lear
    Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany and  Alphabets,'The Jumblies'.

  • Far and few, far and few, Are the lands where the Jumblies live; Their heads are green, and their hands are blue, And they went to sea in a Sieve.

    - Edward Lear
    Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany and  Alphabets,'The Jumblies'.

  • The Owl and the Pussy-Cat went to sea In a beautiful pea-green boat. They took some honey, and plenty of money, Wrapped up in a five-pound note. The Owl looked up to the Stars above And sang to a small guitar, 'Oh lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love, What a beautiful Pussy you are'.

    - Edward Lear
    Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany and  Alphabets,'The Owl and the Pussy-Cat'.

  • It was the schooner Hesperus, That sailed the wintry sea.

    - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
    Ballads and other Poems,'The wreck of the Hesperus'.

  • By the shore of Gitche Gumee By the shining Big-Sea-Water, Stood the wigwam of Nokomis, Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis. Dark behind it rose the forest, Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees, 516 Rose the firs with cones upon them; Bright before it beat the water, Beat the clear and sunny water, Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water.

    - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
      The Song of Hiawatha, pt.3,'Hiawatha's Childhood'.

  • Verde que te quiero verde. Verde viento.Verdes ramas. El barco sobre la mar y el caballo en la montan‹  a. Green how I love you green. Green wind.Green boughs. The ship on the sea and the horse on the mountain.

    - Federico Garc|  a Lorca
    ^7  Romance sona  mbulo.

  • Scotland is not wholly surrounded by the seaunfortunately.

    -Grieve
      Scottish Scene,'The Sea'.

  • persian pussy from over the sea demure and lazyand smug and fat none of your ribbons and bells for me ours is the zest of the alley cat

    - Don(ald Robert Perry) Marquis
      archy and mehitabel,'mehitabels extensive past'.

  • I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by, And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking, And a grey mist on the sea's face and a grey dawn breaking.

    -John Edward Masefield
      'Sea Fever'.

  • Let me look into a human eye; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better than to gaze upon God.

    - Herman Melville
      Captain  Ahab. Moby Dick, ch.132.

  • A wind sways in the pines, And below Not a breath of wild air; Still as the mosses that glow On the flooring and over the lines Of the roots here and there. The pine tree drops its dead; Theyare quiet, as under the sea. Overhead, overhead Rushes life in a race, As the clouds the clouds chase; And we go, And we drop like the fruits of the tree, Even we, Even so.

    - George Meredith
      A Reading of Earth,'Dirge in the Woods'.

  • Virtue could see to do what Virtue would By her own radiant light, though sun and moon Were in the flat sea sunk. And Wisdom's self Oft seeks to sweet retired solitude, Where with her best nurse contemplation She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings That in the various bustle of resort Were all too ruffl'd, and sometimes impair'd. He that has light within his own clear breast May sit i'the centre, and enjoy bright day, But he that hides a dark soul, and foul thoughts Benighted walks under the midday sun; Himself is his own dungeon.

    -John Milton
      Comus,  A Mask, l.372^83.

  • So on this windy sea of land, the Fiend Walked up and down alone bent on his prey.

    -John Milton
      Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.3, l.440^1.

  • Witness this new-made world, another heav'n From heaven gate not far, founded in view On the clear hyaline, the glassy sea; Of amplitude almost immense, with stars Numerous, and every star perhaps a world Of destined habitation.

    -John Milton
      Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.7, l.617^22.

  • The sea hates a coward!

    - Eugene Gladstone O'Neill
      Bryant. Mourning Becomes Electra, pt.2, act 4.

  • And then went down to the ship, Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea.

    - Ezra Loomis Pound
      Draft of XVI Cantos, no.1.

  • When you're between any sort of devil and the deep blue sea, the deep blue sea sometimes looks very inviting.

    - SirTerence Rattigan
      The Deep Blue Sea.

  • Praise the sports of the land And water, each one The bath by the beach, or the yacht on the sea But of all the sweet pleasures Known under the sun; A good game of Croquet's the sweetest to me.

    -Thomas Mayne Reid
      Quoted in Colin Jarman The Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).

  • Elle est retrouve  e. Quoi?L'EŁ  ternite  . C'est la mer alle  e Avec le soleil. It has been recovered. What?Eternity. It is the sea escaping With the sun.

    - (Jean Nicolas) Arthur Rimbaud
      Derniers vers, Fe"  tes de la patience,'L'EŁ   ternite ' .

  • When they were on that sea and had spread their sails and had their banners set high on the poops of the ships and their ensigns, it seemed indeed as if the sea were all a-tremble and all on fire with the ships they were sailing and the great joy they were making.

    -Robert of Clari   fl.c.1216
      Describing theVenetian fleet setting out.The Conquest of Constantinople (translated by E H McNeal,1936), p.42^3.

  • I have sat by night beside a cold lake And touched things smoother than moonlight on still water, But the moon on this cloud sea is not human, And here is no shore, no intimacy, Only the start of space, the road to suns.

    - F(rancis) R(eginald) Scott
      'Trans Canada'.

  • Ah! County Guy, the hour is nigh, The sun has left the lea, The orange flower perfumes the bower, The breeze is on the sea.

    - Sir Walter Scott
      Quentin Durward, ch.4.

  • The sea is mother-death and she is a mighty female, the one who wins, the one who sucks us all up.

    - Anne ne  e Harvey Sexton
    Journal entry,19 Nov, in The Poet's Story,'A SmallJournal'.

  • As an old soldier I admit the cowardice: it's as universal as sea sickness, and matters just as little.

    - George Bernard Shaw
      The Statue. Man and Superman, act 3.

  • 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.

  • London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      'Letter to Maria Gisborne', l.193^5.

  • Let there be light! Said Liberty, And like sunrise from the sea, Athens arose!

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      'Hellas', l.682^4.

  • Lady Venus on the settee of the horsehair sea!

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

  • 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'.

  • Daisy and Lily, Lazy and silly, Walk by the shore of the wan grass sea, Talking once more 'neath a swan-bosomed tree.

    - Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell
      Fa c° ade 'Valse'.

  • What worlds delight, or joy of living speech Can heart, so plunged in sea of sorrows deep, And heape'  d with so huge misfortunes, reach? The careful cold beginneth for to creep, And in my heart his iron arrow steep, Soon as I think upon my bitter bale.

    - Edmund Spenser
      The Faerie Queen, bk.1, canto 7, stanza 39.

  • The true call of the desert, of the mountains, or the sea, is their silencefree of the networks of dead speech.

    - Dame Freya Madeleine Stark
      Perseus in theWind.

  • Two voices are there: one is of the deep; It learns the storm-clouds thundrous melody, Now roars, now murmurs with the changing sea, Now bird-like pipes, now closes soft in sleep: And one is of an old half-witted sheep Which bleats articulate monotony, And indicates that two and one are three, That grass isgreen, lakes damp, and mountains steep And,Wordsworth, both are thine.

    -J(ames) K(enneth) Stephen
      Lapsus Calami,'A Sonnet'.

  • Under the wide and starry sky, Dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will. This be the verse you grave for me: Here he lies where he longed to be, Home is the sailor, home from sea, And the hunter home from the hill.

    - Robert Louis Stevenson
      'Requiem' (dated'Hy e' res, May1884'), collected in Underwoods (1887), bk.1, no.21.

  • I will make you brooches and toys for your delight Of bird-song at morning and star-shine at night. I will make a palace fit for you and me Of green days in forests and blue days at sea. I will make my kitchen, and you shall keep your room, Where white flows the river and bright blows the broom, And you shall wash your linen and keep your body white In rainfall at morning and dewfall at night.

    - Robert Louis Stevenson
      Songs ofTravel (published1896), no.11, stanza1.

  • I saw rain falling and the rainbow drawn On Lammermuir. Hearkening I heard again In my precipitous city beaten bells Winnow the keen sea wind. And here afar, Intent on my own race and place, I wrote.

    - Robert Louis Stevenson
      Weir of Hermiston (published1896), Dedication'To My Wife'.

  • Alas! so all things now do hold their peace, Heaven and earth disturbed in no thing† Calm is the sea, the waves work less and less; So am not I whom love, alas, doth wring, Bringing before my face the great increase Of my desires, whereat I weep and sing, In joy and woe, as in a doubtful ease. For my sweet thoughts sometime do pleasure bring, But by and by the cause of my disease Gives me a pang that inwardly doth sting, When that I think what grief it is again To live and lack the thing should rid my pain.

    - Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey
      'Alas! so all things now do hold their peace'.

  • Ah, yet would God this flesh of mine might be Where air might wash and long leaves cover me; Where tides of grass break into foam of flowers, Or where the wind's feet shine along the sea.

    - Algernon Charles Swinburne
      'LausVeneris'.

  • I will go back to the great sweet mother, Mother and lover of men, the sea. I will go down to her, I and no other, Close with her, kiss her and mix her with me.

    - Algernon Charles Swinburne
      Poems and Ballads,'TheTriumph ofTime'.

  • There lived a singer in France of old By the tideless dolorous midland sea. In a land of sand and ruin and gold There shone one woman, and none but she.

    - Algernon Charles Swinburne
      Poems and Ballads,'TheTriumph ofTime'.

  • In a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland, At the sea-down's edge between windward and lee, Walled round with rocks as an inland island, The ghost of a garden fronts the sea.

    - Algernon Charles Swinburne
      Poems and Ballads (2nd edn),'A Forsaken Garden'.

  • They're all gone now, and there isn't anything more the sea can do to me.

    -John Millington Synge
      Maurya speaking. Riders to the Sea.

  • Below the thunders of the upper deep; Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea, His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep The Kraken sleepeth.

    -Tennyson
      Poems, Chiefly Lyrical,'The Kraken', l.1^4.

  • I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades Vext the dim sea: I am become a name; For always roaming with a hungry heart Much have I seen and known; cities of men And manners, climates, council, governments, Myself not least, but honoured of them all; And drunk delight of battle with my peers, Far on the ringing plains of windyTroy. I am part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnished, not to shine in use! As though to breathe were life.

    -Tennyson
      Poems,'Ulysses' (published1842), l.6^24.

  • Break, break, break, On thy cold grey stones,O Sea! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me.

    -Tennyson
      Poems,'Break, Break, Break', stanza1.

  •    Sweet and low, sweet and low, Wind of the western sea, Low, low, breathe and blow, Wind of the western sea! Over the rolling waters go, Come from the dying moon, and blow, Blow him again to me; While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps. Sleep and rest, sleep and rest, Father will come to thee soon; Rest, rest, on mother's breast, Father will come to thee soon; Father will come to his babe in the nest, Silver sails all out of the west Under the silver moon: Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep.

    -Tennyson
      The Princess, pt.3, added song, stanzas1^2.

  • There, where the long street roars, hath been The stillness of the central sea.

    -Tennyson
      In Memoriam A.H.H., canto123, l.3^4.

  • He clasps the crag with crooked hands; Close to the sun in lonely lands, Ringed with the azure world, he stands. The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls; He watches from his mountain walls, And like a thunderbolt he falls.

    -Tennyson
      'The Eagle', complete poem.

  • A livelier emerald twinkles in the grass, A purer sapphire melts into the sea. 845

    -Tennyson
      Maud, pt.1, sect.18, stanza 6, l.649^50.

  • So all day long the noise of battle rolled Among the mountains by the winter sea.

    -Tennyson
      Idylls of the King,'The Passing of Arthur', l.170^1.

  • I am going a long way With these thou se'stif indeed I go (For all my mind is clouded with a doubt) To the island-valley of Avilion; Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow, Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies Deep-meadowed, happy, fair with orchard lawns And bowery hollows crowed with summer sea, Where I will heal me of my grievous wound.

    -Tennyson
      Idylls of the King,'The Passing of Arthur', l.424^32.

  • And the sun went down, and the stars came out far over the summer sea, But never a moment ceased the fight of the one and the fifty-three.

    -Tennyson
      'The Revenge', stanza 9, l.56^7.

  • She was cut off fromthe past and therefore did not live in the present. But suddenly, as she stood close against a pine tree and breathed in its sharp, bitter scent, a clear space opened to her childhood, as though a wind had sprung fromthesea, clearing a mist.It wasnot a memory from the past, it was the past itself, as alive, as real; and she knew that she and the child of forty years ago were the same person.

    - D(onald) M(itchell) Thomas
    TheWhite Hotel, ch.4.

  • Light breaks where no sun shines; Where no sea runs, the waters of the heart Push in their tides.

    - Dylan Marlais Thomas
      'Light BreaksWhere No Sun Shines'.

  • Though they go mad they shall be sane Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again; Though lovers be lost love shall not; And death shall have no dominion.

    - Dylan Marlais Thomas
      'And Death Shall Have No Dominion'.

  • Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means, Time held me green and dying Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

    - Dylan Marlais Thomas
      'Fern Hill'.

  • To begin at the beginning: It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courters'-and- rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea.

    - Dylan Marlais Thomas
      Under MilkWood, opening words.

  • The boys are dreaming wicked orofthebucking ranches of the night and the jolly-rogered sea.

    - Dylan Marlais Thomas
      Under MilkWood.

  •   I will never believe again that the sea was ever loved by anyone whose life was married to it.

    - H(enry) M(ajor) Tomlinson
      The Sea and theJungle, ch.1.

  • You never enjoy the world aright, till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars: and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world.

    -Thomas Traherne
    Centuries of Meditations,'First Century', section 29 (published 1908).

  • Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetryas hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.

    -John Hoyer Updike
      HuggingThe Shore, foreword.

  • How circumstantial reality is! Facts are like individual letters, with their spikes and loops and thorns, that make up words: eventually they hurt our eyes, and we long to take a bath, to rake the lawn, to look at the sea.

    -John Hoyer Updike
      Self-Consciousness, I.'A Soft Spring Night in Shillington'.

  •   Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour: England hath need of thee: she is a fen Of stagnant waters: altar, sword and pen, Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower, Have forfeited their ancient English dower Of inward happiness.We are selfish men; Oh! raise us up, return to us again; And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power. Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart; Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea: Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free, So didst thou travel on life's common way, In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart The lowliest duties on herself did lay.

    -William Wordsworth
      'Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour', complete poem (published1807).

  • Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the eternal silence: truths that wake, To perish never: Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour, Nor man nor boy, Nor all that is at enmity with joy, Can utterlyabolish or destroy! Hence in a season of calm weather, Though inland far we be, Our souls have sight of that immortal sea Which brought us hither, Can in a moment travel thither, And see the children sport upon the shore, And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

    -William Wordsworth
    c.1802^1803  'Ode. Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood', stanza 9 (published1807).

  • Chains tie us down by land and sea; And wishes, vain as mine, may be All that is left to comfort thee.

    -William Wordsworth
      'TheAffliction of Margaret', stanza 8 (published1807).

  • Not for a moment could I now behold A smiling sea, and be what I have been.

    -William Wordsworth
      'Elegiac Stanzas: suggested by a picture of Peele Castle in a storm', stanza10 (published1807).

  • The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending we lay waste our powers: Little we see in nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! The sea that bares her bosom to the moon; The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not.Great God! I'd rather be A pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathe'  d horn.

    -William Wordsworth
      'The world is too much with us; late and soon', complete poem (published1807).

  • Two voices are there; one is of the sea, One of the mountains; each a mighty voice: In both from age to age thou didst rejoice, They were thy chosen music, Liberty!

    -William Wordsworth
      'Thought of a Briton on the Subjugation of Switzerland', l.1^4.

  • Thalatta! Thalatta! The sea! The sea!

    -Xenophon
    Anabasis bk. 4, 24. Shouted by the Greek soldiers from the Expedition of Cyrus in 401 months inland. when they reached the sea after BC

  • Marbles of the dancing floor Break bitter furies of complexity, Those images that yet Fresh images beget, That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.

    -W(illiam) B(utler) Yeats
      'Byzantium', stanza 5. Collected in TheWinding Stair and Other Poems (1933).

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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