OCEAN QUOTES III
quotations about the ocean
It is beautiful, it is endless, it is full and yet seems empty. It hurts us.
JACKSON PEARCE
Fathomless
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
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
He laid his hand upon "the Ocean's mane,"
And played familiar with his hoary locks.
ROBERT POLLOK
The Course of Time
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
The land is dearer for the sea,
The ocean for the shore.
LUCY LARCOM
On the Beach
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
Waves are the voices of tides. Tides are life.... They bring new food for shore creatures, and take ships out to sea. They are the ocean's pulse, and our own heartbeat.
TAMORA PIERCE
Sandry's Book
We follow and race
In shifting chase,
Over the boundless ocean-space!
Who hath beheld when the race begun?
Who shall behold it run?
BAYARD TAYLOR
The Waves
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
What are the wild waves saying,
Sister, the whole day long,
That ever amid our playing
I hear but their low, lone song?
JOSEPH E. CARPENTER
What Are the Wild Waves Saying?
Ocean into tempest wrought,
To waft a feather, or to drown a fly.
EDWARD YOUNG
Night Thoughts
The breaking waves dashed high
On a stern and rock-bound coast,
And the woods against a stormy sky,
Their giant branches toss'd.
FELICIA HEMANS
The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers in New England
Tut! the best thing I know between France and England is the sea.
DOUGLAS JERROLD
Jerrold's Wit
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
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
Nor is there in the whole range of nature a grander or more magnificent scene than the ocean in a storm, when deep calls unto deep, and its liquid mountains roll and break against each other, when it dashes to pieces, in the wantonness of its power, the strongest, structures which man can rear for the purpose of floating over its billows; then it is that the proudest and bravest tremble and quail at the roaring and thunder of its waters.
PETER WHITTLE
Marina; or, An historical and descriptive account of Southport, Lytham, and Blackpool
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
We were born before the wind
Also younger than the sun
Ere the bonnie boat was won as we sailed into the mystic
Hark, now hear the sailors cry
Smell the sea and feel the sky
Let your soul and spirit fly into the mystic
VAN MORRISON
Into the Mystic
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