OCEAN QUOTES IV

quotations about the ocean

Ocean quote

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


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


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


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


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"

Tags: Li Bai


It is said by the Eldar that in water there lives yet the echo of the Music of the Ainur more than in any substance that is in this Earth; and many of the Children of Ilúvatar hearken still unsated to the voices of the Sea, and yet know not for what they listen.

J. R. R. TOLKIEN

The Silmarillion

Tags: J. R. R. Tolkien


The ocean is powerful, but not invincible. It is rich, but not inexhaustible. For humans to thrive in the coming centuries, we will have to be smarter about how we approach the 70 percent of our planet the ocean covers.

GARY E. KNELL

"Securing a Bold, Blue, and Prosperous Future for Our Ocean", National Geographic, 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


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


Miles of ocean, and oh, the vastness of it, shadows and salt, fierce dark water filled with alien emptiness and the monsters that lived there. Imagine falling into that water and knowing it was below you, even as you treaded water, desperately trying to remain on the surface; the terror of the realization of what was under you--miles and miles of nothingness and monsters, blackness stretching away everywhere and the sea floor so far below--would tear your mind apart.

CASSANDRA CLARE

Lady Midnight