OCEAN QUOTES II

quotations about the ocean

Ocean quote

I am the shore and the ocean, awaiting myself on both sides.

DEJAN STOJANOVIC

The Shape


And Thou, vast Ocean! on whose awful face
Time's iron feet can print no ruin trace.

ROBERT MONTGOMERY

The Omnipresence of the Deity


Past are three summers since she first beheld
The ocean; all around the child await
Some exclamation of amazement here:
She coldly said, her long-lasht eyes abased,
Is this the mighty ocean? is this all?

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR

Gebir

Tags: Walter Savage Landor


I have always been fascinated by the ocean, to dip a limb beneath its surface and know that I'm touching eternity, that it goes on forever until it begins here again.

LAUREN DESTEFANO

Wither


The ocean, whose tides respond like women's menses, to the pull of the moon, the ocean which corresponds to the amniotic fluid in which human life begins, the ocean on whose surface vessels (personified as female) can ride but in whose depth sailors meet their death and monsters conceal themselves ... it is unstable and threatening as the earth is not; it spawns new life daily, yet swallows up lives; it is changeable like the moon, unregulated, yet indestructible and eternal.

ADRIENNE RICH

Of Woman Born

Tags: Adrienne Rich


After all those millions of years of living inside of the sea, we took the ocean with us. When a woman makes a baby, she gives it water, inside her body, to grow in. That water inside her body is almost exactly the same as the water of the sea. It is salty, by just the same amount. She makes a little ocean, in her body.

GREGORY DAVID ROBERTS

Shantaram


A pool just isn't the same as the ocean. It has no energy. No life.

LINDA GERBER

Death by Bikini


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


Water seeks its own level. Look at them. The Tigris, the Euphrates, the Mississippi, the Amazon, the Yangtze. The world's great rivers. And every one of them finds its way to the ocean.

ALISON MCGHEE

All Rivers Flow to the Sea


I really don't know why it is that all of us are so committed to the sea, except I think it's because in addition to the fact that the sea changes, and the light changes, and ships change, it's because we all came from the sea. And it is an interesting biological fact that all of us have in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea -- whether it is to sail or to watch it -- we are going back from whence we came.

JOHN F. KENNEDY

remarks at a dinner for the America's Cup crews, September 14, 1962

Tags: John F. Kennedy


Praise the sea, but keep on land.

GEORGE HERBERT

Jacula Prudentum

Tags: George Herbert


More wonderful than the lore of old men and the lore of books is the secret lore of the ocean. Blue, green, grey, white, or black; smooth, ruffled, or mountainous; that ocean is not silent. All my days I have watched it and listened to it, and I know it well. At first it told to me only the plain little tales of calm beaches and near ports, but with the years it grew more friendly and spoke of other things; of things more strange and more distant in space and time.

H. P. LOVECRAFT

"The White Ship"

Tags: H. P. Lovecraft


I don't think there's much scenery to be seen on the ocean ... It's just plain water all the way over.

JOHN KENDRICK BANGS

Mollie and the Unwiseman Abroad

Tags: John Kendrick Bangs


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?


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


Crime and the sea have always mixed, pirates ever since there have been ships, law ends with the land, man is nothing out there, a few bubbles as he goes down under the mindless waves.

JOHN UPDIKE

Rabbit at Rest

Tags: John Updike


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


Ocean into tempest wrought,
To waft a feather, or to drown a fly.

EDWARD YOUNG

Night Thoughts

Tags: Edward Young


It is beautiful, it is endless, it is full and yet seems empty. It hurts us.

JACKSON PEARCE

Fathomless


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