Sailing Quotes

"A war of ideas can no more be won without books than a naval war can be won without ships. Books, like ships, have the toughest armor, the longest cruising range, and mount the most powerful guns."

Franklin D. Roosevelt

"Just about a month from now I'm set adrift, with a diploma for a sail and lots of nerve for oars."

Richard Halliburton

"There have been times on this trip I’ve been convinced that GPS was wrong."

Chris Robb, Voyages with Kipper: and other Sailing Reminiscences

"There is no more thrilling sensation I know of than sailing. It comes as near to flying as man has got to yet - except in dreams."

Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat

"A sailor is not defined as much by how many seas he has sailed than by how many storms he has overcome."

Matshona Dhliwayo

"You don’t command wind in the direction it blows, but you command a ship in the direction it sails."

Matshona Dhliwayo

"The winds of fortune tend to favour the sails of those who politely yell out to it, 'Nice to meet you!"

Nabil Sabio Azadi

"13. If you’re going through difficult times today, hold steady. It will change soon. If you are experiencing smooth sailing and easy times now, brace yourself. It will change soon. The only thing you can be certain of is change."

James C. Dobson, Life on the Edge: The Next Generation's Guide to a Meaningful Future

"At the end of the day…we are anchoring into the peaceful lagoon, smiling at the majestic sun and its flirting rays, slowly slipping into the glittering ballroom of immense night skies, sipping on the platinum moon liquor under the blues of rippling waves kissing my golden foot hanging over the board of gently rocking boat, and diving into the bed of galaxies whispering magical stories of their eternal lives connecting souls…till the dawn…"

Oksana Rus

"Maria didn’t fear the sea but, as taught by her father, she respected its power. In her experience the ocean had no intent to drown travellers."

Sara Sheridan, On Starlit Seas

"Simply sailing in a new direction you could enlarge the world"

Allen Curnow

"Turn over the rudder in God's name, and sail with the wind heaven sends us."

Catherine of Siena

"A small boat that sails the river is better than a large ship that sinks in the sea."

Matshona Dhliwayo

"You don't throw a compass overboard because the ocean is calm."

Matshona Dhliwayo

"Midnight sail and moonlight. I remember sunset, and gentle breeze. Leaving the city lights behind, and gazing at the moon. Mountains of clouds. Waves slapping our boat. It was easy to forget that love has no direction, or need for compass. Let it guide you to its destination. ~ Fidelis O Mkparu, 2016"

Fidelis O Mkparu

"hark, now hear the sailors cry, smell the sea, and feel the sky let your soul & spirit fly, into the mystic..."

Van Morrison

"and I shall watch the ferry boats, and they'll get high, on a bluer ocean against tomorrow's sky. and i will never grow so old again, and i will walk and talk, in gardens all wet with rain..."

Van Morrison

"She enjoyed the sights and sounds of the dockside – ports were places of freedom."

Sara Sheridan, On Starlit Seas

"She watched the gap between ship and shore grow to a huge gulf. Perhaps this was a little like dying, the departed no longer visible to the others, yet both still existed, only in different worlds."

Susan Wiggs, The Charm School

"Just because I am paranoid does not mean that someone is not out to get me"

Don Darkes, 6692 Pisces the Sailfish

"The moon was low but not full. The men set out along the dock in conversation. As they dropped onto the dark beach, Simmons declared, ‘There can be no better place in the world than this.’Henderson had to agree. The beach was beautiful. The stars lit the sand and balmy air rode in as the waves washed up on paradise"

Sara Sheridan, On Starlit Seas

"It had occurred to her many times that on board it didn’t matter where you were coming from or where you were heading. Each voyage had its own charisma. Like writing a book – word by word – or crossing a country – step by step – each minute had to be lived moment by moment."

Sara Sheridan, On Starlit Seas

"The daily chocolate left Will in high spirits, so that some days he believed he could wheel with the gulls that fished the foaming water close to shore. Now that he felt so free, it came to him that the corner of England, which up till now had been his whole universe, was in fact only a scrap of a boundless realm."

Sara Sheridan, On Starlit Seas

"Her eyes betrayed no shock at the sights of the quay as they unfolded – not the sweating deckhands, the prostitutes crowding the ship, the hubbub of stalls, including one where three slaves were for sale, their ankles manacled. She might as well have been walking through a country garden as she moved inexorably away from the water."

Sara Sheridan, On Starlit Seas

"When I'm all grown up, come what may,I'll build a boat to carry me away"

Guy Gavriel Kay, Tigana

"This sometimes happened: from time to time, Dantès, driven out of solitude into the world, felt an imperative need for solitude. And what solitude is more vast and more poetic than that of a ship sailing alone on the sea, in the darkness of night and the silence of infinity, under the eye of the Lord?"

Alexandre Dumas

"For I say there is no other thing that is worse than the sea is for breaking a man, even though he may a very strong one."

Homer

"Calm sailing doesn't come from calm waters, it comes from having a good navigator; a good crew and a good vessel."

Anthony T. Hincks

"When a great adventure is launched with a powerful thrust, fatigue in the muscles and doubts in the mind are swept away by a fullness that moves life along like a breath from the depths of the soul."

Bernard Moitessier, Tamata and the Alliance

"Vast tracts of ocean, whether Polynesia, Micronesia or Melanesia, contain island populations that remain outside the modern world. They know about it, they may have traveled to it, they appreciate artifacts and medical help from it, but they live their daily lives much as hundreds of generations of ancestors before them, without money, electricity, phones, TV or manufactured food."

Andrew Rayner, Reach for Paradise

"She holds you like a whore in the night, but she'll take your soul and not think twice."

Micheal Rivers, The Black Witch

"So exquisitely perfect was the darkness of the heavens above that one would have difficulty believing it was a prison to the passengers and crew of The Black Witch."

Micheal Rivers, The Black Witch

"If lighthouse becomes a burning candle, flickered upon ocean's insanity.Your sailing heart there anchors to handle the obsessed breeze towards sand dune's vanity."

Munia Khan

"I dreamt of land but that was so long ago.I don't even know if he still exists."

Anne Fall, Rosa Scriptum

"Flying might not be all plain sailing, but the fun of it is worth the price."

Amelia Earhart, The Fun of It

"Now I remembered a captain's honor and his only duty: to bring his crew back alive."

Carsten Jensen, We, the Drowned

"What she really loved was to hang over the edge and watch the bow of the ship slice through the waves. She loved it especially when the waves were high and the ship rose and fell, or when it was snowing and the flakes stung her face."

Kristin Cashore, Graceling

"...this beginning motion, this first time when a sail truly filled and the boat took life and knifed across the lake under perfect control, this was so beautiful it stopped my breath..."

Gary Paulsen, Caught by the Sea

"You can’t believe how bleeding scary the sea is! There’s, like, whales and storms and shit! They don’t bloody tell you that!"

Libba Bray, Beauty Queens

"Paradise” is a suffering word, grossly overused and ineptly devalued in everyday hype and blurb. Yet, tired as it is, it will have to do. Nothing else conveys that sense of place that can inspire a blissful contentment."

Andrew Rayner, Reach for Paradise

"That's what sailing is, a dance, and your partner is the sea. And with the sea you never take liberties. You ask her, you don't tell her. You have to remember always that she's the leader, not you. You and your boat are dancing to her tune."

Michael Morpurgo, Alone on a Wide Wide Sea

"Clouds do not really look like camels or sailing ships or castles in the sky. They are simply a natural process at work. So too, perhaps, are our lives."

Roger Ebert

"The romantic appeal of solar sailing has ensured that its advocates consistently come from the worlds of both science fiction and science fact."

Thomas Mallon

"Life is a voyage across troubled waters where our days are often spent clinging to the top of the highest mast, scouting for a comforting glimpse of shore."

Richelle E. Goodrich, Making Wishes

"To reach a port we must set sail –Sail, not tie at anchorSail, not drift."

Franklin D. Roosevelt

"It’s better to be the rooster than the feather duster."

Jimmy Spithill

"I can't control the wind but I can adjust the sail."

Ricky Skaggs

"We are all born in a little port but not all of us sail the vast oceans! Majority remains in the port!"

Mehmet Murat ildan

"A ship on the port always waits for you to sail to the oceans!"

Mehmet Murat ildan

"She found out that having something to do prevented you from feeling seasick, and that even a job like scrubbing a deck could be satisfying, if it was done in a seamanlike way. She was very taken with this notion, and later on she folded the blankets on her bunk in a seamanlike way, and put her possessions in the closet in a seamanlike way, and used 'stow' instead of 'tidy' for the process of doing so. After two days at sea, Lyra decided that this was the life for her."

Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass

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