Being A Sailor Quotes & Sayings

Her father had been a sailor. Her mother had been a siren. That particular relationship had worked out better than normal, with the sailor not being drowned then eaten, and Sharon had been the result, brought back to human civilization and raised to be a civilized young lady. — Larry Correia

I've always been a very careful sailor. I know, me and being careful - doesn't really sound right, does it? But when I sail, I take it seriously and take along spares for everything. You have to be careful when you're 1,500 miles from land. There's no one you can call. You're on your own. — David Crosby

You can never love another person unless you are equally involved in the beautiful but difficult spiritual work of learning to love yourself. — John O'Donohue

I could totally be a ...
whatever."
"Sailor?"
"On a boat?"
"Yep."
"Yeah." He'll sigh all wistfully. "I could be a sailor. But I'm too busy being a fish. — Hannah Moskowitz

Candlesticks and incense not being portable into the maintop, the sailor perceives these decorations to be, on the whole, inessential to a maintop mass. Sails must be set and cables bent, be it never so strict a saint's day; and it is found that no harm comes of it. Absolution on a lee-shore must be had of the breakers, it appears, if at all; and they give plenary and brief without listening to confession. — John Ruskin

They are tragic,' said Vetinari, 'and we laugh at their tragedy as we laugh at our own. The painted grin leers out at us from the darkness, mocking our insane belief in order, logic, status, the reality of reality. The mask knows that we are born on the banana skin that leads only to the open manhole cover of doom, and all we can hope for are the cheers of the crowd. — Terry Pratchett

No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned ... a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company. — Samuel Johnson

The simple old sailor, with his talk of chains and purchases, made me forget the jungle and the pilgrims in a delicious sensation of having come upon something unmistakably real. Such a book being there was wonderful enough; but still more astounding were the notes penciled in the margin, and plainly referring to the text. I couldn't believe my eyes! They were in cipher! Yes, it looked like cipher. — Joseph Conrad

A ship doesn't look quite the same from inside, does it? A wise sailor,' Robert said, fanning his arms, 'will one time stand upon the shore and watch his ship sail by, that he shall from then on appreciate not being left behind.' He grinned and added, 'Eh?'

George gave him a little grimace. 'Who's that? Melville? Or C.S. Forrester?'

It's me!' Robert complained. "Can't I be profound now and again?'

Hell, no.'

Why not?'

Because you're still alive. Gotta be dead to be profound.'

You're unchivalrous, George. — Diane Carey

The vast majority of psychopaths, like an iceberg, are underwater, and like an iceberg, they are inert. They do nothing. They're just there. They torment their spouse by being unempathic, but they don't beat her or kill her. They bully coworkers, but they don't burn the office. They are not dramatic. They are pernicious. Most psychopaths are subtle. They are more like poison than a knife, and they are more like slow-working poison than cyanide. — Sam Vaknin

Receptor chemistry, the chemistry of artificial receptor molecules, may be considered a generalized coordination chemistry, not limited to transition metal ions but extending to all types of substrates: cationic, anionic or neutral species of organic, inorganic or biological nature. — Jean-Marie Lehn

I will be remembered when I'm in heaven. People won't remember my name, but they will know the photographer who did that picture of that nurse being kissed by the sailor at the end of World War II. Everybody remembers that. — Alfred Eisenstaedt

We are like sailors who have to rebuild their ship on the open sea, without ever being able to dismantle it in dry-dock and reconstruct it from the best components. — Otto Neurath

My goodness, I am made from planets and wood, diamonds and orange peels, now and then, here and there; the iron in my blood was once the blade of a Roman plow; peel back my scalp and you will see my cranium covered in the scrimshaw carved by an ancient sailor who never suspected he was whittling at my skull - no, my blood is a Roman plow, my bones are being etched by men with names that mean sea wrestler and ocean rider and the pictures they are making are pictures of northern stars at different seasons, and the man keeping my blood straight as it splits the soil is named Lucian and he will plant wheat, and I cannot concentrate on this apple, this apple, and the only thing common to all of this is that I feel sorrow so deep, it must be love, and they are upset because while they are carving and plowing they are troubled by visions of trying to pick apples from barrels. — P. Harding

... she felt, more and more strongly, outside that eddy; or as if a shade had fallen, and robbed of colour, she saw things truly ... Nothing seemed to have merged. They all sat separate. And the whole of the effort of merging and flowing and creating rested ... and so, giving herself the little shake that one gives a watch that has stopped, the old familiar pulse began beating, as the watch begins ticking - one, two, three, one, two, three. And so on and so on, she repeated, listening to it, sheltering and fostering the still feeble pulse as one might guard a weak flame with a newspaper ... life being now strong enough to bear her on again, she began all this business, as a sailor not without weariness sees the wind fill his sail and yet hardly wants to be off again and thinks how, had the ship sunk, he would have whirled round and round and found rest on the floor of the sea. — Virginia Woolf

They don't take the Bible as a general thing, sailors don't; though I will say that I never saw the man at sea who didn't give it the credit of being an uncommon good yarn.
("Kentucky's Ghost") — Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

There's a sureness to good writing even when what's being written about doesn't make all that much sense. It's the sureness of the so-called seat of an accomplished horseback rider or a sailor coming about in a strong wind. The words have both muscle and grace, familiarity and surprise. — Anne Bernays

There was a time when, if you encountered someone with a tattoo, you could pretty much assume he was either a sailor or had, at one time or another, been in prison. There was something, it seemed, about men being cooped up together that made them want to draw on themselves. — Cuthbert Soup

As I've grown - dare I say it - older, I had hopes of indulging my dreams of being a sailor. — Jimmy Webb

She cast Oliver a hard glance. "If one of us is arrested, we've all committed to being taken to the station." "Free." He rubbed his eyes. "Anna Marie Higgins - she's the lady over there in the sailor hat - she's been taken to the station thirteen times already. — Courtney Milan

Dear, Missus, Mister - I beg you never to give thoughts to war, in no way, not to work for it, not by writing nor by reading about it nor by looking at the pictures nor on the television about it. Not in any way ever, at all. Not by being a soldier, sailor, airman, work in factory or above all at atom bombs. Above all at atom bombs. No obligation for this, dear fellow creature. Signed Your Fellow Creature.'
'P.S.,' said Gerald slowly, without turning from the window, 'If we all do this, we shall succeed. — Stella Gibbons

This guy was like a sailor who had studied the compass and found that there was a fifth direction in which one could sail."
(Jerry Juhl on being offered a job with Muppets, Inc.) — Brian Jay Jones

This process of being mature in an anxious organisation has been likened to learning to sail against the wind; and as any sailor will tell you, this requires concentration and tolerating some tension as the wind pressures the vessel to let it take over the controls. Good skippers know how to tolerate sufficient tension to keep a steady course. They don't try to overpower their vessel with too much sail in order to get to the finish line faster, as they know this will inevitably knock them backwards. They also know not to panic and retreat to the safe harbour of familiarity. They focus on their key tasks of setting the course and letting the crew know their intensions so that each person can get on with focusing on their own tasks. There's only one path to growing this ability: through patient, thoughtful perseverance in the midst of experience ... no short cuts to be found. — Jenny Brown

I am most grateful for company this evening, even of the quiet variety. I am no great conversationalist, myself."
Gray snorted. Not a conversationalist. The girl had coaxed the life story out of every sailor in this ship.
She had just picked up her spoon again when Joss spoke.
"You do not find the voyage too tedious, Miss Turner?" Joss asked. "I regret that you are left to entertain yourself, being the sole passenger."
She laid down her spoon. "Thank you, Captain, but I find sufficient activity to occupy my hands and my mind. Reading, sketching, walking the deck for fresh air and healthful exertion. I'm surprisingly content, living at sea."
Gray's heart gave an odd kick. — Tessa Dare

You could see the roads crisscrossing over the fields. When cars went by, far away, the beams were so bright they seemed to be ropes of light pulling the cars behind. — Cynthia Kadohata

The disc, being flat, has no real horizon. Any adventurous sailor who got funny ideas from staring at eggs and oranges for too long and set out for the antipodes soon learned that the reason why distant ships sometimes looked as though they were disappearing over the edge of the world was that they were disappearing over the edge of the world. — Terry Pratchett