Ocean And Shore Quotes & Sayings

Age should fly concourse, cover in retreat defects of judgment, and the will subdue; walk thoughtful on the silent, solemn shore of that vast ocean it must sail so soon. — Edward Young

None can comprehend eternity but the eternal God. Eternity is an ocean, whereof we shall never see the shore; it is a deep, where we can find no bottom; a labyrinth from whence we cannot extricate ourselves and where we shall never lose the door. — Thomas Boston

Don't just leave your footprints in the sand only to be washed away as the ocean waves come crashing to the shore. You want to impact the lives of others in such a way that you'll be remembered forever. You want to instill values and wisdom in the hearts and minds of others that will never be forgotten. So they may teach their children to carry on from generation to generation. — Amaka Imani Nkosazana

Rivers spill mysteries into the ocean, and the ocean washes the answer to the shore. — Tanja Kobasic

Roll on, deep and dark blue ocean, roll. Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain. Man marks the earth with ruin, but his control stops with the shore. — Lord Byron

Waves are the voices of tides. Tides are life," murmured Niko. "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

Glimpses do you seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore?
But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God
so, better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land! Terrors of the terrible! is all this agony so vain? Take heart, take heart, O Bulkington! Bear thee grimly, demigod! Up from the spray of thy ocean-perishing
straight up, leaps thy apotheosis! — Herman Melville

You must not talk about 'ain't and can't' when you speak of this great wonderful world round you, of which the wisest man knows only the very smallest corner, and is, as the great Sir Isaac Newton said, only a child picking up pebbles on the shore of a boundless ocean. — Charles Kingsley

Cities on the ocean have a choice whether to turn their faces or their backs to the water, lining the shore either with pretty hotels and rich homes or dim warehouses, narrow streets, and greasy piers. All prairie towns turn away from the prairie, however. The huddled houses form a storm-battened island in the midst of endless space. — Joseph Bottum

You are the mountain, you are the rock
You are the cord and you're the spark
You are the eagle, you are the lark
You are the world and you're remarkable
You're the ocean eating the shore
You are the calm inside the storm
You're every emotion, you can endure
You are the world and the world is yours.
((The World as I See It)) — Jason Mraz

I know when I've been surfing I've got a sense of level of calmness to me, and when I hit the ocean, even in its presence, at the shore, and especially by a powerful surf, I've been put in my place as a person. — Nick Carroll

From my perch on the couch atop the truck I watched our wheels cross the town line, turn left on Highway 33, pick up some speed and head for the ocean breezes and new freedoms of the Shore. With the warm night whistling by me, I felt wonderfully and perilously adrift, giddy with excitement. This town, my town, would never leave me, and I could never completely leave it, but I would never live in Freehold again. — Bruce Springsteen

If I were to sit on the ocean floor and look toward the sky,
I might see a whale or electric eel or octopus pass by.

And if I decided to jump straight up and reach with open arms,
I might feel the pleasure of ocean flight propel me 'mid their swarms.

But if I were seated upon the shore and looking toward the stars,
I might see a comet or falling star near Mercury or Mars.

Then if I decided to jump straight up and reach with open hands,
I might feel despair when my feet refused to leave the shoreline sand.

And so I return to the ocean depths where swimming creatures fly,
For there I can soar with the whales and fish that daily touch the sky. — Richelle E. Goodrich

We can't see the ocean through the haze, but we can hear its susurrations on the shore below, feel its misty presence on our skin, imagine the way it fills up the horizon and how it, like fog, shrouds the earth's body, reflecting light on the surface but remaining impenetrably dark beneath, down in the deep soul of the world. — Justin Hocking

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean - roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin - his control
Stops with the shore. — George Gordon Byron

BISMILLAH
It's a habit of yours to walk slowly.
You hold a grudge for years.
With such heaviness, how can you be modest?
With such attachments, do you expect to arrive anywhere?
Be wide as the air to learn a secret.
Right now you're equal portions clay
and water, thick mud.
Abraham learned how the sun and moon and the stars all set. He said, No longer will I try to assign partners for God.
You are so weak. Give up to grace.
The ocean takes care of each wave
till it gets to shore.
You need more help than you know.
You're trying to live your life in open scaffolding.
Say Bismillah, In the name of God,
as the priest does with a knife when he offers an animal.
Bismillah your old self
to find your real name. — Rumi

I belong to clever words and bedtime stories
even a good riddle or two
I belong to the sound of music
and dance to my own rhythm
I belong to the sunlight on a chilly autumn day
when the world awaits a new beginning
I belong by the shore under a star-filled sky
with the ocean caressing my feet
I belong everywhere.
And anyway I please. — M.J. Abraham

Go to the east shore of any of the Hawaiian Islands, and that's a pretty big lesson on how much plastic is ending up in the ocean. Basically, the Hawaiian Islands act as a filter out in the middle of the Pacific. — Jack Johnson

On a summer morning she woke to a sense of returning health. She had been lying like a waste shore, at low spring-tide, covered with dry seaweeds, withered jelly-fishes, and a multitudinous life that gasped for the ocean: at last the cook washing throb of the great sea of bliss, whose fountain is the heart of God, had stolen upon her consciousness, and she knew that she lived. — George MacDonald

The Golden Mean. Who founded firm and sure Would ever live secure, In spite of storm and blast Immovable and fast; Whoso would fain deride The ocean's threatening tide; - His dwelling should not seek On sands or mountain-peak. Upon the mountain's height The storm-winds wreak their spite: The shifting sands disdain Their burden to sustain. Do thou these perils flee, Fair though the prospect be, And fix thy resting-place On some low rock's sure base. Then, though the tempests roar, Seas thunder on the shore, Thou in thy stronghold blest And undisturbed shalt rest; Live all thy days serene, And mock the heavens' spleen. — Anonymous

Contentedly sat the old woman. Soon now, the sea would hold no terrors, and the blinds wouldn't have to be down, nor the windows shut; she would even be able to walk along the shore at midnight as of old; and they, whom she had deserted so long ago, would once more shrink from the irresistable energy aura of her new, young body.
The sound of the sea came to her, where she sat so quietly; calm sound at first, almost gentle in the soft sibilation of each wave thrust. Farther out, the voices of the water were louder, more raucous, blatantly confident, but the meaning of what they said was blurred by the distance, a dim, clamorous confusion that rustled discordantly out of the gathering night.
Night!
She shouldn't be aware of night falling, when the blinds were drawn.
("The Witch") — A.E. Van Vogt

Nothing is distinct and separate. The waves of the ocean arise and have a separate birth, crashing on the shore, but then back into the ocean they go. They never left it. There is no movement in Nirvana. — Frederick Lenz

Nothing can stop the words so well as the mute alphabet of knit and purl. The curl of your cupped hand scoops up long drinks of calm. The rhythm you find is from down inside, rocking cradle, heartbeat, ocean. Waves on a rockless shore. — Ann Hood

A strange feeling of loneliness
Adrift near the blue canvas
You may stare long and listen deep
Yet not know whether sea-shore or sea-snore! — Avijeet Das

Shark!" I yelled as my feet hit the wet sand. "There's a shark out there! Everyone get out of the water!"
Man, you want to see humans move fast? Scream that on a crowded beach and watch what happens. Its amazing the fear people have for a scaly, sharp toothed predator. I watched the water empty in seconds, parents scooping up their children and heading to shore, desperate to get out of the ocean, and found it a little ironic. They were so terrified of the big, nasty monster out in the water, when there was a bigger, nastier, deadlier one right here on the beach. — Julie Kagawa

Okay. The story is about a little wave, bobbing along in the ocean, having a grand old time. He's enjoying the wind and the fresh air-until he notices the other waves in front of him, crashing against the shore. "My God, this is terrible," the wave says. "Look what's going to happen to me!"
Then along comes another wave. It sees the first wave, looking grim, and it says to him, "Why do you look so sad?"
The first wave says, "You don't understand! We're all going to crash! All of us waves are going to be nothing! Isn't it terrible?"
The second wave says, "No, you don't understand. You're not a wave, you're part of the ocean. — Morrie Schwartz.

My boat is on the shore, And my bark is on the sea. — Lord Byron

The old women in black at early Mass in winter
are a problem for him. He could tell by their eyes
they have seen Christ. They make the kernel
of his being and the clarity around it
seem meager, as though he needs girders
to hold up his unusable soul. But he chooses
against the Lord. He will not abandon his life.
Not his childhood, not the ninety-two bridges
across the two rivers of his youth. Nor the mills
along the banks where he became a young man
as he worked. The mills are eaten away, and eaten
again by the sun and its rusting. He needs them
even though they are gone, to measure against.
The silver is worn down to the brass underneath
and is the better for it. He will gauge
by the smell of concrete sidewalks after night rain.
He is like an old ferry dragged on to the shore,
a home in its smashed grandeur, with the giant beams
and joists. Like a wooden ocean out of control.
A beached heart. A cauldron of cooling melt. — Jack Gilbert

Nothing can be given or taken away; nothing has been added or subtracted; nothing increased or diminished. We stand on the same shore before the same mighty ocean. The ocean of love. There it is - in perpetuum. As much in a broken blossom, the sound of a waterfall, the swoop of a carrion bird as in the thunderous artillery of the prophet.
We move with eyes shut and ears stopped; we smash walls where doors are waiting to open to the touch; we grope for ladders, forgetting that we have wings; we pray as if God were deaf and blind, as if He were in a space. No wonder the angels in our midst are unrecognizable.
One day it will be pleasant to remember these things. — Henry Miller

Those of us who are in tune with nature and animals know it is our way of life, Bram. There is a connection to all living things, a vibration of Life. Animals were not given a power of choice. A lion does not try and eat legumes, nor an elephant meat. We believe the best way to communicate with nature, God, is through a liaison: the animals ... Nature hears one voice and obeys it. That is why ten or ten thousand birds may rise from the surface of a lake at the same time and yet never touch one another. Man only hears his own voice. He constantly bumps into another. Even his voice mirrors his erratic walk, jealousy, hate, ego, pride, lying, cheating. He makes his own judgements and falls prey to his greed. Remember, the moon is reflected on one drop of water as is the entire ocean
so it is with God. He is reflected ins each living thing
in a grain of sand as the entire shore, one star as the whole universe. Each animal as in all creatures. -Jagrat — Ralph Helfer

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

As it turned out, the sachem had been dead wrong.
The Europes neither fled nor died out. In fact, said the old women in charge of the children, he had apologized for this error in prophecy and admitted that however many collapsed from ignorance or disease more would always come.
They would come with languages that sounded like a dog bark; with a childish hunger for animal fur. They would forever fence land, ship whole trees to faraway countries, take any woman for quick pleasure, ruin soil, befoul sacred place and worship a dull, unimaginative god.
They let their hogs browse the ocean shore turning it into dunes of sand where nothing green can ever grow again. Cut loose from the earth's soul, they insisted on purchase of its soil, and like all orphans they were insatiable.
It was their destiny to chew up the world and spit out a horribleness that would destroy all primary peoples. — Toni Morrison

Like a wave that has been building it's strength over a thousand miles of ocean, and which makes little stir in the deep water, but which, when it reaches the shallows rears itself high up into the sky, terrifying the shore dwellers, before crashing down on land with irresistible power - so Iorek Byrnison rose up against Iofur, exploding upward from his firm footing on the dry rock and slashing with a ferocious left hand at the exposed jaw of Iofur Raknison. — Philip Pullman

Beyond the electroliers, beyond the beat and toot of the small sidewalk cars, beyond the smell of hot fat and popcorn and the shrill children and the barkers in the peep shows, beyond everything but the smell of the ocean and the suddenly clear line of the shore and the creaming fall of the waves into the pebbled spume. I walked almost alone now. The noises died behind me, the hot dishonest light became a fumbling glare. Then the lightless finger of a black pier jutted seaward into the dark. This would be the one. I turned to go out on it. Red — Raymond Chandler

To him it is an ocean, unfathomable, and without a shore. — William Godwin

Two waves in the ocean are talking to each other. The front wave tells the second that it's frightened because it is about to crash into the shore and cease to exist. But the second wave shows no fear. It explains to the first: You are frightened because you think you are a wave; I am not frightened because know I am part of the ocean. — Daniel Gottlieb

The trouble with space is, there's so much of it.
An ocean of blackness without any shore.
A neverending nothing.
And here, all alone in the million billion miles of midnight, is one solitary moving speck. A fragile parcel filled with sleeping people and their dreams. — Philip Reeve

You don't need an ocean to feel like you're drowning. You feel it, between your chest and your throat, the weight of it stretching you outside your self, like a dead fish on the shore. — Malak El Halabi

What world lies beyond that stormy sea I do not know, but every ocean has a distant shore, and I shall reach it. — Cesare Pavese

Storms bring the detritus of other people's lives into our own, a reminder that we are not alone, and of how truly insignificant we are. The indiscriminating waves had brutalized the shore, tossing pieces of splintered timber, an intact china teacup, and a gentleman's watch - still with its cover and chain - onto my beloved beach, each coming to rest as if placed gently in the sand as a shopkeeper would display his wares. As I rubbed my thumb over the smooth lip of the china cup, I thought of how someone's loss had become my gain, of how the tide would roll in and out again as if nothing had changed, and how sometimes the separation between endings and beginnings is so small that they seem to run together like the ocean's waves. — Karen White

As the sun shines low and red across the water, I wade into the ocean. The water is still high and brown and murky with the memory of the storm, so if there's something below it, I won't know it. But that's part of this, the not knowing. The surrender to the possibilities beneath the surface. It wasn't the ocean that killed my father, in the end. The water is so cold that my feet go numb almost at once. I stretch my arms out to either side of me and close my eyes. I listen to the sound of water hitting water. The raucous cries of the terns and the guillemots in the rocks of the shore, the piercing, hoarse questions of the gulls above me. I smell seaweed and fish and the dusky scent of the nesting birds onshore. Salt coats my lips, crusts my eyelashes. I feel the cold press against my body. The sand shifts and sucks out from under my feet in the tide. I'm perfectly still. The sun is red behind my eyelids. The ocean will not shift me and the cold will not take me. — Maggie Stiefvater

The sand was smooth. The damp morning fog had hardened its top layer and the heat of the day had set it so that with every footstep the surface cracked, the crunch almost audible. The heels and balls of their shoes made a path of shallow divots, but it was far easier to walk on than the usual loose and gritty beach.
In minutes, the wind worked to sweep their footprints clean and offer a flat, clear expanse all the way to the ocean where the sand became wet and sparkled invitingly with seawater. — Victoria Kahler

The ocean there was bitterly cold, with an average visibility of eighteen inches, and a huge elephant seal rookery at the shore. Through the winter thousands of the rotund pinnipeds lay strewn across Pine Cove beaches like great barking turds, and although not dangerous in themselves, they were the dietary mainstay of the great white shark, which had evolved over 120 million years into the perfect excuse for never entering water over one's ankles. — Christopher Moore

I sail on the ocean of possibilities with the wind of hope and the current of desires moving me to the shore of uncertainty. — Debasish Mridha

No, no! I do nature injustice. She gave us inventive faculty, and set us naked, and helpless on the shore of this great ocean,
the world; swim those who can, the heavy may go to the bottom. — Friedrich Schiller

You don't need to be the tide to rise and fall,
you don't have to be a wave to touch the shore;
just be a little sand-grain and feel them all — Munia Khan

Unfathomable Sea! whose waves are years, Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe Are brackish with the salt of human tears! Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow Claspest the limits of mortality! And sick of prey, yet howling on for more, Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore, Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm, Who shall put forth on thee, Unfathomable sea? — Percy Bysshe Shelley

In the spiritual life it is not necessary to have a complete map of the path in order to begin traveling. On the contrary, having such complete knowledge may actually hinder rather than help the onward march. The deeper secrets of spiritual life are unraveled to those who take risks and who make bold experiments with it. They are not meant for the idler who seeks guarantees at every step. Those who speculate from the shore about the ocean shall know only its surface, but those who would know the depths of the ocean must be willing to plunge into it. — Meher Baba

My nerves came back in full force. I'd thrown myself in the deep end, and, feeling like I had no idea how to swim, I had to get back to shore somehow.
"I'm sorry," I whispered. — Kelly Batten

Let me be an ocean and let me kiss you as many times as the ocean kisses the shore. — Debasish Mridha

You are sitting here with us,
but you are also out walking in a field at dawn.
You are yourself the animal we hunt
when you come with us on the hunt.
You are in your body
like a plant is solid in the ground,
yet you are wind.
You are the diver's clothes
lying empty on the beach.
You are the fish.
In the ocean are many bright strands
and many dark strands like veins that are seen
when a wing is lifted up.
Your hidden self is blood in those,
those veins that are lute strings
that make ocean music,
not the sad edge of surf,
but the sound of no shore. — Rumi

The beach looked beautiful this time of night. She'd always loved the ocean, spending many of her summers on its sand and in its waters, but she'd never witnessed it like this. Completely night, and completely alone. The waves crashed against the shore, the moon's light shimmering off the currents like glitter, stars speckling the sky above and wind rustling her hair as she took it all in. Sitting here in solitude, it felt as if it existed just for her. The water, the moon, the stars, the wind - all a beautiful masterpiece constructed only for her viewing. — Connie L. Smith

No one is adequate to comprehending the misery of my lot! Fate obliges me to be constantly in movement: I am not permitted to pass more than a fortnight in the same place. I have no Friend in the world, and from the restlessness of my destiny I never can acquire one. Fain would I lay down my miserable life, for I envy those who enjoy the quiet of the Grave: But Death eludes me, and flies from my embrace. In vain do I throw myself in the way of danger. I plunge into the Ocean; The Waves throw me back with abhorrence upon the shore: I rush into fire; The flames recoil at my approach: I oppose myself to the fury of Banditti; Their swords become blunted, and break against my breast: The hungry Tiger shudders at my approach, and the Alligator flies from a Monster more horrible than itself. God has set his seal upon me, and all his Creatures respect this fatal mark! — Matthew Gregory Lewis

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

Literature is a vast ocean, in which one has to drown themselves to be able to conquer it. Those on shore can see a side of it or have tasted a part of it. And I choose to drown myself in it than just to see it. — Nikita Dudani

Thoughts appear and disappear, just like waves on the ocean. Be like the ocean of love, releasing every thought to the shore as soon as they appear. — Yogi Kanna

Have you ever watched a crab on the shore crawling backward in search of the Atlantic Ocean, and missing? That's the way the mind of man operates. — H.L. Mencken

How paltry are the traces left behind by a life, even one concentrated around those supposed things of permanence called words. We spend our time upon the earth and then disappear, and only one one-thousandth of what we were lasts. We send all those bottles out into the ocean and so few wash up on shore. — John Darnton

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. — Isaac Newton

One day many years ago a man walked along and stood in the sound of the ocean on a cold sunless shore and said, "We need a voice to call across the water, to warn ships; I'll make one. I'll make a voice like all of time and all of the fog that ever was; I'll make a voice that is like an empty bed beside you all night long, and like an empty house when you open the door, and like trees in autumn with no leaves. A sound like the birds flying south, crying, and a sound like November wind and the sea on the hard, cold shore. I'll make a sound that's so alone that no one can miss it, that whoever hears it will weep in their souls, and hearths will seem warmer, and being inside will seem better to all who hear it in the distant towns. I'll make me a sound and an apparatus and they'll call it a Fog Horn and whoever hears it will know the sadness of eternity and the briefness of life."
The Fog Horn blew. — Ray Bradbury

Again the water rose, they both took a breath; again they were submerged and his leg hooked over something, an old pipe, unmoving. The next time, they both reached their heads high as the water rushed back, another breath taken. He heard Mrs. Kitteridge yelling from above. He couldn't hear the words, but he understood that help was coming. He had only to keep Patty from falling away, and as they went again beneath the swirling, sucking water, he strengthened his grip on her arm to let her known: He would not let her go. Even though, staring into her open eyes in the swirling salt-filled water, with sun flashing through each wave, he thought he would like this moment to be forever: the dark-haired woman on shore calling for their safety, the girl who had once jumped rope like a queen, now holding him with a fierceness that matched the power of the ocean - oh, insane, ludicrous, unknowable world! Look how she wanted to live, look she wanted to hold on. — Elizabeth Strout

Faced with the immensity of the universe, Job realized that there are limits to man's rationalizing, that we cannot find where the cloud of sorrow starts, that all our boasted knowledge is but an island in the vast ocean of mystery, and as the island of knowledge grows larger, the shore line of mystery becomes longer. At the end of his wits, he surrendered in trust to a Higher Wisdom. — Ralph Washington Sockman

When I was still working at the museum, every project had a checklist, a clear set of milestones. I worked until I satisfied these requirements, and then I put the project away. On the farm, though, we were immersed in the summer, a wide, warm ocean with no shore in sight and no landmarks to swim toward. Now we rested in that same ocean, floating as it moved around us. — Arlo Crawford

Excerpt from "The Long Road from Perdition" for the day:
" ... I've always been drawn to the ocean. It is here that I now feel peaceful and can lose my thoughts while immersed in the deafening sounds of waves crashing around me. The spray and mist of the ocean's past seem to be a living, breathing yet wounded animal. The fury of the waves never settled and the spew of the foam touched all that dared to sit near it.
There is no reason to flinch as the waves spray and crash against the shore. It is a natural progression I have learned to endure. However, it is the rescinding of the waves and fluid release of fury that I struggle to understand and coexist with peacefully. I hope one day to master it. — J.R. Stone

I was meant to land wherever he settled, like the ocean washing seashells onto the shore. Jack was the shell, in constant motion and movement, being tossed around from place to place by the ebb and flow of something more powerful than he. And I was the sand, gripping and holding on to him, comforting his tumble with each push and pull of the tide, yet always constant. When I walked into the waiting — J. Sterling

Be quiet now and wait.
It may be that the ocean one,
the one we desire so to move into and become,
desires us out here on land a little longer,
going our sundry roads to the shore. — Rumi

He was the ocean and I was the sand,
i lived content in stillness and he washed a shore everytime, as a better man. — Nikki Rowe

It is impossible not to feel stirred at the thought of the emotions of man at certain historic moments of adventure and discovery - Columbus when he first saw the Western shore, Pizarro when he stared at the Pacific Ocean, Franklin when the electric spark came from the string of his kite, Galileo when he first turned his telescope to the heavens. Such moments are also granted to students in the abstract regions of thought, and high among them must be placed the morning when Descartes lay in bed and invented the method of co-ordinate geometry. — Alfred North Whitehead

Tempest-tossed souls, wherever ye may be, under whatsoever conditions ye may live, know this in the ocean of life the isles of Blessedness are smiling, and the sunny shore of your ideal awaits your coming. Keep your hand firmly upon the helm of thought. In the bark of your soul reclines the commanding Master; He does but sleep: wake Him. Self-control is strength; Right Thought is mastery; Calmness is power. Say unto your heart, Peace, be still! — James Allen

Crazy people who are productive are geniuses. Crazy people who are rich are eccentric. Crazy people who are neither productive nor rich are just plain crazy. Geniuses and crazy people are both out in the middle of a deep ocean; geniuses swim, crazy people drown. Most of us are sitting safely on the shore. Take a chance and get your feet wet. — Michael J. Gelb

The moon does not fight. It attacks no one. It does not worry. It does not try to crush others. It keeps to its course, but by its very nature, it gently influences. What other body could pull an entire ocean from shore to shore? The moon is faithful to its nature and its power is never diminished. — Ming-Dao Deng

It seemed to me that man himself was like a half-emptied bottle of pale ale, which Time had drunk so far, yet stoppled tight for a while, and drifting about in the ocean of circumstances, but destined ere-long to mingle with the surrounding waves, or be spilled amid the sands of a distant shore. — Henry David Thoreau

Flames beaten by the Ocean's Rage;
Shrouded in Molten Haze;
Blithely sheathed in Splendor.
An Angel rises from the Embers.
Calming Waters brew Courage replete;
Fear cowers at Bravery's feet.
An Angel rises from the Embers.
Enlightenment basks on the shore;
Tidal waves gasp and roar;
'Quiet!' the Wind implores!
Silence sings, and spirits soar ...
An Angel rises from the Embers. — Renee Rentmeester

Me, love is paramount when choosing a mate. It will stand the test of time when the winds blow and the tempest of the outside world tries to tear the marriage apart like the shifting of the waves of an ocean crashing to shore. Love has to be the driving force or the marriage will not last in today's world. — Melody Anne

The savage, rocky shores of Christmas Island, 200 miles south of Java, in the Indian Ocean. It's November, the moon is in its third quarter, and the sun is just setting. In a few hours from now, on this very shore, a thousand million lives will be launched. — David Attenborough

As we drew nearer the green shore the bearded man told me of that land, the Land of Zar, where dwell all the dreams and thoughts of beauty that come to men once and then are forgotten. And when I looked upon the terraces again I saw that what he said was true, for among the sights before me were many things I had once seen through the mists beyond the horizon and in the phosphorescent depths of the ocean. — H.P. Lovecraft

When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced
The rich proud cost of outworn buried age;
When sometime lofty towers I see down-razed
And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the watery main,
Increasing store with loss and loss with store;
When I have seen such interchange of state,
Or state itself confounded to decay;
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate,
That Time will come and take my love away.
This thought is as a death which cannot choose
But weep to have that which it fears to lose. — William Shakespeare

America, so far as her physical history is concerned, has been falsely denominated the New World. Hers was the first dry land lifted out of the waters, hers the first shore washed by the ocean that enveloped all the earth beside; and while Europe was represented only by islands rising here and there above the sea, America already stretched an unbroken line of land from Nova Scotia to the Far West. — Louis Agassiz

Every creature aflame as it swims through the night! How sea, how shore's held in a burning embrace! Then let Eros reign with whom all things commence! Hurrah for the ocean! Hurrah for the waves 8770 And their crests with the sacred fire ablaze! Hurrah for the water, hurrah for the fire, Hurrah for their union, so rare, with each other! ALL TOGETHER. Hurrah for the gentle caressing breezes! Hurrah for the caves and their secret recesses! Lift up our voices in praise of the four: Water, fire, earth, and air! — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

This body is the boat which will carry us to the other shore of the ocean of life. It must be taken care of. Unhealthy persons cannot be Yogis. Mental laziness makes us lose all lively interest in the subject, without which there will neither be the will nor the energy to practise. Doubts will arise in the mind about the truth of the science, however strong one's intellectual conviction may be, until certain peculiar psychic experiences come, as hearing or seeing at a distance, etc. These glimpses strengthen the mind and make the student persevere. Falling away ... when obtained. Some days or weeks when you are practicing, the mind will be calm and easily concentrated, and you will find yourself progressing fast. All of a sudden the progress will stop one day, and you will find yourself, as it were, stranded. Persevere. All progress proceeds by such rise and fall. — Swami Vivekananda

Other men puffed, snorted, and splashed. George passed through the ocean with the silent dignity of a torpedo. Other men swallowed water, here a mouthful, there a pint, anon, maybe, a quart or so, and returned to the shore like foundering derelicts. George's mouth had all the exclusiveness of a fashionable club. His breast stroke was a thing to see and wonder at. When he did the crawl, strong men gasped. When he swam on his back, you felt that that was the only possible method of progression. — P.G. Wodehouse

Possibly a man who hates the land should dwell on shore forever. Alienation and the long voyages at sea will compel him once again to dream of it, torment him with the absurdity of longing for something that he loathes. — Yukio Mishima

Apparently she got stranded out at sea again this time. It happens to her every time she goes to an ocean. She just bobs along on her back enjoying the sun and the undulating waves and then gets too far out and can't get back and has to be rescued. She doesn't panic at all, just sort of slowly drifts away from shore and waits to be noticed or missed. Her big thing is going out beyond the wake where it's calm and she can bob in the moonlight far out at sea. That's her biggest pleasure. Our family is trying to escape everything all at once, even gravity, even the shoreline. We don't even know what we're running away from. Maybe we're just restless people. Maybe we're adventurers. Maybe we're terrified. Maybe we're crazy. Maybe Planet Earth is not our real home. — Miriam Toews

In the time we spend reeling in confusion, grasping at straws trying to piece our egos together, we forget to acknowledge some things. Society created gender roles and categorizations and lifestyles and names and titles because we fear the unknown, especially when the unknown is us.
It's as though we're stranded in the middle of an ocean, but we were promised the current would bring us back ashore. We're given all we need on the life raft. As far as we can see, we're being led back, slowly. We don't know when we'll approach the shore, but all evidence points to the fact that we will. But we don't spend our time looking around, enjoying the view, seeing who came with us, and riding out the waves. We sit and panic about what we're doing and why we came here.
It doesn't matter where we started because we may never know. It matters where we're going, because that, we do. We begin and we end. We've seen one, so there's only one other option. — Brianna Wiest

A significant driver of opposition to abortion is the social construction of the Ideal Woman. In a culture that rarely, if ever, allows women simply to be people, value is ascribed based on a woman's relation to something other than herself. A woman on her own is like a bit of driftwood floating in the ocean. She is a broken object with no purpose, waiting either to wash up on the shore and be put to use as part of something else, or to sink and be forgotten forever. — Clementine Ford

Instead of standing on the shore and proving to ourselves that the ocean cannot carry us, let us venture on its waters just to see. — Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

Though the Indian ocean abounds in rich and rare gems, it does not boast a clearer sky nor more unruffled sea. If there be a shore that dreads not the fury of the faithless billows, it is some poor and narrow inlet unknown to the winds. — Pietro Metastasio

The poem is called: The first glance.
You were standing there
Your presence changing the atmosphere.
I can't help to stare
Your beauty is so rare.
Watching you
Is like the sunset on the ocean shore.
Hearing your voice
Left me wanting more.
Oh, baby you're giving me no choice.
I beg you to fulfill my loneliness
With your gracefulness.
I beg you to give me a glimpse
Of your pure soul.
Baby, make me whole,
Make me free
And go out with me. — Rose J. Bell

I had never been in love with anyone before in my life, but I knew the feeling when it came bursting into my soul, like a million butterflies swirling around inside of me, like a tidal wave crashing into the shore that was my heart, flooding it completely and wiping out everything in it's path ... - Nina Jean Slack, Once Lost, Forever Found (Vol. #1) — Nina Jean Slack

The cool wind blew around us. The ocean made a complaining sound, the ocean that complains and doesn't know why. The ocean washed woefully up onto the shore. My thoughts are an ocean, they wash woefully up against their limits.
A new age would dawn, we could still do great things. I did my best to believe it, my very, very best. — Nescio

I could never stay long enough on the shore; the tang of the untainted, fresh, and free sea air was like a cool, quieting thought. — Helen Keller

You need boundaries ... even in our material creations, boundaries mark the most beautiful of places, between the ocean and the shore, between the mountains and the plains, where the canyon meets the river. — Wm. Paul Young

Crying is as vital to our well-being as sweating. The body must release tears to self-cleanse. Just as the ocean turns over waves to push all the grime to shore, we must too. It is part of the cycle of life - to wash away the energies that build up inside to make way for new ones. Showing emotion is as natural as the changing weather. A repressed being cannot flow freely with the cycle of life, if their energies are congested or stagnant - spiritually and mentally. From time to time, one must release the grime built up inside them to to free their emotions like the ocean. — Suzy Kassem

I will never turn my back on the ocean: Passion
I will paddle around the impact zone: No short cuts
I will take the drop with commitment: Courage, focus and determination
I will never fight a rip tide: The danger of pride and egotism
I will always paddle back out: Perseverance in the face of challenges
I will watch out for other surfers after a big set: Responsibility
I will know that there will always be another wave: Optimism
I will ride and not paddle into shore: Self-esteem
I will pass on my stoke to a non-surfer: Sharing knowledge and giving back
I will catch a wave every day, even in my mind: Imagination
I will realize that all surfers are joined by one ocean: Empathy
I will honor the sport of kings: Honor and integrity — Shaun Tomson

All that we do is touched with ocean, and yet we remain on the shore of what we know — Richard Wilbur

He looked out the open window. So this was what it was like. He looked through the green foliage, over the ocean, and felt around him the heat massing in the air, the current of coolness running through it, taking form in the thunderheads. He saw the black energy becoming creatured from a hundred kilometers away, roaring toward shore, feeding on itself. On the headland, trees bending to absorb the weight of the forward wind. — Nam Le

Aimlessly
It pounds the shore. White and aimless signals. No
One listens to poetry.
- from Thing Language — Jack Spicer

A beautiful, majestic, and awe-inspiring sea awaits you. And you are welcome to enter however you see fit - to wade, to walk lightly, to swim for your life, or to sail. The decision is yours. No one will stop you from returning to the sandy towel on the shore if you desire.

But I'd like to think you chose to come to the sea for a reason. You have been called to the sea. There is something here that you need, and it has awaited your arrival for quite some time. — Stephen Lovegrove

Postscript

And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you'll park and capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open. — Seamus Heaney

I know I could have saved your ashes to put into the ocean, but I wanted you to have the journey, all the way with the currents, to the open sea. And I know that when I finally get to see the waves washing on the shore, to hear them, I will feel you there. — Ava Dellaira