Ocean Gazing Quotes & Sayings

When I finally made it across the dune, I found her gazing at the ocean and holding a weathered fence post as if it were the mast of a sailboat.
'That was quite a sprint you did on that soft sand,' I said, huffing and puffing. She smiled, but didn't respond. So I clarified, 'That sand is hard to get through.'
She laughed. 'It's easier to get through the tough stuff if I give it a little muscle.'
I looked at her out of the corner of my eye and said coyly, 'I think there's a life lesson there.'
'Nah,' she refuted. 'I've exercised my whole life. Lots of practice. It comes naturally now.'
Like I said. — Emily Colson

Here at its extremities the terrified transients gathered, gazing out at the vast refulgent ocean for some sign of security. We — William Boyd

Men may sail the seas for a lifetime and seldom, if ever, come in contact with the nightmare monsters that inhabit the caves and cliffs of the ocean floor. Gazing down at the slightly muddy water, the men of The Unicorn saw a squirming mass of interwoven tentacles resembling enormous snakes, immensely thick and long and tapering at their free ends to the size of a man's thumb. It was a foul sight, an obscene growth from the dark places of the world, where incessant hunger is the driving force. At one place, down near the bulge of the hull, appeared a staring gorgon face with great lidless eyes and a huge parrot beak that moved slightly, opening and shutting as though it had just crunched and swallowed a meal of warm flesh.
("Fire In The Galley Stove") — William Outerson

A girl stood before him in midstream, alone and still, gazing out to sea. She seemed like one whom magic had changed into the likeness of a strange and beautiful seabird. Her long slender bare legs were delicate as a crane's and pure save where an emerald trail of seaweed had fashioned itself as a sign upon the flesh. Her thighs, fuller and soft-hued as ivory, were bared almost to the hips, where the white fringes of her drawers were like feathering of soft white down. Her slate-blue skirts were kilted boldly about her waist and dovetailed behind her. Her bosom was as a bird's, soft and slight, slight and soft as the breast of some dark-plumaged dove. But her long fair hair was girlish: and girlish, and touched with the wonder of mortal beauty, her face. — James Joyce

There is a fundamental reason why we look at the sky with wonder and longing - for the same reason that we stand, hour after hour, gazing at the distant swell of the open ocean. There is something like an ancient wisdom, encoded and tucked away in our DNA, that knows its point of origin as surely as a salmonid knows its creek. Intellectually, we may not want to return there, but the genes know, and long for their origins - their home in the salty depths. But if the seas are our immediate source, the penultimate source is certainly the heavens.
The spectacular truth is - and this is something that your DNA has known all along - the very atoms of your body - the iron, calcium, phosphorus, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and on and on - were initially forged in long-dead stars. This is why, when you stand outside under a moonless, country sky, you feel some ineffable tugging at your innards. We are star stuff. Keep looking up. — Gerald D. Waxman

I am an obscure and patient pearl-fisherman who dives into the deepest waters and comes up with empty hands and a blue face. Some fatal attraction draws me down into the abysses of thought, down into those innermost recesses which never cease to fascinate the strong. I shall spend my life gazing at the ocean of art, where others voyage or fight; and from time to time I'll entertain myself by diving for those green and yellow shells that nobody will want. So I shall keep them for myself and cover the walls of my hut with them. — Gustave Flaubert