Sailed Out Quotes & Sayings

The thing to keep in mind is that we're still in the very early days when it comes to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Saying there's a silence is a bit like if Columbus, looking to discover a new continent, only sailed 10 miles off the coast of Spain before turning back to say, 'Nothing out there!' — Seth Shostak

Before Columbus, all previous adventurers sailed close to the shore, within sight of land. That was the accepted way to sail. Columbus dared to be different. He refused to do what all others had done. He took a risk: he sailed perpendicular to the shore - straight out to sea. And because he let go of the known and had the bravery to sail out into the unknown, he became one of our greatest heroes. — Robin S. Sharma

There's a lot of women out there, some of whom are my age who've never been married and some who have been married and would like to be married again but think their ship has sailed, and I'm like, 'Oh no, honey, let Miss Niecy show you it is never too late for love!' — Niecy Nash

I played in rock bands in college and then right out of college I moved over to Europe and lived in Ireland for about four years playing in indie rock bands. I love and miss being in a band, I still am in a band but pursuing that as a career I definitely missed it but I felt like that ship had sailed. — Bill Watterson

With his mind full of the engaging Rosalind, he stared at Mac. "Hi, sorry to interrupt." He lurched to his feet, scattered his papers so some sailed to the floor. "Ah, it's all right. No problem. I was just ... " He bent to retrieve papers as she did the same, and knocked his head against hers. "Sorry, sorry." He stayed down, met her eyes. "Crap." She smiled, and the dimples came out to play. "Hello, Carter. — Nora Roberts

Man was sent into the world to be a growing and exhaustless force. The world was spread out around him to be seized and conquered. Realms of infinite truth burst open above him, inviting him to tread those shining coasts along which Newton dropped his plummet, and Herschel sailed,
a Columbus of the skies. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

All his plans were suddenly overthrown, and the existence, so elaborately pictured, was no more than a dream which would never be realized. He was free once more. Free! He need give up none of his projects, and life still was in his hands for him to do what he liked with. He felt no exhiliration, but only dismay. His heart sank. The future stretched out before him in desolate emptiness. It was as though he had sailed for many years over a great waste of waters, with peril and privation, and at last had come upon a fair haven, but as he was about to enter, some contrary wind had arisen and drove him out again into the open sea; and because he had let his mind dwell on these meads and pleasant woods of the land, the vast deserts of the ocean filled him with anguish. He could not confront again the loneliness and the tempest. — W. Somerset Maugham

The Greeks, at least by the fourth century BC, knew Britain as Albion. Originally applied to a Spanish tribe called the 'Albiones', the term was later adopted for Britain, perhaps because of its similarity to the Greek word for whiteness, alphos, thanks to the white chalk cliffs of the southeast coast. Pliny the Elder, writing in the first century AD, says that Britain had 'previously' been called Albion, so by then the name must have fallen out of common use.2 By the time Britain began to be referred to more frequently, the Greeks called it Prettannia, or Brettannia.3 What does seem certain is that in the fourth century BC, Pytheas of Massilia (Marseilles) sailed to Britain. Pytheas wrote down his experiences, but these only survive as incidental third-hand references by later writers. Most — Guy De La Bedoyere

As they sailed farther from the coast, the sky darkened and more stars came out. Percy studied the constellations - the ones Annabeth had taught him so many years ago. — Rick Riordan

Have you not yet seen, or not been introduced to ma tante? Anna Pavlovna said to her guests as they arrived, and very seriously she led them up to a little old lady wearing tall bows, who had sailed in out of the next room as soon as the guests began to arrive. Anna Pavlovna mentioned their names, deliberately turning her eyes from the guest to ma tante, and then withdrew. All the guests performed the ceremony of greeting the aunt, who was unknown, uninteresting and unnecessary to every one. Anna Pavlovna with mournful, solemn sympathy, followed these greetings, silently approving them. Ma tante said to each person the same words about his health, her own health, and the health of her majesty, who was, thank God, better to-day. Every one, though from politeness showing no undue haste, moved away from the old lady with a sense of relief at a tiresome duty accomplished, and did not approach her again all the evening. — Leo Tolstoy

In, 1950, at the age, 19 I dropped out of St. George William College in Montreal, as it then was, and sailed for England on the Franconia. Foolishly, no arrogantly, believing I could put Canada and its picayune problems behind me, never dreaming it would become the raw material of most of my fiction and non-fiction. Or that I would care so deeply about its surviving intact. — Mordecai Richler

So we go, so little knowing what we touch and what touches us as we talk! We drop out a common piece of news, "Mr. So-and-so is dead, Miss Such-a-one is married, such a ship has sailed," and lo, on our right hand or on our left, some heart has sunk under the news silently - gone down in the great ocean of Fate, without even a bubble rising to tell its drowning pang. And this - God help us! - is what we call living! — Harriet Beecher Stowe

The [bowling] ball flew out jerkily, sailed about four feet, hit the lane with a loud crack, and then promptly entered the gutter. Roman walked up beside me, and we silently watched the ball complete its journey.
'Are you always that rough with balls?' he asked finally.
'Most men don't complain. — Richelle Mead

It was years ago now, on a warm summer night,
When the boy came out of the sea.
His skin was blue and his hair was white,
And he was in love with me.
He was wild and true, and right then I knew
That he was in love with me.

In our ship we sailed for years on the ocean,
Unfettered and totally free.
And he gave all his days to his endless devotion,
For he was in love with me.
I called it a phase and made endless delays,
Though he was in love with me.

One day the waves swept him right off the ship
And dropped him into the blue.
As his skin turned to water, his hair into fish,
He asked if I loved him too.
Too late I called through the wind and the water,
'I was always in love with you.'
I was always in love with you. — Traci Chee

It was strange to read about the people he knew in New York, Ed and Lorraine, the newt-brained girl who had tried to stow herself away in his cabin the day he sailed from New York. It was strange and not at all attractive. What a dismal life they led, creeping around New York, in and out of subways, standing in some dingy bar on Third Avenue for their entertainment,watching television, or even if they had enough money for a Madison Avenue bar
or a good restaurant now and then, how dull it all was compared to the worst little
trattoria in Venice with its tables of green salads, trays of wonderful cheeses, and
its friendly waiters bringing you the best wine in the world! 'I certainly do envy
you sitting there in Venice in an old palazzo!' Bob wrote. 'Do you take a lot of gondola rides? How are the girls? Are you getting so cultured you won't speak to any of us when you come back? How long are you staying, anyway ? — Patricia Highsmith

Thirty years ago, my sister, Gale (so named because a gale hit Boston Harbor the night she was born), some friends and I stole a boat in the middle of the night and sailed it out of the Santa Barbara harbor. Suddenly we were becalmed and the current began pushing us toward the breakwall. With no running lights and no power, we were dead in the water. Out of that darkness a steel hull appeared: it was the local Coast Guard cutter. My father, stern-faced and displeased, stood in the bow. — Gretel Ehrlich

My love, I see you through my tears.
No pity in your face I see.
I have sailed far across the years;
Stretch out, stretch out your arms to me. — Stella Benson

Nevertheless, they boarded The Purdue Victory and sailed out of Boston harbor, provided for against all inclemencies but these they were leaving behind, and those disasters of such scope and fortuitous originality which Christian courts of law and insurance companies, humbly arguing ad hominem, define as acts of God. — William Gaddis

No doubt she'd thought she was doing him a kindness, urging him to kick up his heels and loosen his too-tight cravat and learn to savor careless pleasures. As though he hadn't heard such urgings before, from every feckless acquaintance made uncomfortable by his example of propriety, or every heedless one who sailed through life never noticing that it was vigilant people, the people standing back from the merriment, who stomped out the fiery raisins dropped by others and kept everything from going up in flames. — Cecilia Grant

It was one of those perfect nights, listening to the waves crash, feeling the warm summer breeze, watching the sun set over the ocean as the moon rose up in the sky. I looked out over the cliffs and I thought about the explorers who had sailed from places like this, what they'd accomplished, mapping the unknown world, charting our place in the universe. How many times had they failed and fallen down only to get back up and try again? How many times had they sailed out on an impossible voyage and made a successful return home? I sat there with Carola looking out over the endless horizon. It was strange, but I felt like everything was going to be okay. The end of my story was not yet written, and I still had the chance to make it extraordinary. — Mike Massimino

All that the unsuspecting Bilbo saw that morning was an old man with a staff. He had a tall pointed blue hat, a long grey cloak, a silver scarf over which his long white beard hung down below his waist, and immense black boots.
"Good morning!" said Bilbo, and he meant it. The sun was shining, and the grass was very green. But Gandalf looked at him from under long bushy eyebrows that stuck out further than the brim of his shady hat.
"What do you mean?" he said. "Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I wish it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?"
"All of them at once," said Bilbo. "And a very fine morning for a pipe of tobacco out of doors, into the bargain." Then Bilbo sat down on a seat by his door, crossed his legs, and blew out a beautiful grey ring of smoke that sailed up into the air without breaking and floated away over The Hill. — J.R.R. Tolkien

The Boy's head was spinning. Raul was real, and quite possibly not kindly disposed to him, as Marama's potential heir and jail-breaker. The sailors worshiped Marama, who controlled the tides and commanded them through dreams? The Geolwe collected clouds and lived in the sky? And did the captain just say there were mountains in the sea? Did he mean under the water? Downing the drink in front of him, he began to laugh. It was all just so hopelessly un-real. Anselt and the captain stared for a moment, then found his mirth infectious. Before long they were laughing too, and the sound of their merriment sailed through the night and out to greet the rolling waves, wrapping itself around the ship like a cloud. — J.J. Gadd

He liked order and precision, and his crew knew it. He had hand-picked each and every one of them, and he'd never sailed with a finer group of men. Not that he would ever say it out loud, but they knew it. — Jeff Grubb

An hour later, thoroughly appalled with the state of the cabin now that she had given it a thorough assessment, Camilla sailed into the shed. She was armed with a long list.
"You need supplies."
"Hand me that damn wrench."
She picked up the tool and considered herself beyond civilized for not simply bashing him over the head with it. "Your home is an abomination. I'll require cleaning supplies - preferably industrial strength. And if you want a decent meal, I'll need some food to stock the kitchen. You have to go into town."
He battled the bolt into submission, shoved the switch on. And got nothing but a wheezy chuckle out of the generator. "I don't have time to go into town."
"If you want food for your belly and clean sheets on which to sleep, you'll make time. — Nora Roberts

For thirty years," he said, "I've sailed the seas and seen good and bad, better and worse, fair weather and foul, provisions running out, knives going, and what not. Well, now I tell you, I never seen good come o' goodness yet. Him as strikes first is my fancy; dead men don't bite; them's my views - amen, so be it. — Robert Louis Stevenson

And [he] sailed back over a year
and in and out of weeks
and through a day
and into the night of his very own room
where he found his supper waiting for him
and it was still hot — Maurice Sendak

A red-tailed hawk rose high on an air current, calling out shrill, sequential rasps of raptor joy. She scanned the sky for another one. Usually when they spoke like that, they were mating. Once she'd seen a pair of them coupling on the wing, grappling and clutching each other and tumbling curve-winged through the air in hundred-foot death dives that made her gasp, though always they uncoupled and sailed outward and up again just before they were bashed to death in senseless passion. — Barbara Kingsolver

When the last sea is sailed and last shallow charted,
When the last field is reaped and the last harvest stored,
When the last fire is out and the last guest departed
Grant the last prayer that I pray, Be good to me, O Lord. — John Masefield

A new darkness pulled away the room, inked out flesh and outlined bones. My mother was wide awake again. She become sharply herself - bone, wire, antenna - but she was not afraid. She had been pared down like this before, when she had travelled up the mountains into rare snow - alone in white not unlike being alone in black. She had also sailed a boat safely between land and land. — Maxine Hong Kingston

She promised you'd get to shore in one piece.' Cheap said, 'and I won't make a liar out of her. But if you know what's good for you, you'll forget about that girl. Ask anyone on the coast. Or the Lord God himself. They'll tell you. Lucas Cheap sailed with the Brethren. He makes good ever on his threats. — Donna Thorland

Whether the type of old sea captain that I have portrayed in my stories is gone forever, is a question. Certainly each summer I find that the ranks have perceptibly thinned. The longshore captain is still there, many of the men who are not any older than myself, but their viewpoint is not that of a man who sailed his square rigged ship out one morning with China as his destination. — Joseph C. Lincoln

She had not understood what it had been like for him to live his entire life underground, chained and beaten and crippled - until then. Until she heard that noise of undiluted, unyielding joy.
Until she echoed it, tipping her head back to the clouds around them.
They sailed over a sea of clouds, and Abraxos dipped his claws in them before tilting to race up a wind-carved column of cloud. Higher and higher, until they reached its peak and he flung out his wings in the freezing, thin sky, stopping the world entirely for a heartbeat.
And Manon, because no one was watching, because she did not care, flung out her arms as well and savored the freefall, the wind now a song in her ears, in her shriveled heart. — Sarah J. Maas

Father and son

No sound - a spell- on, on out
where the wind went, our kite sent back
its thrill along the string that
sagged but sang and said, "I'm here!
I'm here!" - till broke somewhere,
gone years ago, but sailed forever clear
of earth. I hold-whatever tugs
the other end-I hold that string. — William Stafford

When he couldn't walk anymore he sailed, and when he couldn't sail anymore he was at the End of the World, where sat a dignified man in a dinner suit, dangling his long legs over the edge. He was patting his lapels and turning out his pockets and looking generally perplexed. "Bother," said the well-dressed man. "I've lost the Key to the World. If I don't wind it up and set its clockwork going again, the sun and moon and stars won't turn, and the world will be plunged into an eternal nighttime of miserable cold and darkness. Bother! — Lev Grossman

I'm still furious with you," she murmured, kissing a line down his chest.
"Oh, God, please don't be furious," he choked out quickly. "Every female I know is furious with me. Rosalyn throws tantrums, and Charlotte hasn't spoken to me or written since you left." He moved his hands to unbutton her gown. "The morning I thought you'd sailed out of my life I started drinking and didn't stop until I'd finished two bottles. For three days I had a blistering headache, and Nedda couldn't for the life of her stop banging things." He groaned. "And I can't even begin to tell you about your sisters. — Adele Ashworth

I knew I was missing out, missing this: the thrum of population, out here, in the street. I sailed by, a white ghost in their midst. — Monique Roffey

With my husband, I have twice sailed across the Atlantic in a sailboat one third the length of the Mayflower. I know Atlantic gales inside and out. I endured one that lasted for three days with winds up to fifty knots. — Kathryn Lasky

We'd need to leave fast. The biggest hurdle would be finding a ship. Passages across the Atlantic didn't always work out. The Black Sea wasn't easy to cross either. The ancient Greeks called it Pontos Axenos, the Hostile Sea. In our day and age, Greek myths were lifesaving required reading, and I'd read enough of them to know that the Black Sea wasn't a fun place.
"Where on the Black Sea?"
"Georgia."
Colchis. Bodyguard detail in the land of the Golden Fleece, dragons, and witches, where the Argonauts had sailed and nearly died. — Ilona Andrews

Essex raised its ugly head. When i was a scholarship boy at the local grammar, son of a city-hall toiler on the make, this country was synonymous with liberty, success, and Cambridge. Now look at it. Shopping malls and housing estates pursue their creeping invasion of our ancient land. A North Sea wind snatched frilly clouds in its teeth and scarpered off to the midlands. The countryside proper began at last. My mother had a cousin out here, her family had a big house. I think they moved to Winnipeg for a better life. There! There, in the shadow of that DIY warehouse, once stood a row of walnut trees where me and Pip Oakes - a childhood chum who died aged thirteen under the wheels of an oil tanker - varnished a canoe one summer and sailed it alone the Say. Sticklebacks in jars,. There, right there, around that bend we lit a fire and cooked beans and potatoes wrapped in silver foil! Come back, oh, come back! Is one glimpse all I get? — David Mitchell

Turn to my left and see a young couple walking along the sidewalk. Seattle's Alki Beach is pretty much deserted, aside from a few die-hards, or early morning insomniacs, like me. The young couple are walking away from me, hand in hand, smiling at each other, and I point my lens at them and click. I zoom in on their sneaker-clad feet and locked hands and shoot some more, my photographer's eye appreciating their intimate moment on the beach. I inhale the salty air and stare out at the sound once again as a red-sailed boat gently glides out on the water. The early morning sunshine is — Kristen Proby

O'er rivers, through woods,
With winding and weaves,
Their school bus sailed on
Through the new-fallen leaves.

When out on the road
There arose such a clatter,
They threw down their windows
To see what was the matter.

When what with their wondering eyes
Should they see,
But a miniature farm
And eight tiny turkey.

And a little old man
So lively and rugged,
They knew in a moment
It was Farmer Mack Nuggett.

He was dressed all in denim
From his head to his toe,
With a pinch of polyester
And a dash of Velcro.

And then in a twinkling
They heard in the straw
The prancing and pawing
Of each little claw.

More rapid than chickens
His cockerels they came.
He whistled and shouted
And called them by name:

"Now Ollie, now Stanley, now Larry and Moe,
On Wally, on Beaver, on Shemp and Groucho! — Dav Pilkey

You should have Hugo throw you in the pool."
The golem turned his head toward Seth, who shrugged.
"Sure, that would be fun."
Hugo nodded, grabbed Seth, and, with a motion like a hook shot, flung him skyward. Kendra gasped. They were still thirty or forty feet away from the edge of the pool. She had pictured the golem carrying Seth much closer before tossing him. Her brother sailed nearly as high as the roof of the house before plummeting down and landing in the center of the deep end with an impressive splash.
Kendra ran to the side of the pool. By the time she arrived, Seth was boosting himself out of the waster, hair and clothes dripping. "That was the freakiest, awesomest moment in my life!" Seth declared. "But next time, let me take off my shoes. — Brandon Mull

If I had been downright honest with myself, I would have seen very plainly in my heart that I did but half fancy being committed this way to so long a voyage, without once laying my eyes on the man who was to be the absolute dictator of it, so soon as the ship sailed out upon the open sea. But when a man suspects any wrong, it sometimes happens that if he be already involved in the matter, he insensibly strives to cover up his suspicions even from himself. And much this way it was with me. I said nothing, and tried to think nothing. — Herman Melville

It had borne all the ships whose names are like jewels flashing in the night of time, from the Golden Hind returning with her round flanks full of treasure, to be visited by the Queen's Highness and thus pass out of the gigantic tale, to the Erebus and Terror, bound on other conquests - and that never returned. It had known the ships and the men. They had sailed from Deptford, from Greenwich, from Erith - the adventurers and the settlers; kings' ships and the ships of men on 'Change; captains, admirals, the dark "interlopers" of the Eastern trade, and the commissioned "generals" of East India fleets. Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire. What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown earth! . . . The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empires. — Joseph Conrad

By what seemed then and still seems a chance, the suggestion of a moment's idle thought followed up upon familiar lines and paths that I had tracked a hundred times already, the great truth burst upon me, and I saw, mapped out in lines of light, a whole world, a sphere unknown; continents and islands, and great oceans in which no ship has sailed (to my belief) since a Man first lifted up his eyes and beheld the sun, and the stars of heaven, and the quiet earth beneath. — Arthur Machen

And yes, Holden would keep those kids from falling off the cliff, but WHO WOULDN'T? Does she think I would just fold my arms or give them a pat on the back before they sailed headfirst to the ground? We are all catchers, and it's sad that she doesn't see it. Instead she sees the PHONINESS, she deplores the world even after I point out that I am in it. — David Levithan

In Brueghel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster, the ploughman may Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green water, And the expensive ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on. — W. H. Auden

And that fear I'd felt, the disembodying confusion, seemed to be a drug I was now addicted to, because moving through the ordinary world- watching CNN, reading the Times, walking to Sant Ambroeus to have a coffee at the bar- made me feel exhausted, even depressed. Perhaps I was suffering from the same problem as the man who'd sailed around the world and now on land, facing his farmhouse, his wife and kids, understood that the constancy of home stretching out before him like a dry flat field was infinitely more terrifying than any violent squall with thirty-foot swells. — Marisha Pessl

Battered by shifing currents and a cold, unrelenting wind, we sailed past deserted islands crowded with pines and a ghost tree growing staight out of the water, its gaunt trunk and scrawny branches raised heavenward like an outcast pleading for his life. Now, having reached the north shore, we were doggedly searching for the hidden rivulet that would take us into The Peak. We were trapped in muddy water barbed with grasses and covered with thick green algae, which broke apart in clumps, then, after we'd edged through, resealed, erasing all signs of our passing.

The wind had dissipated - strange, as it'd been so turbulent minutes ago out on the lake. Dense trees surrounded us, packed like hordes of stranded prisoners. There wasn't a single bird, not a scuttle through the branches, not a cry - as if everything alive had fled. — Marisha Pessl