Quotes & Sayings About Sailing

Sail on silver girl, sail on by ... your time has come to shine all your dreams are on their way ... see how they shine..oh and if you need a friend. I'm sailing right behind ... — Paul Simon

Okay, so all a woman has to do is ignore society's expectations, be ambitious, sit at the table, work hard, and then it's smooth sailing all the way. What could possibly go wrong? — Sheryl Sandberg

Our future is like that of the passengers on a small pleasure boat sailing quietly above the Niagara Falls, not knowing that the engines are about to fail. — James Lovelock

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

In those days, the Corrected Hydrographic Sailing Directions for the Mediterranean, say, or the tables in Brown's Nautical Almanac. Under the charm of these rich I was as trusting and as stupid as a bird dog who wants to go out with any man with a gun, or a trained pig — Ernest Hemingway,

If everything is smooth sailing right from the beginning, we cannot become people of substance and character. By surmounting paining setbacks and obstacles, we can create a brilliant history of triumph that will shine forever. That is what makes life so exciting and enjoyable. In any field of endeavour, those who overcome hardships and grow as human beings are advancing towards success and victory in life. — Daisaku Ikeda

The ship is always off course. Anybody who sails knows that. Sailing is being off course and correcting. That gives a sense of what life is about. — Michael Meade

Living without an aim, is like sailing without a compass. — John Ruskin

people's lives could also be told from front to back, one could wait until they ended and then, gradually, follow the stream back to the source, identifying the tributaries on the way and sailing up them too, aware that each one, even the smallest and feeblest, was, in its time and in itself, a major river, and in this slow, deliberate way, alert to every scintillation on the surface of the water, every bubble risen from the bottom, every sudden downward flurry, every stagnant stillness, reach the end of the narrative and place after the first of all moments the final full stop, and to take the same amount of time that the lives thus told had actually lasted. — Jose Saramago

It is time to be old
To take in sail. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Barack Obama is putting his team together to take over the Administration. So far, he's got his mother-in-law, who is going to be living with him, and they are talking about Hillary for Secretary of State. You have your mother-in-law and Hillary Clinton. Sounds like smooth sailing to me. — David Letterman

I really enjoy sailing on Lake Geneva because I can just look at the shore and see my wife having a barbecue with the kids. — Ernesto Bertarelli

For one thing, I was no longer alone; a man is never alone with the wind-and the boat made three. — Hilaire Belloc

The most ordinary conditions for observing sailing birds are then the wind and sea are both aft. — Lawrence Hargrave

Every year I spend one month just sailing, but I still work when I'm on the boat. You never separate work from leisure. A boat is like a magic world, like a little island. — Renzo Piano

The first glance at the pillow showed me a repulsive sentinel perched upon each end of it
cockroaches as large as peach leaves
fellows with long, quivering antennae and fiery, malignant eyes. They were grating their teeth like tobacco worms, and appeared to be dissatisfied about something. I had often heard that these reptiles were in the habit of eating off sleeping sailors' toe nails down to the quick, and I would not get in the bunk any more. I lay down on the floor. But a rat came and bothered me, and shortly afterward a procession of cockroaches arrived and camped in my hair. In a few moments the rooster was crowing with uncommon spirit and a party of fleas were throwing double somersaults about my person in the wildest disorder, and taking a bite every time they stuck. I was beginning to feel really annoyed. I got up and put my clothes on and went on deck.
The above is not overdrawn; it is a truthful sketch of inter-island schooner life. — Mark Twain

Everything speaks: the flowing airstream and the sailing halycon, the blade of grass, the flower, the bud, the element; did you imagine the universe to be otherwise? — Victor Hugo

It is always fair sailing, when you escape evil. — Sophocles

Bad, or good, as it happens to be, that is what it is to exist! ... It is as though I have been silent and fuddled with sleep all my life. In spite of all, I know now that at least it is better to go always towards the summer, towards those burning seas of light; to sit at night in the forecastle lost in an unfamiliar dream, when the spirit becomes filled with stars, instead of wounds, and good and compassionate and tender. To sail into an unknown spring, or receive one's baptism on storm's promontory, where the solitary albatross heels over in the gale, and at last come to land. To know the earth under one's foot and go, in wild delight, ways where there is water. — Malcolm Lowry

Every flyer who ventures across oceans to distant lands is a potential explorer; in his or her breast burns the same fire that urged adventurers of old to set forth in their sailing-ships for foreign lands. — Jean Batten

Wealth from trade was the mainspring of Western material advance; the visible agents of change were great guns. These came of age in Europe in the 15th century. On land their potency in reducing castle walls favoured central over local power, since in general only monarchs could afford siege-trains; so nation-states were consolidated and extended into great territorial empires. At sea, guns transformed sailing ships into mobile castles virtually impregnable to opponents who lacked equally powerful ordnance. With the ocean-going gunned warship, western Europe began to extend around the globe. — Peter Padfield

I wouldn't say our relationship is always smooth sailing. In a fun sort of way, this publicizing of some feud has brought us closer together. I think it had to do with shooting an episode last season at a school. The students swarmed around him, and I'm walking along and feeling like yesterday's lunch. I was saying that was hard to deal with sometimes and he said, "Stephanie, you can go for it! All you have to do is play sexy." It was a nice chat, but the tabloids took it and made it out that I was jealous. I'm not jealous. — Stephanie Zimbalist

In the far corner, a tenor began to sing, Zsadist's crystal-clear voice sailing up toward the warrior paintings on the ceiling far, far above them all. At first John didn't know what the song was ... although if he'd been asked what his name was, he would have said Santa Claus, or Luther Vandross, or Teddy Roosevelt.
Maybe even Joan Collins. — J.R. Ward

Cry no tears for us, my friend." I pry at her fingers, panicking to be released in fear that she may drag me into death with her. She croaks again, "Lend no aches to the dreams of yesterday."
From the corpse of Warren, his greyish gums smack from whatever goo has settled in his mouth, "Allow the tide sweep free the bay."
Then together they sing in zombie choir, "And home the ships sailing send. — Nathan Reese Maher

People say that life is a cesspool of darkness and dispair. Well we of Van Halen are sailing through it in a yacht! — David Lee Roth

In Western Australia they don't even know how to make that vital piece of sailboating equipment, the gin and tonic. — P. J. O'Rourke

Helena had been standing by her window looking out to sea, breathing in the fresh air and admiring the picturesque scene of a small ship sailing into the harbor.
She had not been able to think of anything other than Mikolas for days.
From LONGING the 3rd chapter of TRUE LOVE — Destin Bays

From the plough to paper, from the wheel to house, from tool handles to sailing ships. Man would have been nothing without trees. — Chris Priestley

The effect of sailing is produced by a judicious arrangement of the sails to the direction of the wind. — William Falconer

There's a man who's been out sailing
In a decade full of dreams
And he takes her to a schooner
And he treats her like a queen
Bearing beads from California
With their amber stones and green
He has called her from the harbor
He has kissed her with his freedom
He has heard her off to starboard
In the breaking and the breathing
Of the water weeds
While she was busy being free — Joni Mitchell

Everyone needs to realize why am I here? It comes in everyone's life; you ask why am I here? What am I doing? Once you are able to answer that question for yourself honestly, you have smooth sailing. — Jimmy Cliff

I know enough about Satan to realize that he will have all his weapons ready for determined opposition. He would be a missionary simpleton who expected plain sailing in any work of God. — James O. Fraser

When rowan leaves are dank and rusting And rowan berries red as blood, When in my palm the hangman's thrusting The final nail with bony thud, When, over the foul flooding river, Upon the wet grey height, I toss Before my land's grim looks, and shiver As I swing here upon the cross, Then, through the blood and weeping, stretches My dying sight to space remote; I see upon the river's reaches Christ sailing to me in a boat. — Alexander Blok

Hey!" said the guy in the video. "Greetings from your friends at Camp Half-Blood, et cetera. This is Leo. I'm the ... " He looked off screen and yelled: "What's my title? Am I like admiral, or captain, or-"
A girl's voice yelled back, "Repair boy."
"Very funny, Piper," Leo grumbled. He turned back to the parchment screen. "So yeah, I'm ... ah..supreme commander of the Argo II. Yeah, I like that! Anyway, we're gonna be sailing towards you in about, I dunno, an hour in this big mother warship. We'd appreciate it if you'd not, like, blow us out of the sky or anything. So okay! If you could tell the Romans that. See you soon. Yours in demigodishness, and all that. Peace out! — Rick Riordan

The sea is the same as it has been since before men ever went on it in boats. — Ernest Hemingway,

When I was 11 years old, my parents wanted me to do something besides get in trouble. So they enrolled me in sailing classes at the Sea Shell Association in Santa Barbara, Calif. From the moment I climbed into that 8-foot dinghy in 1952, I knew instinctively what to do and sensed I had done it before. — David Crosby

Three fishers went sailing away to the west,/ Away to the west as the sun went down. — Charles Kingsley

Elijah blinked in dazzling sunlight and took a deep breath. The sweet-pepper scent of meadow grass told him immediately where he was. Winded, he skidded to a halt as the portal spat him out. Above him stretched skies of cornflower blue, dotted with threadbare white clouds sailing over like cotton galleons on the summer breeze. — Sharon Sant

Now, as far as I knew, he (Luke) was still sailing around on his demon-infested cruise ship while the chopped-up Lord Kronos re-formed, bit by bit, in a golden sarcophagus, biding his time until he had enough power to challenge the Olympian gods. In demigod-speak, we call this a "problem."
- Percy, 'The Battle of the Labyrinth — Rick Riordan

You know, the Chinese have forgotten more about sailing than the rest of the world ever knew. — Annie Proulx

Somehow we American pastors, without really noticing what was happening, got our vocations redefined in the terms of American careerism. We quit thinking of the parish as a location for pastoral spirituality and started thinking of it as an opportunity for advancement. Tarshish, not Nineveh, was the destination. The moment we did that, we started thinking wrongly, for the vocation of pastor has to do with living out the implications of the word of God in community, not sailing off into the exotic seas of religion in search of fame and fortune. — Eugene H. Peterson

There is poetry of sailing as old as the world, — E.L. James

To expel hunger and thirst there is no necessity of sitting in a palace and submitting to the supercilious brow and contumelious favour of the rich and great there is no necessity of sailing upon the deep or of following the camp What nature wants is every where to be found and attainable without much difficulty whereas require the sweat of the brow for these we are obliged to dress anew j compelled to grow old in the field and driven to foreign mores A sufficiency is always at hand — Seneca.

Simply sailing in a new direction you could enlarge the world — Allen Curnow

Every American autobiography, someone once said, is about one thing - escape. Look into the frightened heart of an American life, and you'll find a compulsion to flee - a seed planted in the national character at the start by those ships sailing out of Europe and landing on our shores.
- Teller: A Novel — Frederick Weisel

Not so much two ships passing in the night as two ships sailing together for a time but always bound for different ports. — P.D. James

I was never part of the sailing circle, but I enjoy when I'm invited to sail. — Philippe Petit

We have seen death before, Marnie and I, a mountain of ice melting over time, drops of water freezing at your core reminding you every day of that which has vanished, but the despair we know today is a sadness sailing sorrow through every bone and knuckle. — Lisa O'Donnell

But that's how it is on a sailing ship, and in this respect its journey parallels that of life: simply knowing where you want to go isn't enough, because life is a windblown voyage, consisting mainly of the detours imposed by alternating calm and storm. — Carsten Jensen

Stop!" I sent my open hand sailing and slapped Talbot across his face.
He let go of the spear and stared down at me-that rage burning in his eyes. Then he blinked and clutched his palm over the red hand-shaped mark I'd left on his face. "What was that for!"
"He submitted.Let.Him.Go. — Bree Despain

Life is a voyage, and we are all sailing under sealed orders. We plan, plot, scheme and arrange, and some fine day Fate steps in and our dreams are tossed into the yeasty deep. We grin and bear it
anyway we bear it: it is the only thing to do. — Elbert Hubbard

My belief assumed a form that it commonly assumes among the educated people of our time. This belief was expressed by the word "progress." At the time it seemed to me that this word had meaning. Like any living individual, I was tormented by questions of how to live better. I still had not understood that in answering that one must live according to progress, I was talking just like a person being carried along in a boat by the waves and the wind; without really answering, such a person replies to the only important question-"Where are we to steer?"-by saying, "We are being carried somewhere. — Leo Tolstoy

I grew up in England, went to a nice public school, then didn't want to go to university, so I thought I would wander around. I did a season skiing, a bit of sailing, typical spoilt brat stuff. I ended up in the Caribbean. I was having a blast. — Marc Koska

I keep sailing on in this middle passage. I am sailing into the wind and the dark. But I am doing my best to keep my boat steady and my sails full. — Arthur Ashe

I spent a long time trying to find my center until I looked closely at it one night & found it had wheels and moved easily in the slightest breeze. So now I spend less time sitting and more time sailing. — Brian Andreas

Now he is certainly sailing above, he on whom my wishes hang, and in whose hand I should like to lay my life's happiness. I will dare everything to win him and an immortal soul. — Hans Christian Andersen

There are valleys that lead to the bottom of the world, so it seems, but what world is that? The universe has no sides, no end, can't be mapped. Enough to make a man talk about God, make a man superstitious and worship an idol. The science never gets as far as the strangeness. The more sophisticated my equipment, the stranger the worlds it detects. I sometimes think I'm sailing through a vast thought. — Jeanette Winterson

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

Nothing goes to windward like a 747. — Tracee Ellis Ross

Their elegant shape, showy colours, and slow, sailing mode of flight, make them very attractive objects, and their numbers are so great that they form quite a feature in the physiognomy of the forest, compensating for the scarcity of flowers. — Henry Walter Bates

Were this world an endless plain, and by sailing eastward we could for ever reach new distances, and discover sights more sweet and strange than any Cyclades or Islands of King Solomon, then there were promise in the voyage. But in pursuit of those far mysteries we dream of, or in tormented chase of the demon phantom that, some time or other, swims before all human hearts; while chasing such over this round globe, they either lead us on in barren mazes or midway leave us whelmed. — Herman Melville

The only ship you can truly steer in this ocean is the one you're sailing. Quit trying to alter the winds; harness them. — Richelle E. Goodrich

From the front row of the balcony, I look out over the Uptown Cinema. The red velvet seats are emptying, the credits scrolling up the screen. Ginger Rogers married a Nazi, but Cary Grant got her out of it. Their ship is sailing to America; sun burns away the fog and the wind blows free. Now they are gone and I am coming back to reality, breathing a harsher air. It is how I always feel when a movie ends. — Kermit Roosevelt III

The happiest hour a sailor sees Is when he's down At an inland town, With his Nancy on his knees, yo ho! And his arm around her waist! — W.S. Gilbert

This is the most elaborate and luxurious method of convincing others that you can cook. Take everybody out on your yacht until they're green in the face. Then you can rave for weeks about your sauce marinara and no one will gainsay you.. — P. J. O'Rourke

New things always have to experience difficulties and setbacks as they grow. It is sheer fantasy to imagine that the cause of socialism is all plain sailing and easy success, without difficulties and setbacks or the exertion of tremendous efforts. — Mao Zedong

The things she sees are uninteresting to her. Irrelevant. Until there's a clatter of wings. We both look up. There's a pigeon, a woodpigeon, sailing down to roost in a lime tree above us. Time slows. The air thickens and the hawk is transformed. It's as if all her weapons systems were suddenly engaged. Red cross-hairs. She stands on her toes and cranes her neck. This. This flightpath. This thing, she thinks. This is fascinating. Some part of the hawk's young brain has just worked something out, and it has everything to do with death. — Helen Macdonald

If our lives were smooth sailing without painful hardships, unexpected disappointments or frustrating challenges, we wouldn't have our own personal testimony as credible evidence revealing God's omnipotent power. — Dana Arcuri

Slowly the truth is loading
I'm weighted down with love
Snow lying deep and even
Strung out and dreaming of

Night falling on the city
Quite something to behold
Don't it just look so pretty
This disappearing world

We're threading hope like fire
Down through the desperate blood
Down through the trailing wire
Into the leafless wood

Night falling on the city
Quite something to behold
Don't it just look so pretty
This disappearing world
This disappearing world

I'll be sticking right there with it
I'll be by your side
Sailing like a silver bullet
Hit 'em 'tween the eyes
Through the smoke and rising water
Cross the great divide
Baby till it all feels right

Night falling on the city
Sparkling red and gold
Don't it just look so pretty
This disappearing world"~David Gray — David Gray

Regardless of how your life will impact others and what that will look like, I just know that when your identity is grounded in God, when you trust in Him, you become part of a bigger picture. And you begin to live out this wonderful poem He has written for your life. This is the truth when life is smooth sailing, and this is the truth when storms come. — Tim Tebow

The warmly cool, clear, ringing, perfumed, overflowing, redundant days, were as crystal goblets of Persian sherbet, heaped up - flaked up, with rose-water snow. — Herman Melville

I hate a Barnacle as no man ever did before, not even a Sailor in a slow-sailing ship. — Charles Darwin

Marketing today is much more like sailing than driving. Your boat is the brand. If you point your boat in the right direction, follow the winds/currents, and steer, you will get the boat to go where you want it. Marketers should become the wind, but accept that they're at the mercy of the currents and weather — Steve Rubel

Orcs, and talking trees, and leagues of grass, and galloping riders, and glittering caves, and white towers and golden halls, and battles, and tall ships sailing, all these passed before Sam's mind. — J.R.R. Tolkien

It was one of the peculiar malfunctions of technology that shore batteries on the islands were generally of inadequate caliber and range to knock out a ship approaching with hostile intent. One is moved to wonder why, if a 10-pounder gun could be mounted on the rolling deck of a sailing vessel, the same or larger could not be mounted on land? — Barbara W. Tuchman

Always, sailing up from the south, from beyond the bend in the river, were clumps of water hyacinths, dark floating islands on the dark river, bobbing over the rapids. It was as if rain and river were tearing away bush from the heart of the continent and floating it down to the ocean, incalculable miles away. But the water hyacinth was the fruit of the river alone. The tall lilaccoloured flower had appeared only a few years before, and in the local language there was no word for it. The people still called it "the new thing" or "the new thing in the river," and to them it was another enemy. Its rubbery vines and leaves formed thick tangles of vegetation that adhered to the river banks and clogged up waterways. It grew fast, faster than men could destroy it with the tools they had. The channels to the villages had to be constantly cleared. Night and day the water hyacinth floated up from the south, seeding itself as it travelled. I — V.S. Naipaul

If you can't stop the waves, go sailing. — Margaret Atwood

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

My goal in sailing isn't to be brilliant or flashy in individual races, just to be consistent over the long run. — Dennis Conner

Just because I am paranoid does not mean that someone is not out to get me — Don Darkes

I rushed off to Whitehall and assumed Aidan would head back to Astor. But when I turned around briefly, I saw Aidan uncoiling her black scarf from around her neck. She held each end of the scarf above her head, the silk capturing the wind, arching above her like a parachute. Aidan released one end, kiting the scarf. The wind swirled around her for a moment before Aidan let go completely. She was an excellent student. The light silk caught a thermal and rose, sailing above the water. A dark black bird against the blue sky. — Amber Dermont

Sailing is necessary, living is not necessary. — Fernando Pessoa

It's ... " She couldn't finish.
"Don't try, Miss Redmond," he agreed, shading his eyes. "There are honestly no suitable words, so we shall not fault you for failing to find them. Nothing makes a man feel more like God than sailing a ship over the sea with no land in sight. And nothing makes a man feel less like a God than clinging to a shred of ship exploded by lightning in a storm. — Julie Anne Long

I looked up to see the sailing ship above me, the prow dipped low and Mircea hanging off the end of the wooden figurehead. His fist was knotted in my waistband, which explained why I couldn't breathe. Considering the alternative, I really didn't mind so much.
Even so, I was surprised his reflexes had been good enough to catch me. He looked kind of shocked himself. For a second, the reserved demeanor cracked open on something wild and fierce and compelling. Then he dragged me up, put a hand on either side of my face and kissed me full on the lips. From somewhere above, I heard Pritkin swear. — Karen Chance

The shelves of this store are stacked with stock. You will find a steamship, a sailing ship, and even a spaceship. There are several sorts of shoe and scores of signs and symbols. There is a sketch of a squinch, a selection of shells (not all from the sea), a siamang settled on a seat, a sponge to be studied, and sundry stuff suspended from strings. In all I included 1,234 Ss for you to see. — Mike Wilks

Back on the ferry, I sip some vodka on the rocks and have a chat with God.
Me: (desperately) What the *&%$# am I going to do?
God:
Me: (surprised) Really? After all those Sundays of being a back up singer for Jesus, you got nothing to say?
God:
Me: (humbly) Help me out here. — Lexis De Rothschild

Some gifted adventurer is always sailing round the world of art and science, to bring home costly merchandise from every port. — Robert Aris Willmott

Sophia and Grandmother sat down by the shore to discuss the matter further. It was a pretty day, and the sea was running a long, windless swell. It was on days just like this
dog days
that boats went sailing off all by themselves. Large, alien objects made their way in from sea, certain things sank and others rose, milk soured, and dragonflies danced in desperation. Lizards were not afraid. When the moon came up, red spiders mated on uninhabited skerries, where the rock became an unbroken carpet of tiny, ecstatic spiders. — Tove Jansson

Tessa had lain down beside him and slid her arm beneath his head, and put her head on his chest,listening to the ever-weakening beat of his heart. And in the shadows they'd whispered, reminding each other of the stories only they knew. Of the girl who had hit over the head with a water jug the boy who had come to rescue her, and how he had fallen in love with her in that instant. Of a ballroom and a balcony and the moon sailing like a ship untethered through the sky. Of the flutter of the wings of the clockwork Angel. Of holy water and blood. — Cassandra Clare

He touched me as if I were the curved and delicate handle of a china cup, but he held me tightly just as I was, flesh and blood and full of human flaws and fears. In his arms I wasn't a girl dreaming of sailing the high seas, and I wasn't a farm kid jumping the train, either, but a fully grown woman riding the soft side of a crescent moon. — Ann Howard Creel

They came there regularly every evening drawn by some need. It was as if the water floated off and set sailing thoughts which had grown stagnant on dry land, and gave to their bodies even some sort of physical relief. First, the pulse of colour flooded the bay with blue, and the heart expanded with it and the body swam, only the next instant to be checked and chilled by the prickly blackness on the ruffled waves. Then, up behind the great black rock, almost every evening spurted irregularly, so that one had to watch for it and it was a delight when it came, a fountain of white water; and then while one waited for that, one watched, on the pale semicircular beach, wave after wave shedding again and again smoothly, a film of mother-of-pearl. — Virginia Woolf

Some things cannot be spoken or discovered until we have been stuck, incapacitated, or blown off course for awhile. Plain sailing is pleasant, but you are not going to explore many unknown realms that way. — David Whyte

Of course it is impossible, or at any rate very difficult, properly to study anything whatever without the aid of printed books. But if you desire to understand the deeper depths of bridge or of boat-sailing you would not be deterred by your lack of interest in literature from reading the best books on bridge or boat-sailing. We must, therefore, distinguish between literature, and books treating of subjects not literary. — Arnold Bennett

Nine times out of ten, failure is resorting to Plan B when Plan A gets too risky, too costly, or too difficult. That's why most people are living their Plan B. They didn't burn the ships. Plan A people don't have a Plan B...

There are moments in life when we need to burn the ships to our past. We do so by making a defining decision that will eliminate the possibility of sailing back to the old world we left behind. You burn the ships named Past Failure and Past Success. You burn the ship named Bad Habit. You burn the ship named Regret. You burn the ship named Guilt. You burn the ship named My Old Way of Life. — Mark Batterson

Even those novelists most commonly deemed "philosophical" have sometimes answered with an emphatic no. Iris Murdoch, the longtime Oxford philosopher and author of some two dozen novels treating highbrow themes like consciousness and morality, argued that philosophy and literature were contrary pursuits. Philosophy calls on the analytical mind to solve conceptual problems in an "austere, unselfish, candid" prose, she said in a BBC interview broadcast in 1978, while literature looks to the imagination to show us something "mysterious, ambiguous, particular" about the world. Any appearance of philosophical ideas in her own novels was an inconsequential reflection of what she happened to know. "If I knew about sailing ships I would put in sailing ships," she said. "And in a way, as a novelist, I would rather know about sailing ships than about philosophy. — Iris Murdoch

My wife and I said good-bye the next morning in a little sheltered place among the lumber on the wharf; she was one of your women who never like to do their crying before folks.
She climbed on the pile of lumber and sat down, a little flushed and quivery, to watch us off. I remember seeing her there with the baby till we were well down the channel. I remember noticing the bay as it grew cleaner, and thinking that I would break off swearing; and I remember cursing Bob Smart like a pirate within an hour.
("Kentucky's Ghost") — Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

We had been busy building up fibre infrastructure under the ground in Hong Kong and underneath the homes of people, so when we launched IPTV, it was relatively smoother sailing than in other territories. — Richard Li

Trees quiver in the wind,
sailing on a sea of mist
out of earshot. — Dag Hammarskjold

- Know any good sailing jokes? - I've got one about seagulls. - Okay. - Why do seagulls fly over the sea? - Why? - Because if they flew over the bay, they'd be bagels. — Jennifer E. Smith

Up to a few years ago nearly all the literature about Oceania was written by papalagi and other outsiders. Our islands were and still are a goldmine for romantic novelists and filmmakers, bar-room journalists and semi-literate tourists, sociologists and Ph.D. students, remittance men and sailing evangelists, UNO experts, and colonial administrators and their well-groomed spouses. Much of this literature ranges from the hilariously romantic through the pseudo-scholarly to the infuriatingly racist; from the noble savage literary school through Margaret Mead and all her comings of age, Somerset Maugham's puritan missionaries/drunks/and saintly whores and James Michener's rascals and golden people, to the stereotyped childlike pagan who needs to be steered to the Light. — Albert Wendt