Sailor Man Quotes & Sayings

The interesting thing, in the photograph, was how the fragile little knock-kneed boy - smiling sweetly, pristine in his sailor suit - was also the old man who'd clasped my hand while he was dying: two separate frames, superimposed upon each other, of the same soul. And the painting, above his head, was the still point where it all hinged: dreams and signs, past and future, luck and fate. There wasn't a single meaning. There were many meanings. It was a riddle expanding out and out and out. — Donna Tartt

Never let your love for your profession overshadow your religious feeling. Depend on it that religion will strengthen, not weaken, your energies, and will not only make you a better sailor, but a superior man. Professional studies are not to be neglected; but, on the other hand, take care how you fall into the common error of believing they are the remedy for all the ills of life. — Benjamin Haydon

Dr. Sacks treats each of his subjects - the amnesic fifty-year-old man who believes himself to be a young sailor in the Navy, the "disembodied" woman whose limbs have become alien to her, and of course the famous man who mistook his wife for a hat - with a deep respect for the unique individual living beneath the disorder. These tales inspire awe and empathy, allowing the reader to enter the uncanny worlds of those with autism, Alzheimer's, Tourette's syndrome, and other unfathomable neurological conditions. "One of the great clinical writers of the 20th century" (The New York Times), Dr. Sacks brings to vivid life some of the most fundamental questions about identity and the human mind. — Oliver Sacks

My daughter," I said blankly. "I see. Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought
it took a man, as well as a woman, to make a child. Is this infant's father to
be a crab, or a seagull maybe? Or were you planning to shipwreck some likely
sailor on my doorstep, so I can make convenient use of him? — Juliet Marillier

Seems to me," said Cap'n Bill, as he sat beside Trot under the big acacia tree, looking out over the blue ocean, "seems to me, Trot, as how the more we know, the more we find we don't know." "I can't quite make that out, Cap'n Bill," answered the little girl in a serious voice, after a moment's thought, during which her eyes followed those of the old sailor-man across the glassy surface of the sea. "Seems to me that all we learn is jus' so much gained." "I know; it looks that way at first sight," said the sailor, nodding his head; "but those as knows the least have a habit of thinkin' they know all there is to know, while them as knows the most admits what a turr'ble big world this is. It's the knowing ones that realize one lifetime ain't long enough to git more'n a few dips o' the oars of knowledge. — L. Frank Baum

Evolution did not intend trees to grow singly. Far more than ourselves they are social creatures, and no more natural as isolated specimens than man is as a marooned sailor or hermit. — John Fowles

The wonder is always new that any sane man can be a sailor. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

In any age, there is no shortage of people willing to embark on a hazardous adventure. Columbus and Magellan filled eight ships between them for voyages into the void. One hundred and fifty years ago, the possibilities offered by missionary service were limitless and first-rate. Later, Scott and Shackleton turned away droves after filling their crews for their desperate Antarctic voyages. In 1959 ... sailor H.W. Tilman, looking for a crew for a voyage in an old wooden yacht to the Southern Ocean, ran this ad in the London Times: "Hand [man] wanted for long voyage in small boat. No pay, no prospects, not much pleasure." Tilman received more replies than he could investigate, one from as far away as Saigon. — Peter Nichols

There's lots o' things folks don't 'preciate," replied the sailor-man. "If somethin' would 'most stop your breath, you'd think breathin' easy was the finest thing in life. — L. Frank Baum

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

I was surprised he didn't just spit the nails into the wood like Popeye the Sailor Man. — Josh Lanyon

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

I'll tell you an incident that happened right at the Brown Derby [restaurant] since I've been here in Honolulu," Armstrong tells a friend on one of the recordings. "You remember that white boy, he's a sailor or something, on one of these battleships, on Pearl Harbor, and he caught my show, and I come to find out he has damn near every record I made from childbirth. "He come up and shook my hand after the whole show was over . . . and he said, 'You know, I don't like Negroes.' "Right to my [expletive] face, that [expletive] told me. And so I said, 'Well, I admire your [expletive] sincerity.' "And he said, 'I don't like Negroes, but you're one [expletive] I'm crazy about. I've got every [expletive] record.' "I've said it for years. You take the majority of white people," continued Armstrong, "they always got one [expletive] at least that they're just crazy about, [expletive]. Every white man in the world got one [expletive] at least that they just love his dirty drawers. — Howard Reich

I became interested in librarians while researching my first book, about obituaries. With the exception of a few showy eccentrics, like the former soldier in Hitler's army who had a sex change and took up professional whistling, the most engaging obit subjects were librarians. An obituary of a librarian could be about anything under the sun, a woman with a phenomenal memory, who recalled the books her aging patrons read as children - and was also, incidentally, the best sailor on her stretch of the Maine coast - or a man obsessed with maps, who helped automate the Library of Congress's map catalog and paved the way for wonders like Google Maps. — Marilyn Johnson

Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe, 45
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations. 50
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water. — T. S. Eliot

The seasick passenger on an ocean liner detests the good sailor who stalks past him 265 times a day grandly smoking a large, greasy cigar. In precisely the same way the democrat hates the man who is having a better time in the world. This is the origin of democracy. It is also the origin of Puritanism. — H.L. Mencken

Sydney's the kind of port that leaves a mark on a sailor," the old man mused.
"Really?" Haakon said, wondering what the man meant.
"It did on me," he said, opening up his shirt to display his chest. It was covered with tattoos! At the top, SYDNEY was printed in elaborate red and blue letters. Beneath that was an enticing selection of names and dates.
"Mary, 1838 ... Adella, 1840 ... " The old sailor began laughing. "Beatrice, 1843 ... Helen, 1846." And then finally, "Mother." There was no date after "Mother."
"Mothers you love forever," he said. Everybody laughed then, including Haakon, though the thought brought some sadness to his heart. He did love his mother forever, and he missed her as well. — Bonnie Bryant Hiller

Soldier or sailor, the fighting man is but a fiend; and the staff and body-guard of the Devil musters many a baton. — Herman Melville

The gunslinger came awake from a confused dream which seemed to consist of a single image: that of the Sailor in the Tarot deck from which the man in black had dealt (or purported to deal) the gunslinger's own moaning future. — Stephen King

It was not considered right for a man not to drink, although drink was a dangerous thing. On the contrary, not to drink would have been thought a mark of cowardice and of incapacity for self-control. A man was expected even to get drunk if necessary, and to keep his tongue and his temper no matter how much he drank. The strong character would only become more cautious and more silent under the influence of drink; the weak man would immediately show his weakness. I am told the curious fact that in the English army at the present day officers are expected to act very much after the teaching of the old Norse poet; a man is expected to be able on occasion to drink a considerable amount of wine or spirits without showing the effects of it, either in his conduct or in his speech. "Drink thy share of mead; speak fair or not at all" - that was the old text, and a very sensible one in its way. — Eoghan Odinsson

For a woman knows the face of the man she loves like a sailor knows the open sea — Honore De Balzac

A woman knows the face of the man she loves as a sailor knows the open sea. — Honore De Balzac

Popeye the Sailor Man has more cultural longevity. Only women and poofs read or write now. Otherwise, these days, no sooner has someone been sodomised by a close relative than they think they can write a memoir. The game's up. — Hanif Kureishi

I say, White-Jacket, d'ye mind me? there never was a very great man yet who spent all his life inland. A snuff of the sea, my boy, is inspiration; and having been once out of sight of land, has been the making of many a true poet and the blasting of many pretenders; for, d'ye see, there's no gammon about the ocean; it knocks the false keel right off a pretender's bows; it tells him just what he is, and makes him feel it, too. A sailor's life, I say, is the thing to bring us mortals out. What does the blessed Bible say? Don't it say that we main-top-men alone see the marvellous sights and wonders? Don't deny the blessed Bible, now! don't do it! How it rocks up here, my boy!" holding on to a shroud; "but it only proves what I've been saying - the sea is the place to cradle genius! Heave and fall, old sea! — Herman Melville

The one weapon every man, soldier, sailor, or airman should be able to use effectively is the rifle. It is always his weapon of personal safety in an emergency, and for many it is the primary weapon of offence and defense. Expertness in its use cannot be over emphasized. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

But events can unfold in such a manner that overnight the man out of step finds himself in the right place at the right time. The fashions and attitudes that had seemed so alien to him are suddenly swept aside and supplanted by fashions and attitudes in perfect sympathy with his deepest sentiments. Then, like a lone sailor adrift for years on alien seas, he wakes one night to discover familiar constellations overhead. And — Amor Towles

It was the sea that made me begin thinking secretly about love more than anything else; you know, a love worth dying for, or a love that consumes you. To a man locked up in a steel ship all the time, the sea is too much like a woman. Things like her lulls and storms, or her caprice, or the beauty of her breast reflecting the setting sun, are all obvious. More than that, you're in a ship that mounts the sea and rides her and yet is constantly denied her. It's the old saw about miles and miles of lovely water and you can't quench your thirst. Nature surrounds a sailor with all these elements so like a woman and yet he is kept as far as a man can be from her warm, living body. That's where the problem begins, right there - I'm sure of it. — Yukio Mishima

She had to do that
she had to become a widow, for life, before she was even married. That's why I never got married. I'm thirty-eight years old. I can read and write very well
my mother made sure I was educated
and I do the bookwork for all the shops and businesses in the slum. I do the taxes for every man who pays them. I make a good living here, and I have respect. I shouldn't been married fifteen or even twenty years ago. But she was a widow, all her life, for me. And I couldn't do it. I just couldn't allow myself to get married. I kept hoping I would see him, the sailor with the best moustache. My mother had one very old, faded photograph of the two of them, looking very serious and stern. That's why I lived in this area. I always hoped I would see him. And I never married. And she died last week, Lin. My mother died last week. — Gregory David Roberts

Then if any one at all is to have the privilege of lying, the rulers of the State should be the persons; and they, in their dealings either with enemies or with their own citizens, may be allowed to lie for the public good. But nobody else should meddle with anything of the kind; and although the rulers have this privilege, for a private man to lie to them in return is to be deemed a more heinous fault than for the patient or the pupil of a gymnasium not to speak the truth about his own bodily illnesses to the physician or to the trainer, or for a sailor not to tell the captain what is happening about the ship and the rest of the crew, and how things are going with himself or his fellow sailors. Most — Plato

The man who has a girl in every port is not a sailor but a wholesaler. — Evan Esar

One can no more prevent thought from recurring to an idea than one can the sea from returning to the shore: the sailor calls it the tide; the guilty man calls it remorse; God upheaves the soul as he does the ocean. — Victor Hugo

Put any two people together and each will seek ways of feeling superior to the other. If a ship went down in the Pacific and a single sailor managed to swim to a desert island, would he be pleased to see, ten minutes later, another sailor emerging from the surf? Quite possibly - but only if the new arrival accepted that the first man was now a landed aristocrat while he himself was an illegal immigrant. — Michael Foley

There is a witchery in the sea, its songs and stories, and in the mere sight of a ship, and the sailor's dress, especially to a young mind, which has done more to man navies, and fill merchantmen, than all the pressgangs of Europe. — Richard Henry Dana Jr.

Take the sailor," he said. "he signs on to a new ship. He's surrounded by nothing but strangers. Not only do they come from other towns and parts of his own country, but often from completely different nations. He has to learn to work with them. His vocabulary's broadened, he learns new words and grammar, and he comes across new ways of thinking. he turns into a different man, unlike the one who spends his life plowing the same old furrow. These are the men the world needs, not nationalists and warmongers. — Carsten Jensen

I'm Popeye the sailor man dum dum I live in a cara-van dum dum I op-en the door And fall-on the floor I'm Popeye the sailor man dum dum — Arundhati Roy

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

A married man forms married habits and becomes dependent on marriage just as a sailor becomes dependent on the sea. — George Bernard Shaw

According to man's environment, society has made as many different types of men as there are varieties in zoology. The differences between a soldier, a workman, a statesman, a tradesman, a sailor, a poet, a pauper and a priest, are more difficult to seize, but quite considerable as the differences between a wolf, a lion, an ass, a crow, a sea-calf, a sheep, and so on. — Honore De Balzac

The first dead man on Omaha Beach must be a sailor! — Paddy Chayefsky

No military man is ever anxious to fight," said Cole. "We've seen war, and we've seen peace, and there's not a soldier or sailor anywhere in the galaxy who doesn't think peace is better. — Mike Resnick

That was Julian for you: reckless. A dashing sailor, a speedy driver, a frequenter of single bars, he was the kind of man who would make a purchase without consulting _Consumer Reports_. — Anne Tyler

The Mayflower sped across the white-tipped waves once the voyage was under way, and the passengers were quickly afflicted with seasickness. The crew took great delight in the sufferings of the landlubbers and tormented them mercilessly. "There is an insolent and very profane young man, Bradford wrote, "who was always harrassing the poor people in their sickness, and cursing them daily with greivous execrations." He even laughed that he hoped to 'throw half of them overboard before they came to their journey's end.'
The Puritans believe a just God punished the young sailor for his cruelty when, halfway through the voyage, 'it pleased God ... to smite the young man with a greivous disease, of which he died in a desperate manner." He was the first to be thrown overboard. — Tony Williams

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