Quotes & Sayings About Ships At Sea

It isn't that life ashore is distasteful to me. But life at sea is better. — Francis Drake

There are so many ships in the animation sea that are computer driven, that I think we can have at least one that's just a log raft that we can row by hand. — Hayao Miyazaki

It's a fact of life that a girl can tell in a flash if another girl likes her ... Between girls there is a silent and unending flow of invisible signals, like the high-frequency wireless messages between the shore and the ships at sea, and this secret flow of dots and dashes was signaling that Mary detested me. — Alan Bradley

Alas, by what rude fate Our lives, like ships at sea, an instant meet, Then part forever on their courses fleet. — Edmund Clarence Stedman

The methods by which men have met and conquered trouble, or been slain by it, are the same in every age. Some have floated on the sea, and trouble carried them on its surface as the sea carries cork. Some have sunk at once to the bottom as foundering ships sink. Some have run away from their own thoughts. Some have coiled themselves up into a stoical indifference. Some have braved the trouble, and defied it. Some have carried it as a tree does a wound, until by new wood it can overgrow and cover the old gash. — Henry Ward Beecher

To all the ships at sea, and all the ports of call. To my family and to all friends and strangers. This is a message, and a prayer. The message is that my travels taught me a great truth. I already had what everyone is searching for and few ever find. The one person in the world who I was born to love forever. A person, like me, of the outer banks and the blue Atlantic mystery. A person rich in simple treasures. Self-made. Self-taught. A harbor where I am forever home. And no wind, or trouble or even a little death can knock down this house. The prayer is that everyone in the world can know this kind of love and be healed by it. If my prayer is heard, there will be an erasing of all guilt and all regret and an end to all anger. Please, God. Amen. — Nicholas Sparks

I've never had this kind of scrap with one of our kind, only heard about them. You ever hear about a whole town losing its memory, ships at sea that witness water doing things it shouldn't, like talking, or ever just notice a large plot of land that never changes even though the entire neighborhood around it does? That's my kind fighting in one form or another. Croatoan? That was us. — Ayize Jama-Everett

Men go back to the mountains, as they go back to sailing ships at sea, because in the mountains and on the sea they must face up. — Henry David Thoreau

I am a free Prince, and I have as much authority to make war on the whole world as he who has a hundred ships at sea and an army of 100,000 men in the field."
-Samuel "Black Sam" Bellamy — Colin Woodard

within the harbour, or on the beautiful sea without. The line of demarcation between the two colours, black and blue, showed the point which the pure sea would not pass; but it lay as quiet as the abominable pool, with which it never mixed. Boats without awnings were too hot to touch; ships blistered at their moorings; the stones of the quays had not cooled, night or day, for months. Hindoos, Russians, Chinese, Spaniards, Portuguese, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Genoese, Neapolitans, Venetians, Greeks, Turks, descendants from all the builders of Babel, come to trade at Marseilles, sought the shade alike - taking refuge in any hiding-place from a sea too intensely blue to be looked at, and a sky of purple, set with one great flaming jewel of fire. The universal stare made the eyes ache. Towards the distant line of Italian coast, indeed, it was a little relieved — Charles Dickens

Seafarers are used to being exploited. At sea, the captain moans at chandlers who supply ships with green bananas that will never ripen; at fruit that goes moldy obscenely fast; at sub-standard meat. — Rose George

Darius squared his shoulders, wishing he had something other than his handkerchief to keep his hands occupied while she stood this close, looking so angry and at the same time as wildly beautiful, dangerous, and breathtaking as a thunderstorm at sea. A face to sink a thousand ships... — Jayne Fresina

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

Between 1793 and 1797, the French would lose 125 warships to Britain's 38, including 35 capital vessels (ships-of-the-line) to Britain's 11, most of the latter the result of fire, accidents and storms rather than French attack.15 The maritime aspect of grand strategy was always one of Napoleon's weaknesses: in all his long list of victories, none was at sea. — Andrew Roberts

The Battle for the Philippines was the greatest naval battle in history, judged in terms of the number of ships taking part, the number of ships sunk, and the importance of its outcome. It included every form of naval warfare of the 20th century: gunnery duels between battleships; destroyer battles at night and by day, as ferocious and sustained as any at the Battle of Jutland; submarines that stalked the depths; sinking many ships; and finally, carrier warfare on a scale never dreamed of even by the most ardent enthusiasts of air warfare at sea. — Richard Hough

As ships meet at sea a moment together, when words of greeting must be spoken, and then away upon the deep, so men meet in this world; and I think we should cross no man's path without hailing him, and if he needs giving him supplies. — Henry Ward Beecher

Put two ships in the open sea, without wind or tide, and, at last, they will come together. Throw two planets into space, and they will fall one on the other. Place two enemies in the midst of a crowd, and they will inevitably meet; it is a fatality, a question of time; that is all. — Jules Verne

I walk up a dune to a beach and look out to sea, but it's 100km away. The ships lie askew in their dry beds, at anchor for ever. Today is my son's birthday. Thousands of miles from here, his healthy lungs are blowing out candles. I should be there but I'm here with another boy, who puts his face close to mine and laughs. I smile back but realise he can't see it, because I'm wearing an antiseptic muzzles to protect me from his breath. — A.A. Gill

My queen," said Tristifer, "here we have the walls, but if we reach the sea and find that the wolves have taken our ships or driven them away ... "
" ... we die," she finished cheerfully, "but at least we'll die with our feet wet. Ironborn fight better with salt spray in their nostrils and the sound of the waves at their backs. — George R R Martin

Like unto ships far off at sea, Outward or homeward bound, are we. Before, behind, and all around, Floats and swings the horizons bound, Seems at its distant rim to rise And climb the crystal wall of the skies, And then again to turn and sink, As if we could slide from its outer brink. Ah! it is not the sea, It is not the sea that sinks and shelves, But ourselves That rock and rise With endless and uneasy motion, Now touching the very skies, Now sinking into the depths of ocean. Ah! if our souls but poise and swing Like the compass in its brazen ring, Ever level and ever true To the toil and the task we have to do, We shall sail securely, and safely reach The Fortunate Isles, on whose shining beach The sights we see, and the sounds we hear, Will be those of joy and not of fear! — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

They were now moving steadily down the river, passing the dark shapes of ships at anchor, and London was a swarm of lights with a pale yellow canopy drooping above it. There were the lights of the great theatres, the lights of the long streets, lights that indicated huge squares of domestic comfort, lights that hung high in air. No darkness would ever settle upon those lamps, as no darkness had settled upon them for hundreds of years. It seemed dreadful that the town should blaze for ever in the same spot; dreadful at least to people going away to adventure upon the sea, and beholding it as a circumscribed mound, eternally burnt, eternally scarred. From the deck of the ship the great city appeared a crouched and cowardly figure, a sedentary miser. — Virginia Woolf

Indeed, at hearing the news that 'the old god is dead', we philosophers and 'free spirits' feel illuminated by a new dawn; our heart overflows with gratitude, amazement, forebodings, expectation - finally the horizon seems clear again, even if not bright; finally our ships may set out again, set out to face any danger; every daring of the lover of knowledge is allowed again; the sea, our sea, lies open again; maybe there has never been such an 'open sea'. — Friedrich Nietzsche

It's out there at sea that you are really yourself. — Vito Dumas

I love moving water, I love ships, I love the sharp definition, the concentrated humanity, the sublime solitude of life at sea. The dangers of it only make present to us the peril inherent in all existence, which the stupid, ignorant, untravelled land-worm never discovers; and the art of it, so mathematical, so exact, so rewarding to intelligence, appeals to courage and clears the mind of superstition, while filling it with humility and true religion. — George Santayana

In the midst of such industry, gawky Simon was the fabled grasshopper in the nest of ants. He knew he would never amount to much: many people had told him so, and nearly all of them were older - and presumably wiser - than he. At an age when other boys were clamoring for the responsibilities of manhood, Simon was still a muddler and a meanderer. No matter what task he was given to do, his attention soon wandered, and he would be dreaming of battles, and giants, and sea voyages on tall, shining ships ... and somehow, things would get broken, or lost, or done wrong. — Tad Williams

It was one of those hot, silent nights, when people sit at windows, listening for the thunder which they know will shortly break; when they recall dismal tales of hurricanes and earthquakes; and of lonely travelers on open plains, and lonely ships at sea, struck by lightning. — Charles Dickens

I really don't know why it is that all of us are so committed to the sea, except I think it's because in addition to the fact that the sea changes, and the light changes, and ships change, it's because we all came from the sea. And it is an interesting biological fact that all of us have in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea - whether it is to sail or to watch it - we are going back from whence we came.
[Remarks at the Dinner for the America's Cup Crews, September 14 1962] — John F. Kennedy

In the serene weather of the tropics it is exceedingly pleasant - the mast-head; nay, to a dreamy meditative man it is delightful. There you stand, a hundred feet above the silent decks, striding along the deep, as if the masts were gigantic stilts, while beneath you and between your legs, as it were, swim the hugest monsters of the sea, even as ships once sailed between the boots of the famous Colossus at old Rhodes. — Herman Melville

Like ships that have gone down at sea, when heaven was all tranquillity. — Thomas Moore

Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America from border to border and coast to coast and all the ships at sea. Let's go to press. — Walter Winchell

It is undeniable that the source of all our miseries comes from our obstinacy in maintaining that Paradise is a garden. The psychoanalysts have added to the confusion by interpreting the floating dreams as a flight into space. The mystic is the only one who knows that all states of ecstasy are a state of floating in an ambiance more heavy than air. Paradise is at the bottom of the sea, and I can also prove to you that angels are ships. They have no wings but large sails which they unfold noiselessly at night to cross eternity. — Anais Nin

The desert is so vast that no one can know it all. Men go out into the desert, and they are like ships at sea; no one knows when they will return. — J.M.G. Le Clezio

Ships are safe in harbor, but that's not what ships are for. So set sail on the stormy sea of love. You're going to get soaked at times, but at least you'll know you're alive. — Dan Millman

There's a planet called Echo. It doesn't exist. It's like those ghost-ships at sea, the sails worn through and the deck empty. It comes on the radar, you fly towards it, there's nothing there. Our crew were outside, repairing the craft, and we saw it moving at speed right at us. It passed straight through the ship and through our bodies, and the strange thing that happened was the bleach. It bleached our clothes and hair, and men that had black beards had white. Then it was gone, echoing in another part of the starry sky, always, 'here' and 'here' and 'here', but nowhere. Some call it Hope. — Jeanette Winterson

I saw at sea a great fog bank
Between two ships that struck and sank;
A thousand screams the heavens smote;
And every scream tore through my throat.
...
A fragrance such as never clings
To aught save happy living things
...
Of wind blew up to me and thrust
Into my face a miracle
Of orchard-breath, and with the smell,
I know not how such things can be!
I breathed my soul back into me. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

I detected instantly that she didn't like me. It's a fact of life that a girl can tell in a flash if another girl likes her. Feely says that there is a broken telephone connection between men and women, and we can never know which of us rang off. With a boy you never know whether he's smitten or gagging, but with a girl you can tell in the first three seconds. Between girls there is a silent and unending flow of invisible signals, like the high frequency wireless messages between the shore and the ships at sea, and this secret flow of dots and dashes was signalling that Mary detesting me. — Alan Bradley

Usually, there is no equivalent of air traffic control at sea. Some busy areas operate 'traffic separation schemes,' but mostly, ships are treated like cars on roads where there are rules and codes of behavior, and successful, accident-free outcomes depend on everyone respecting them. As on roads, this doesn't always work. — Rose George

The common sense of the word (navy) as we use it today refers to a permanent fighting service made up of ships designed for war, manned by professionals and supported by an adminsistrative and technical infrastructure. A navy in this sense is only one possible method of making war at sea, and by some way the most difficult and the most recent. There have in the past been, and to some extent still are, many other ways of generating sea power. — Nicholas Rodger

The Nantucketer, he alone resides and riots on the sea; he alone, in Bible language, goes down to it in ships; to and fro ploughing it as his own special plantation. There is his home; there lies his business, which a Noah's flood would not interrupt, though it overwhelmed all the millions in China. He lives on the sea, as prairie cocks in the prairie; he hides among the waves, he climbs them as chamois hunters climb the Alps. For years he knows not the land; so that when he comes to it at last, it smells like another world, more strangely than the moon would to an Earthman. With the landless gull, that at sunset folds her wings and is rocked to sleep between billows; so at nightfall the Nantucketer, out of sight of land, furls his sails, and lays him to his rest, while under his very pillow rush herds of walruses and whales. — Herman Melville

long. Trade has always traveled and the world has always traded. Ours, though, is the era of extreme interdependence. Hardly any nation is now self-sufficient. In 2011, the United Kingdom shipped in half of its gas. The United States relies on ships to bring in two-thirds of its oil supplies. Every day, thirty-eight million tons of crude oil sets off by sea somewhere, although you may not notice it. As in Los Angeles, New York, and other port cities, London has moved its working docks out of the city, away from residents. Ships are bigger now and need deeper harbors, so they call at Newark or Tilbury or Felixstowe, not Liverpool or South Street. — Rose George

Let the fortifications of the sea-coasts and the fleets of battle-ships and cruisers on the ocean be commensurate with the vast national interests and honor intrusted to their protection and defense; let the standing army be sufficient to discharge the duties which require long and scientific education and training, and to serve as models and instructors for the millions of young citizens: then will the United States, by being always ready for war, insure to themselves all the blessings of peace, and this at a cost utterly insignificant in comparison with the cost of one great war. — John McAllister Schofield

She was broken and helpless. Sciron, the son of Poseidon, had won again.
Hazel could hardly believe this guy had the same father as Percy Jackson. Then she remembered that Poseidon had a changeable personality, like the sea. Maybe his children reflected that. Percy was a child of Poseidon's better nature - powerful, but gentle and helpful, the kind of sea that sped ships safely to distant lands. Sciron was a child of Poseidon's other side - the kind of sea that battered relentlessly at the coastline until it crumbled away, or carried the innocents from shore and let them drown, or smashed ships and killed entire crews without mercy. — Rick Riordan

There are more than one hundred thousand ships at sea carrying all the solids, liquids and gases that we need to live. — Rose George

Lord! when you sell a man a book you don't sell just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life. Love and friendship and humour and ships at sea by night - there's all heaven and earth in a book, a real book. — Christopher Morley

Haven't you heard, though,
About the ships where war has found them out
At sea, about the towns where war has come
Through opening clouds at night with droning speed
Further o'erhead than all but stars and angels
And children in the ships and in the towns? — Robert Frost

Ships are blowing up at sea, or catching fire, factories are blowing up. Are these accidents? Are these industrial sabotage? No one really suspected a spy network. — Howard Blum

Having therefore no foreign establishments, either colonial or military, the ships of war of the United States, in war, will be like land birds, unable to fly far from their own shores. To provide resting places for them, where they can coal and repair, would be one of the first duties of a government proposing to itself the development of the power of the nation at sea. — Alfred Thayer Mahan

At long last the horizon appears free to us again, even if it should not be bright; at long last our ships may venture out again, venture out to face any danger; all the daring of the lover of knowledge is permitted again; the sea, our sea, lies open again; perhaps there has never yet been such an 'open sea. — Friedrich Nietzsche

The Atlantic is a stormy moat, and the Mediterranean,
The blue pool in the old garden,
More than five thousand years has drunk sacrifice
Of ships and blood and shines in the sun; but here the Pacific:
The ships, planes, wars are perfectly irrelevant.
Neither our present blood-feud with the brave dwarfs
Nor any future world-quarrel of westering
And eastering man, the bloody migrations, greed of power, battle-falcons,
Are a mote of dust in the great scale-pan.
Here from this mountain shore, headland beyond stormy headland plunging like
dolphins through the grey sea-smoke
Into pale sea, look west at the hill of water: it is half the planet: this
dome, this half-globe, this bulging
Eyeball of water, arched over to Asia,
Australia and white Antarctica: those are the eyelids that never close; this
is the staring unsleeping
Eye of the earth, and what it watches is not our wars. — Robinson Jeffers

The rain is falling all around, It falls on field and tree, It rains on the umbrellas here, And on the ships at sea. - Rain — Robert Louis Stevenson

At least I have the comfort of believing Alina is in heaven. That maybe someday I'll gaze into a child's eyes and see a piece of my sister's should in there, because the fact is I do believe we go on. Then again, maybe I'll never see a trace of her, but I still feel her. I don't know how to explain it. It's as if she's only a slight shift of reality away from me sometimes, in what I think of as the slipstream, and if I could only slip sideways, too, I could join her. And one day I think I will slip sideways and get to see her again, if only as ships passing on our way to new destinations in the same vas, magnificent sea. — Karen Marie Moning