quotations about the ocean
Once more upon the waters! yet once more!
And the waves bound beneath me as a steed
That knows his rider.
LORD BYRON
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
The land is dearer for the sea,
The ocean for the shore.
LUCY LARCOM
On the Beach
Those who live by the sea can hardly form a single thought of which the sea would not be part.
HERMANN BROCH
foreword, The Spell
We were born before the wind
Also younger than the sun
Ere the bonnie boat was won as we sailed into the mystic
Hark, now hear the sailors cry
Smell the sea and feel the sky
Let your soul and spirit fly into the mystic
VAN MORRISON
Into the Mystic
What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams.
WERNER HERZOG
attributed, Beowulf on Film: Adaptations and Variations
Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man.
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
Thanatopsis
The great depths of the ocean are entirely unknown to us; soundings cannot reach them. What fanes in those remote depths, what beings live twelve or fifteen miles beneath the surface of the waters, what is the organization of the animals we can scarcely conjecture?
JULES VERNE
Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
The ocean is powerful, but not invincible. It is rich, but not inexhaustible. For humans to thrive in the coming centuries, we will have to be smarter about how we approach the 70 percent of our planet the ocean covers.
GARY E. KNELL
"Securing a Bold, Blue, and Prosperous Future for Our Ocean", National Geographic, January 27, 2017
Tut! the best thing I know between France and England is the sea.
DOUGLAS JERROLD
Jerrold's Wit
It is said by the Eldar that in water there lives yet the echo of the Music of the Ainur more than in any substance that is in this Earth; and many of the Children of Ilúvatar hearken still unsated to the voices of the Sea, and yet know not for what they listen.
J. R. R. TOLKIEN
The Silmarillion