Nautical Exploration Quotes

A very goodly Bay … that may have the prerogative over the most pleasant places of Europe, Asia, Africa or America for large and pleasant navigable rivers. Heaven and Earth have never agreed better to frame a place for man’s habitation.

The ocean was waiting with grand and bitter provocations, as if it invited you to think how deep it was, how much colder than your blood or saltier, or to outguess it, to tell which were its feints or passes and which its real intentions, meaning business.

My dad always wanted to sail. They lived on a boat for eight years.

This was charming, no doubt; but they shortly found out That the Captain they trusted so well Had only one notion for crossing the ocean, And that was to tingle his bell.

There is no greater unknown than the sea and no greater mystery than a lost ship.

Young sailors once stood under a square sail, gazing wonderingly across the water to where a strange shore rose about the sea - a New World.

I sailed a bit as a child, but it wasn't until I was around 40, when I was halfway through Patrick O'Brian's 'Master and Commander' novels, that I had the sudden epiphany that I had to go sail on a square-rig ship.

Surely oak and threefold brass surrounded his heart who first trusted a frail vessel to the merciless ocean.

As soon as I get on my boat, something inside me changes. Then I really feel what living is.

The Graveyard of the Atlantic exhibit reflects the aquarium's proximity to the state's Outer Banks, where thousands of ships have run aground over the centuries. Divers in the exhibit carry on a conversation with visitors outside the tank.

She comes majestic with her swelling sails, The gallant Ship: along her watery way, Homeward she drives before the favouring gales; Now flirting at their length the streamers play, And now they ripple with the ruffling breeze.

Sailing became one of the mainstreams of my life. I suppose my father was an influence. I remember seeing a photo of him at home sailing a big boat to Bermuda in his 20s. I still have it.

There is no more thrilling sensation I know of than sailing. It comes as near to flying as man has got to yet - except in dreams.

Talk not of the river or lake To those who have looked on the sea.

Everything can be found at sea according to the spirit of your quest.

A book should contain pure discoveries, glimpses of terra firma, though by shipwrecked mariners, and not the art of navigation by those who have never been out of sight of land.

There never was a great man yet who spent all his life inland.

Those far distant, storm-beaten ships, upon which the Grand Army never looked, stood between it and the dominion of the world.

I grew up sailing in the North Sea.

I love sailing but hate cruise ships.

The last spectacle of which Christian men are likely to grow tired is a harbour. Centuries hence there may be jumping-off places for the stars, and our children's children's and so forth children may regard a ship as a creeping thing scarcely more adventurous than a worm. Meanwhile, every harbour gives us a sense of being in touch, if not with the ends of the universe, with the ends of the earth.

I was born in the breezes, and I had studied the sea as perhaps few men have studied it, neglecting all else.

My love for traveling to islands amounts to a pathological condition known as nesomania, an obsession with islands. This craze seems reasonable to me, because islands are small self-contained worlds that can help us understand larger ones.