The Sea Sayings and Quotes

Below you will find our collection of inspirational, wise, and humorous old the sea quotes, the sea sayings, and the sea proverbs, collected over the years from a variety of sources.

The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever. Jacques Yves Cousteau
The sea is emotion incarnate. It loves, hates, and weeps. It defies all attempts to capture it with words and rejects all shackles. No matter what you say about it, there is always that which you can't. Christopher Paolini
To me the sea is a continual miracle; The fishes that swim, the rocks, the motion of the waves, the ships with men in them. What stranger miracles are there? Walt Whitman
With every drop of water you drink, every breath you take, you're connected to the sea. No matter where on Earth you live. Sylvia Earle
The sea is everything. It covers seven tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and healthy. It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely, for he feels life stirring on all sides. Jules Verne
The sea complains upon a thousand shores. Alexander Smith
The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace. Kate Chopin
In one drop of water are found all the secrets of all the oceans. Kahlil Gibran
We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch-we are going back from whence we came John F. Kennedy
The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach - waiting for a gift from the sea. Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Why do we love the sea? It is because it has some potent power to make us think things we like to think. Robert Henri
For whatever we lose (like a you or a me), it's always our self we find in the sea. E.E. Cummings
It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose, should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist: the threat is rather to life itself. Rachel Carson
To me, the sea is like a person--like a child that I've known a long time. It sounds crazy, I know, but when I swim in the sea I talk to it. I never feel alone when I'm out there... Gertrude Ederle
My soul is full of longing for the secrets of the sea, and the heart of the great ocean sends a thrilling pulse through me. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The tradition of freedom of the high seas has its roots in an era when there were too few people to seriously violate the oceans but in hindsight that era ended some 150 years ago. James Carlton
A lot of people attack the sea, I make love to it. Jacques Yves Cousteau
The sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper; I cannot quite make it out. Annie Dillard
The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness. Joseph Conrad
When anxious, uneasy and bad thoughts come, I go to the sea, and the sea drowns them out with its great wide sounds, cleanses me with its noise, and imposes a rhythm upon everything in me that is bewildered and confused. Rainer Maria
Most of us, I suppose, are a little nervous of the sea. No matter what its smiles may be, we doubt its friendship. H.M. Tomlinson
I could never stay long enough on the shore; the tang of the untainted, fresh, and free sea air was like a cool, quieting thought. Helen Keller
There was a magic about the sea. People were drawn to it. People wanted to love by it, swim in it, play in it, look at it Cecelia Ahern
Because there's nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline, no matter how many times it's sent away. Sarah Kay
Hark, now hear the sailors cry / smell the sea, and feel the sky / let your soul & spirit fly, into the mystic. Van Morrison
I spent uncounted hours sitting at the bow looking at the water and the sky, studying each wave, different from the last, seeing how it caught the light, the air, the wind; watching patterns, the sweep of it all, and letting it take me. The sea. Gary Paulsen
Just as the wave cannot exist for itself, but is ever a part of the heaving surface of the ocean, so must I never live my life for itself, but always in the experience which is going on around me. Albert Schweitzer
I heard silence, silence infinite as the bottom of the ocean, a silence that sealed. Anne Spollen
There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about the sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath. Herman Melville
Limitless and immortal, the waters are the beginning and end of all things on earth. Heinrich Zimmer