The Ocean Quotes

“Tell her this
And more,—
That the king of the seas
Weeps too, old, helpless man.
The bustling fates
Heap his hands with corpses
Until he stands like a child
With surplus of toys.”
― Stephen Crane, The Complete Poems of Stephen Crane

“In school I ended up writing three different papers on "The Castaway" section of Moby-Dick, the chapter where the cabin boy Pip falls overboard and is driven mad by the empty immensity of what he finds himself floating in. And when I teach school now I always teach Crane's horrific "The Open Boat," and get all bent out of shape when the kids find the story dull or jaunty-adventurish: I want them to feel the same marrow-level dread of the oceanic I've always felt, the intuition of the sea as primordial nada, bottomless, depths inhabited by cackling tooth-studded things rising toward you at the rate a feather falls.”
― David Foster Wallace, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments

“However baby man may brag of his science and skill, and however much, in a flattering future, that science and skill may augment; yet for ever and for ever, to the crack of doom, the sea will insult and murder him, and pulverize the stateliest, stiffest frigate he can make; nevertheless, by the continual repetition of these very impressions, man has lost that sense of the full awfulness of the sea which aboriginally belongs to it.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“Sunny held Kit, and Violet held Klaus, and for a minute the four castaways did nothing but weep, letting their tears run down their faces and into the sea, which some have said is nothing but a library of all tears in history.”
― Lemony Snicket, The End

“I just found out that people with brown eyes actually have blue eyes or blue-grey eyes underneath! The brown is just a layer that covers the real colour underneath. And brown is the only colour eye that is multilayered like that. So in other words, people with brown eyes are layered individuals with deep souls; pull away the top layer and you’ll find an ocean underneath!”
― C. JoyBell C.

“Under star-dark seas and skies of gold
Live those Above and those Below
They sing and weep, both high and deep
While over and under the ocean rolls”
― Ally Condie, Atlantia

“You could start now, and spend another forty years learning about the sea without running out of new things to know.”
― Peter Benchley, The Deep

“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.”
― Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March

“Stop crying to the ocean, stop crying over me. Stop worrying over nothing, stop worrying over me. So it's been so long since you said, well I know what I want and what I want's right here with you.”
― Tegan Quin

“But though, to landsmen in general, the native inhabitants of the seas have ever regarded with emotions unspeakably unsocial and repelling; though we know the sea to be an everlasting terra incognita, so that Columbus sailed over numberless unknown worlds to discover his one superficial western one; though, by vast odds, the most terrific of all mortal disasters have immemorially and indiscriminately befallen tens and hundreds of thousands of those who have gone upon the waters; though but a moment’s consideration will teach that, however baby man may brag of his science and skill, and however much, in a flattering future, that science and skill may augment; yet for ever and for ever, to the crack of doom, the sea will insult and murder him, and pulverize the stateliest, stiffest frigate he can make; nevertheless, by the continual repetition of these very impressions, man has lost that sense of the full awfulness of the sea which aboriginally belongs to it.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“Time is like the ocean; you can only hold a little in your hands.”
― Josh Pyke

“Dark-heaving; boundless, endless, and sublime,
The image of Eternity, -- the throne
Of the Invisible! even from out thy slime
The monsters of the deep are made; each zone
Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.”
― Lord Byron, The Complete Poetical Works of Byron

“Whales feel cohesion, a sense of community, of loyalty. The distress call of a lone whale is enough to prompt its entire pod to rush to its side- a gesture that lands them nose to nose in the same sand. It's a fatal symphony of echolocation, a siren call to the sympathetic.”
― Marina Keegan, The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories

“First, make sure
the ocean is rolled
by an older woman
whose quick fingers
have been rolling the ocean
for as long as you’ve been alive –
She’ll fatten the rice in hot,
sugared water spiked
with rice vinegar
then make a soft bed of it to wrap
a slip of fish muscle,
squeezing the bamboo rolling mat
until the ocean’s circumference
is compacted in seaweed’s
brittle corsetry.
It takes her just moments
to dress the ocean,
its nudity a pink tongue
poking
from iridescent green nori wrap”
― Jalina Mhyana, The Wishing Bones

“Though I’m tempted by the call of the sea, I resist.
It can’t claim me.
In a way I’m stronger than the waves and I feel good about that.”
― Darren Shan, Bec

“Now then, thou not only wantest to go a-whaling, to find out by experience what whaling is, but ye also want to go in order to see the world? Was not that what ye said? I thought so. Well then, just step forward there, and take a peep over the weather-bow, and then back to me and tell me what ye see there.'

For a moment I stood a little puzzled by this curious request, not knowing exactly how to take it, whether humorously or in earnest. But concentrating all his crow's feet into one scowl, Captain Peleg started me on the errand.

Going forward and glancing over the weather-bow, I perceived that the ship, swinging to her anchor with the flood-tide, was now obliquely pointing toward the open ocean. The prospect was unlimited, but exceedingly monotonous and forbidding; not the slightest variety that I could see.

'Well, what's the report?' said Peleg when I came back; 'what did ye see?'

'Not much,' I replied - 'nothing but water; considerable horizon though, and there s a squall coming up, I think.'

'Well, what does thou think then of seeing the world? Do ye wish to go round Cape Horn to see any more of it, eh? Can't ye see the world where you stand?”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“People came and went from Connor's life like the pebbles one finds on the shore: turned continuously by the tide, or tossed firmly back into the ocean by the man himself. When he was younger, Connor had filled his pockets with all kinds of stones, big ones, grey ones, ones with tiny crystals and stripes. His shore had been bright, and vibrant, and he rushed to meet the tide every morning. Now, Connor’s arms were tired, his head heavy from the drugs, and his pockets were full of other things besides rocks. When Jack had rolled along, a stranger to those lonely, forgotten sands, everything had flipped on its axis. Suddenly, he was the pebble, spat out in white foam, a modest, lump of rock that any jaded person might have kicked along. Jack had been different. He had reached down, amongst the water’s debris and sticky sand, and plucked Connor from that shore. He had weighed Connor in his palm, turned him this way and that, and curved his fingers into his grooves and bumps. Whatever Jack saw in him that day, on that metaphorical spit of sand, Connor must have met his approval.”
― James Hayes, Solidarity

“Stories from Beyond the Sea – “I could not believe my good luck!” from Page 31
“Not only was she stunningly beautiful but she was also witty, flirtatious and at the same time understanding and loving, I couldn’t believe my good fortune and did all I could to convince her to stay with me in the United States.
After getting married to my young wife Ursula, in a small town in upstate New York, and thinking that the US Navy would be a better option than returning to a life at sea on merchant ships, I took the navy exam to become a student pilot. As a commissioned officer with the rank of Lieutenant Junior Grade (LTJR) I enjoyed many benefits that the aviation cadets didn’t get, including having basic living quarters.
Having had some prior experience flying the right hand seat in a DC-3 when I was in Liberia, I took to aviation, my new endeavor, like a duck to water.”
― Captain Hank Bracker, Stories from Beyond the Sea

“The ocean is truly an immeasurably beautiful thing for a man to see," the old man thought. "There are times when she is cruel, but those times are easily forgotten when she is kind and gentle as she is now, or when the sun is on her, warming her and lulling her to sleep.”
― T.M Cicinski, Where The Waves Break Upon The Shore

“Andrei’s bruised mouth loosened and inhaled the saltwater scent of his water planet. And as easy as it was to breathe, tears rolled down his tender cheeks. This was no less than the transaction between nature and man. Beauty is known to pull out fluids from humans that surrender to it.”
― Karl Kristian Flores, A Happy Ghost