Gifts From The Sea Quotes

Every few days the sea delivers us gifts, and I am convinced that there is something of the divine nature in this process. Often I have prayed for a jacket, a bucket, or a handsaw, but instead I find one single flip-flop. Many times it has left my heart bitter, but then I find some useful purpose for my found treasure. Maybe the sea doesn't give me what I want, but what I need. ~ Jennifer Arnett

…They're dangerous as all gifts from the sea are; the sea offers death as well as immortality. ~ Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa

It is always with excitement that I wake up in the morning wondering what my intuition will toss up to me, like gifts from the sea. I work with it and rely on it. It's my partner. ~ Jonas Salk

Houses, trees and fields of flax once flourished here. Summers had been blue with flowers. Now it was a shallow sea of stinking grey from end to end. And this is where you fought the war. ~ Timothy Findley

The storm is a glazier. Then fog passes through, touches the cold trees to add to the ice already there. Here the wind spins glass from the water it has stolen off the sea and the lakes, off the hair on my head and the breath out of my mouth, the storm takes the water from us all everywhere, to make of a mountain range a stained-glass depiction of a saint no one knows. ~ Alexander Chee

If we're talented at music, that talent is of god. If something makes our heart sing, that's god's way of telling us its a contribution he wants us to make. Sharing our gifts is what makes us happy. We're most powerful and god's power is most apparent on the earth when we're happy. A course in miracles teaches that we are only truly happy when we're doing god's will. The only thing to be saved from is our own negativity and fear. The crux of salvation in any area is a shift in our sense of purpose. That shift is a miracle, as always we consciously ask for it: 'Dear god, please give my life some sense of purpose. use me as an instrument of your peace. Use my talents and abilities to spread love. I surrender my job to you. Help me to remember that my real job is to love the world back to health. ~ Marianne Williamson

There's a girl on the beach at high tide, lighting up the sea with her hands. The girls from the convent watch her from the clifftop. She's waded into the ocean up to her waist, higher. She's not even wearing a bathing suit - just jeans and a black cardigan. And she's setting the sea on fire. ~ Naomi Alderman

River with no border
the forgetful hand of man

Gather harvest from the fallow land

Take all memory from it
to speak of lonely travellers
who hopelessly took orders

From armies lined within them
marching over fields and valleys

As though they were a river
not a woman nor a man
not a place for which to answer
but a cold and shapeless
journey from the sea ~ Tamara Rendell

It did not occur to me that absence of human companionship does not assure solitude. It may, on the contrary, plunge one into an environment compared with which New York or London would appear deserts. For we take memory and imagination with us. The seabirds that scream overhead or waddle along the margins of the surf; the grotesque forms of twisted cedars; the rustle of sea-grass in the wind; the interminable percussion of the breakers; the dead infinity of the sand itself - there can be no solitude, in the sense of freedom from disturbances of thought, in the presence of such things. They draw us back into the maelstrom. ("Absolute Evil") ~ Julian Hawthorne

French Polynesia embraces a vast ocean area strewn with faraway outer islands, each with a mystique of its own. The 118 islands and atolls are scattered over an expanse of water 18 times the size of California, though in dry land terms the territory is only slightly bigger than Rhode Island. The distance from one end of the island groups to another is four times further than from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Every oceanic island type is represented in these sprawling archipelagoes positioned midway between California and New Zealand. The coral atolls of the Tuamotus are so low they're threatened by rising sea levels, while volcanic Tahiti soars to 2,241 meters. Bora Bora and Maupiti, also high volcanic islands, rise from the lagoons of what would otherwise be atolls.
~ David Stanley

Helena had been standing by her window looking out to sea, breathing in the fresh air and admiring the picturesque scene of a small ship sailing into the harbor.
She had not been able to think of anything other than Mikolas for days.
From LONGING the 3rd chapter of TRUE LOVE ~ Destin Bays

Shakespearean fish swam the sea, far away from land;
Romantic fish swam in nets coming to the hand ... ~ William Butler Yeats

What finally turned me back toward the older traditions of my own [Chickasaw] and other Native peoples was the inhumanity of the Western world, the places--both inside and out--where the culture's knowledge and language don't go, and the despair, even desperation, it has spawned. We live, I see now, by different stories, the Western mind and the indigenous. In the older, more mature cultures where people still live within the kinship circles of animals and human beings there is a connection with animals, not only as food, but as 'powers,' a word which can be taken to mean states of being, gifts, or capabilities.

I've found, too, that the ancient intellectual traditions are not merely about belief, as some would say. Belief is not a strong enough word. They are more than that: They are part of lived experience, the on-going experience of people rooted in centuries-old knowledge that is held deep and strong, knowledge about the natural laws of Earth, from the beginning of creation, and the magnificent terrestrial intelligence still at work, an intelligence now newly called ecology by the Western science that tells us what our oldest tribal stories maintain--the human animal is a relatively new creation here; animal and plant presences were here before us; and we are truly the younger sisters and brothers of the other animal species, not quite as well developed as we thought we were. It is through our relationships with animals and plants that we maintain a way of liv ~ Linda Hogan

Dr. Lecter, erect as a dancer and carrying Starling in his arms, came out from behind the gate, walked barefoot out of the barn, through the pigs. Dr. Lecter walked through the sea of tossing backs and bloodspray in the barn. ~ Thomas Harris

[London is] like the sight of a heavy sea from a rowing boat in the middle of the Atlantic ... One lives in it, afloat but half submerged in a heavy flood of brick, stone, asphalt, slate, steel, glass, concrete, and tarmac, seeing nothing fixable beyond a few score white spires that splash up like spits of foam above the next glum wave of dirty buildings. ~ V.S. Pritchett

7. Do you ask me what this real good is, and whence it derives? I will tell you: it comes from a good conscience, from honourable purposes, from right actions, from contempt of the gifts of chance, from an even and calm way of living which treads but one path. For ~ Seneca.

Gannets

I am watching the white gannets
blaze down into the water
with the power of blunt spears
and a stunning accuracy--
even though the sea is riled and boiling
and gray with fog
and the fish
are nowhere to be seen,
they fall, they explode into the water
like white gloves,
then they vanish,
then they climb out again,
from the cliff of the wave,
like white flowers--
and still I think
that nothing in this world moves
but as a positive power--
even the fish, finning down into the current
or collapsing
in the red purse of the beak,
are only interrupted from their own pursuit
of whatever it is
that fills their bellies--
and I say:
life is real,
and pain is real,
but death is an imposter,
and if I could be what once I was,
like the wolf or the bear
standing on the cold shore,
I would still see it--
how the fish simply escape, this time,
or how they slide down into a black fire
for a moment,
then rise from the water inseparable
from the gannets' wings. ~ Mary Oliver

With my mother's death all settled happiness, all that was tranquil and reliable, disappeared from my life. There was to be much fun, many pleasures, many stabs of Joy; but no more of the old security. It was sea and islands now; the great continent had sunk like Atlantis. ~ C.S. Lewis

Love, that is first and last of all things made,
The light that has the living world for shade,
The spirit that for temporal veil has on
The souls of all men woven in unison,
One fiery raiment with all lives inwrought
And lights of sunny and starry deed and thought,
And alway through new act and passion new
Shines the divine same body and beauty through,
The body spiritual of fire and light
That is to worldly noon as noon to night;
Love, that is flesh upon the spirit of man
And spirit within the flesh whence breath began;
Love, that keeps all the choir of lives in chime;
Love, that is blood within the veins of time;
That wrought the whole world without stroke of hand,
Shaping the breadth of sea, the length of land,
And with the pulse and motion of his breath
Through the great heart of the earth strikes life and death,
The sweet twain chords that make the sweet tune live
Through day and night of things alternative,
Through silence and through sound of stress and strife,
And ebb and flow of dying death and life:
Love, that sounds loud or light in all men's ears,
Whence all men's eyes take fire from sparks of tears,
That binds on all men's feet or chains or wings;
Love that is root and fruit of terrene things;
Love, that the whole world's waters shall not drown,
The whole world's fiery forces not burn down;
Love, that what time his own hands ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

And then what?" she says, pulling her hand from Grom's grasp. "Then Grom will mate with Mom and live happily ever after twenty thousand leagues under the sea? ~ Anna Banks

[Neurotic] pride is both so vulnerable and so precious that it also must be protected in the future. The neurotic may build an elaborate system of avoidances in the hope of circumventing future hurts. This too is a process that goes on automatically. He is not aware of wanting to avoid an activity because it might hurt his pride. He just avoids it, often without even being aware that he is. The process pertains to activities, to associations with people, and it may put a check on realistic strivings and efforts. If it is widespread it can actually cripple a person's life. He does not embark on any serious pursuits commensurate with his gifts lest he fail to be a brilliant success. He would like to write or to paint and does not dare to start. He does not dare to approach girls lest they reject him. [...] He withdraws from social contacts lest he be self-conscious. So, according to his economic status, he either does nothing worthwhile or sticks to a mediocre job and restricts his expenses rigidly. In more than one way he lives beneath his means. In the long run this makes it necessary for him to withdraw farther from others, because he cannot face the fact of lagging behind his age group and therefore shuns comparisons or questions from anybody about his work. In order to endure life he must now entrench himself more firmly in his private fantasy-world. But, since all these measures are more a camouflage than a remedy for his pride, he may start to cultivate his neuroses beca ~ Karen Horney

The white saucer like some full moon descends
At last from the clouds of the table above;
She sighs and dreams and thrills and glows,
Transfigured with love.
She nestles over the shining rim,
Buries her chin in the creamy sea;
Her tail hangs loose; each drowsy paw
Is doubled under each bending knee.
A long, dim ecstasy holds her life;
Her world is an infinite shapeless white,
Till her tongue has curled the last holy drop,
Then she sinks back into the night,
Draws and dips her body to heap
Her sleepy nerves in the great arm-chair,
Lies defeated and buried deep
Three or four hours unconscious there. ~ Harold Monro

He stirred the fire, and when he spoke, his voice blended in with the roar of the fire's blaze. "I want tonight, Maddie." He twisted his body away from the fire until his attention was focused entirely on her. "Tell me you don't love me, and I'll sleep on the other side of the fire. Otherwise, I intend to take tonight. ~ Lorraine Heath

Although it was autumn and not summer the dark-gold sunlight and the inky shadows, long and slender in the shape of felled cypresses, were the same, and there was the same sense of everything drenched and jewelled and the same ultramarine glitter on the sea. I felt inexplicably lightened; it was as if the evening, in all the drench and drip of its fallacious pathos, had temporarily taken over from me the burden of grieving. ~ John Banville

An Exhortation

Chameleons feed on light and air:
Poets' food is love and fame:
If in this wide world of care
Poets could but find the same
With as little toil as they,
Would they ever change their hue
As the light chameleons do,
Suiting it to every ray
Twenty times a day?

Poets are on this cold earth,
As chameleons might be,
Hidden from their early birth
In a cave beneath the sea;
Where light is, chameleons change:
Where love is not, poets do:
Fame is love disguised: if few
Find either, never think it strange
That poets range.

Yet dare not stain with wealth or power
A poet's free and heavenly mind:
If bright chameleons should devour
Any food but beams and wind,
They would grow as earthly soon
As their brother lizards are.
Children of a sunnier star,
Spirits from beyond the moon,
O, refuse the boon! ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Not to be daily employing the Spirit and new nature for the mortifying of sin is to neglect that excellent succor which God has given us against our greatest enemy. If we neglect to make use of what we have received, God may justly hold his hand from giving us more. His graces, as well as his gifts, are bestowed on us to use, exercise, and trade with. Not to be daily mortifying sin is to sin against the goodness, kindness, wisdom, grace, and love of God, who has furnished us with a principle of doing it. ~ John Owen

Religion, according to Alfred North Whitehead, is a phenomenon that begins in wonder and ends in wonder. Feelings of awe, reverence, and gratitude are primary, and these can never be learned from books. We gain them from sitting high on a cliff side, gazing at the sea, lost in reverie and listening to the laughter of children. ~ Gary A. Kowalski

These are the lords
That have bought titles: men may merchandise
Wares, ay and traffic in all commodities
From sea to sea, and from shore to shore:
But in my thought, of all things that are sold,
'Tis pity honor should be bought for gold:
It cuts off all desert. ~ Eliza Haywood

N indeed peace had come. Messages of peace breathed from the sea to the shore. Never to break its sleep any more, to lull it rather more deeply to rest, and whatever the dreamers dreamt holily, dreamt wisely, to confirm - what else was it murmuring - as Lily Briscoe laid her head on the pillow in the clean still room and heard the sea. Through the open window the voice of the beauty of the world came murmuring, too softly to hear exactly what it said - but what mattered if the meaning were plain? ~ Virginia Woolf

How impossible it is for us to imagine ourselves victims of disaster. We suffer for the poor people who were thrown into the sea from their cruise ship off the coast of Tuscany, some losing their lives. Imagine a world of accelerating natural disasters, one after the other so that nobody can help anyone else. ~ Vivienne Westwood

While Mum was a busy working mother, helping my father in his constituency duties and beyond, Lara became my surrogate mum. She fed me almost every supper I ate--from when I was a baby up to about five years old. She changed my nappies, she taught me to speak, then to walk (which, with so much attention from her, of course happened ridiculously early). She taught me how to get dressed and to brush my teeth.
In essence, she got me to do all the things that either she had been too scared to do herself or that just simply intrigued her, such as eating raw bacon or riding a tricycle down a steep hill with no brakes.
I was the best rag doll of a baby brother that she could have ever dreamt of.
It is why we have always been so close. To her, I am still her little baby brother. And I love her for that. But--and this is the big but--growing up with Lara, there was never a moment's peace. Even from day one, as a newborn babe in the hospital's maternity ward, I was paraded around, shown off to anyone and everyone--I was my sister's new "toy." And it never stopped.
It makes me smile now, but I am sure it is why in later life I craved the peace and solitude that mountains and the sea bring. I didn't want to perform for anyone, I just wanted space to grow and find myself among all the madness.
It took a while to understand where this love of the wild came from, but in truth it probably developed from the intimacy found with my father on the shores of Northern Ire ~ Bear Grylls

It might be that some day I shall be drowned by the sea, or die of pneumonia from sleeping out at night, or be robbed and strangled by strangers. These things happen. Even so, I shall be ahead because of trusting the beach, the night and strangers. ~ Janet Reno

Remember ... this year has already seen more billion-dollar weather-related disasters than any year in US history. Last year was the warmest ever recorded on planet Earth. Arctic sea ice is near all-time record lows. Record floods from Pakistan to Queensland to the Mississippi basin; record drought from the steppes of Russia to the plains of Texas ... This is what climate change looks like in its early stages. ~ Bill McKibben

Count the times. The number of times you have seen the silence of another world seep though a crack. The number of times you have heard the sea trying to escape from the blue painted wall. ~ Jay Woodman

Christopher observed the passage of the coach from his sight and then turned his gaze to the pair of men who approached them. It was Farrell and Captain Daniels, and while the latter was smiling broadly, the former frowned in sharp disapproval at the couple. Christopher thrust out a hand in greeting to his captain, then looked to his wife's brother. "Farrell, I don't think we've been properly introduced." Christopher smiled as he extended his hand. "I am Lord Saxton."
The young man's eyes widened, and he searched the softly smiling visage of his sister as he mechanically accepted the hand. "Lord Saxton? The Lord Saxton?"
"Aye, I am the one who wore the mask and walked with a limp," Christopher confessed. " 'Twas done partly to fool the thieves into believing the man they had murdered was still alive, and then too, I desired to wed your sister and found no other way. I hope you will value the friendship we began when you knew me as the cripple."
Farrell tried to grasp all the facts and put them together in their proper places. "You are really married to my sister, and you are the father of her…" Erienne blushed as she glanced hesitantly toward the sea captain, who seemed to be enjoying the whole exchange. His smile broadened as her husband gave a reply. "You needn't sharpen your skill with firearms to avenge your sister's honor," Christopher replied. The teasing gleam in his eyes shone brighter. " 'Twas quite properly made, I assure you."

-Christop ~ Kathleen E. Woodiwiss

Children should be encouraged to search out in nature the objects that illustrate Bible teachings, and to trace in the Bible the similitudes drawn from nature. They should search out, both in nature and in Holy Writ, every object representing Christ, and those also that He employed in illustrating truth. Thus may they learn to see Him in tree and vine, in lily and rose, in sun and star. They may learn to hear His voice in the song of birds, in the sighing of the trees, in the rolling thunder, and in the music of the sea. And every object in nature will repeat to them His precious lessons. ~ Ellen G. White

A far cicada rings high and clear over the river's heavy wash. Morning glory, a lone dandelion, cassia, orchids. So far from the nearest sea, I am taken aback by the sight of a purple land crab, like a relict of the ancient days when the Indian subcontinent, adrift on the earth's mantle, moved northward to collide with the Asian landmass, driving these marine rocks, inch by inch, five miles into the skies. The rise of the Himalaya, begun in the Eocene, some fifty million years ago, is still continuing: an earthquake in 1959 caused mountains to fall into the rivers and changed the course of the great Brahmaputra, which comes down out of Tibet through northeastern India to join the Ganges near its delta at the Bay of Bengal. ~ Peter Matthiessen

The more you come to admire God's wisdom and believe in his love and kindness to each of us, the freer you will be from envying those with more faith and stronger gifts and from feeling superior to those what are weaker than you. ~ Barbara R. Duguid

From wherever the emissions come, they have the same effect: They trap much more heat from the sun, melt the ice, raise the sea level, cause stronger storms, floods, drought, bigger fires, generate millions of climate refugees, destabilize political systems, threaten the growing of food crops and cause a number of other catastrophic consequences which, taken together, threaten the basis for the future of human civilization on the Earth. ~ Al Gore

I wish I was Dumbo the Octopus. Adapted to freezing deep-ocean temperatures, I'd flop around down there at
peace. The big concerns of my life would be what sort of bottom-coating slime to feed off of - that's not so different from now - plus I wouldn't have
any natural predators; then again, I don't have any now, and that hasn't done me a whole lot of good. But it suddenly makes sense: I'd like to be
under the sea, as an octopus. ~ Ned Vizzini

Of course we live in dreams and by dreams, and even in a disciplined spiritual life, in some ways especially there, it is hard to distinguish dream from reality. In ordinary human affairs humble common sense comes to one's aid. For most people common sense is moral sense. But you seem to have deliberately excluded this modest source of light. Ask yourself, what really happened between whom all those years ago? You've made it into a story, and stories are false. ~ Iris Murdoch

Author's Note

Then there is the land itself. Our Native people have always believed that the land talks to us when we listen. I have stood on the same ground where Squanto walked three centuries ago, feeling the sea breeze in my face and smelling the smoke from cooking fires, where the same foods he would have eaten were being cooked in the traditional way. As I stood there, I, too, heard the whisper of the earth, a song on the wind reminding me that those ancient voices will never be gone. ~ Joseph Bruchac

She felt as if she had no bones, like a jellyfish, hooked from the sea. She walked slowly towards them, her ears ringing, but they ignored her. All except for Levi, who stood at the end of the bridge, his hands in his pockets, smiling. ~ Sanjida Kay

Lorenzo: In such a night stood Dido with a willow in her hand upon the wild sea-banks, and waft her love to come again to Carthage
Jessica: In such a night Medea gathered the enchanted herbs that did renew old Aeson.
Lorenzo: In such a night did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew, and with an unthrift love did run from Venice, as far as Belmont.
Jessica: In such a night did young Lorenzo swear he lov'd her well, stealing her soul with many vows of faith, and ne'er a true one.
Lorenzo: In such a night did pretty Jessica (like a little shrow) slander her love, and he forgave it her.
Jessica: I would out-night you, did nobody come; but hark, I hear the footing of a man. ~ William Shakespeare

{God's] presence is not contingent upon our feeling it. It simply is. We must learn to remember this and calm ourselves. By His apparent 'absence', He is leading us to a more mature level of consciousness, self-offering, and love. He is leading us from the love of God for the sake of His gifts to love of God for His own sake. ~ Monks Of New Skete

To grow up, a man must stand apart not only from his mother but from his fellows. Human achievement, according to this perspective, is always to be measured in difference, who is the fastest, the most handsome, the richest. The quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon highlights this way of looking at human achievement. Not only do the two men compete for the most honor, symbolized by possessions, but they see their contest as a zero-sum game. That is, they - and all the other warriors - assume that there is a finite amount of honor available, so that if one man gets more, then someone else gets less.

Achilles, with his semidivine nature and abundant physical gifts, would seem to be an example of a man fully equipped for success in this system. And yet, Achilles does not prosper in the world of the poem. As he pursues honor and status among his fellows, he becomes more and more isolated, the price of distinction in a competitive society. ~ Thomas Van Nortwick

I have putt the change in the till, I have cleaned and made room for new bottles in the cooling sink, for butter and cheese in the icebox. Now I am standing in the shop waiting by the open door without switching the light on. I like this early half-light, the mild air from the sea, standing inside looking out without being seen, and there are almost no sounds from the street, and I can think and remember who I am before anything new comes along. Everything happens so fast it's easy to forget, everything is exploding and burning. But now it is quiet. ~ Per Petterson