Ocean Sea Quotes

The sea, like a crinkled chart, spread to the horizon, and lapped the sharp outline of the coast, while the houses were white shells in a rounded grotto, pricked here and there by a great orange sun. ~ Daphne Du Maurier

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

The enormous vermilion sun was dropping toward the sea, its reflected glow making a blazing path across the water to the very beach, where the last ripple was spangled with garnets. Otherwise, the sea was periwinkle purple, spilling and whispering and sidling with an easy going prattle of foam round the steeper rocks. ~ L.M. Boston

Let us suppose that an ichthyologist is exploring the life of the ocean. He casts a net into the water and brings up a fishy assortment. Surveying his catch, he proceeds in the usual manner of a scientist to systematize what it reveals. He arrives at two generalizations:
(1) No sea-creature is less than two inches long.
(2) All sea-creatures have gills.
These are both true of his catch, and he assumes tentatively that they will remain true however often he repeats it. ~ Arthur Eddington

I am drawn to the ocean; I find solace in its mystery. ~ Joe Dunthorne

The stock market is like a small row boat on a rough sea, bouncing around as it drifts, whereas the macro economy is like a large ocean liner, very ponderous and difficult to maneuver but without such a rough journey. ~ Clive Granger

Of all the sacred places on the coast, none is more comforting than where rivers join the sea. By the river's disappearance we are reminded of life's passing, while by the ocean's beauty we accept it, in a hope we cannot explain. ~ Robert Adams

In coastal waters rich in runoff, plankton can swarm densely, a million in a drop of water. They color the sea brown and green where deltas form from big rivers, or cities dump their sewage. Tiny yet hugely important, plankton govern how well the sea harvests the sun's bounty, and so are the foundation of the ocean's food chain. ~ Gregory Benford

As the years passed, new myths arose to explain the mysterious objects the strangers brought from the land of the dead. A nineteenth-century missionary recorded, for example, an African explanation of what happened when captains descended into the holds of their ships to fetch trading goods like cloth. The Africans believed that these goods came not from the ship itself but from a hole that led into the ocean. Sea sprites weave this cloth in an "oceanic factory, and, whenever we need cloth, the captain ... goes to this hole and rings a bell." The sea sprites hand him up their cloth, and the captain "then throws in, as payment, a few dead bodies of black people he has bought from those bad native traders who have bewitched their people and sold them to the white men." The myth was not so far from reality. For what was slavery in the American South, after all, but a system for transforming the labor of black bodies, via cotton plantations, into cloth? ~ Adam Hochschild

There is a river in the ocean. In the severest droughts it never fails, and in the mightiest floods it never overflows. Its banks and its bottom are of cold water, while its current is of warm. The Gulf of Mexico is its fountain, and its mouth is in the Arctic Sea. It is the Gulf Stream. ~ Matthew Fontaine Maury

When you have swam in the sea
a lake will no longer do;
everyone else has been a pond
but the ocean was always you. ~ -Tyler Knott Gregson-

They walked, and the long waves rolled and murmured rhythmically beside them; the fresh salty wind blew free and unobstructed in their faces, wrapped itself around their ears, and made them feel slightly numb and deliciously dizzy. They walked along in that wide, peaceful, whispering hush of the sea that gives every sound, near or far, some mysterious importance. ~ Thomas Mann

I can smell the ocean in the distance. The salt wraps around my body, making my skin feel tight, and already I want to shower. I can do big cities, and small cities, and the even the occasional mountaintop is cool. But oceans are ridiculous. They take up way too much space in this overcrowded world and are filled with creatures that have several sets of teeth, like one row of man-eating teeth isn't enough. And just to add insult to injury, all that water isn't even drinkable. If you ask me, the ocean is kind of a prick. ~ Victoria Scott

What an incomparable creature is the sea! ("Absolute Evil") ~ Julian Hawthorne

One does not have to see the sea to know that monsters live there. ~ Katie Cross

Those who live by the sea can hardly form a single thought of which the sea would not be part. ~ Hermann Broch

A beach is not only a sweep of sand, but shells of sea creatures, the sea glass, the seaweed, the incongruous objects washed up by the ocean. ~ Henry Grunwald

Praise the sea, on shore remain. ~ John Florio

Just look at the world around you, right here on the ocean floor. Such wonderful things surround you. What else are you looking for? Its all under the sea ~ SebastiAn

Then all was quiet, except for that murmurous half telling, half withholding of tremendous secrets that the sea would keep up all night. Each little wave seemed to say, "I'll tell you-" and then pull back with a smothered "Oh!" to be followed by another wave saying, "Then I will say-" but whatever it was remained unsaid and unsayable. ~ L.M. Boston

The grotto itself comprises its own slick universe, and inside this universe spin countless galaxies: here, in the upturned half of a single mussel shell, lives a barnacle and a tiny spindle shell occupied by a still smaller hermit crab. And on the shell of the crab? A yet smaller barnacle. And on that barnacle? ~ Anthony Doerr

The sea beckoned to me, and all reality was lost - swept away in the entrancing song of the tide. ~ Meredith T. Taylor

When I moved, the broker had told me there was something good for the brain about living near the sea, something about ions. But I often felt like the water was insulting me, like, I'm beautiful and endless - what are you doing with your life? ~ Anna North

Underwater I hear the water coming to my body, I hear the sunlight penetrating the water. ~ James Nestor

The sea is as near as we come to another world. ~ Anne Stevenson

Sometimes, the waves grow hushed, but the sea is always there, touching, caressing, eating the earth ... ~ Keri Hulme

When you see a picture of the ocean, it's cut off at the edges. You know it goes on and on to the right and on and on to the left, but you never really know how it feels to see that until you actually do see it. ~ Diane Chamberlain

When I walk down the beach and smell the salt water, hear the waves crashing against the shoreline, and feel the granular sand under my feet, I can't help but realize why I'm here on this green earth ~ Wendy Joubert

Ocean is more ancient than the mountains, and freighted with the memories and the dreams of Time. ~ H.P. Lovecraft

My love, i would like even more; to be an ocean if you are the wave; to be a wave, if you are the ocean. ~ Nicolas Guillen

The simple, stupefying truth that, as a woman, I am a minute ocean, in the dark tropic of whose womb eggs lay coded as roe, floating in the sea that wet-nursed us all, moved me deeply. ~ Diane Ackerman

Contentedly sat the old woman. Soon now, the sea would hold no terrors, and the blinds wouldn't have to be down, nor the windows shut; she would even be able to walk along the shore at midnight as of old; and they, whom she had deserted so long ago, would once more shrink from the irresistable energy aura of her new, young body.
The sound of the sea came to her, where she sat so quietly; calm sound at first, almost gentle in the soft sibilation of each wave thrust. Farther out, the voices of the water were louder, more raucous, blatantly confident, but the meaning of what they said was blurred by the distance, a dim, clamorous confusion that rustled discordantly out of the gathering night.
Night!
She shouldn't be aware of night falling, when the blinds were drawn.
("The Witch") ~ A.E. Van Vogt

Darwin may have been quite correct in his theory that man descended from the apes of the forest, but surely woman rose from the frothy sea, as resplendent as Aphrodite on her scalloped chariot. ~ Margot Datz

And resting in the ocean, dipped into the sea, I find glimmers of One Taste everywhere. ~ Ken Wilber

The risks of piracy spreading beyond the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, off the Somali coast, and in the Straits of Malacca and Singapore and beyond are substantial. ~ Peter Middlebrook

As she always did, when she went over the dune and saw the waves crashing on the shore, her heart leapt inside her in excitement. She still had a love affair with the ocean. ~ Sharon Brubaker

I've always wanted to be thrown into the ocean when I die - to be rowed out to sea and thrown overboard into the Atlantic. ~ Aoife O'Donovan

Sea World's killer whale collection needs constant replenishing. The average life span of the animals in captivity is less than half the average for killer whales in the ocean. ~ Nina Easton

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

The deep sea is the largest museum on earth, it contains more history than all the museums on land combined, and yet we're only now penetrating it. ~ Robert Ballard

I used to see dolphins as cute,
Smart and funny sea animals.
I know now that they're astute,
Divine beings, clever mammals. ~ Ana Claudia Antunes

Something grey surged out of the ship's wake, and Mouana reached for her pistol, then swore softly as she saw it was only a porpoise. The animals were playing in the engine wash, spinning in the air as they arced through the crashing foam. They were not albino, nor rotten, nor tentacled - just porpoises. The sight of the things brought hope back again; whatever mess they were in, at least they weren't in Ocean. ~ Nate Crowley

At the beginning of meditation training thoughts will arrive one on top of another, uninterrupted, like a steep mountain waterfall. Gradually, as you perfect meditation, thoughts become like the water in a deep, narrow gorge, then a great river slowly winding its way down to the sea; finally the mind becomes like a still and placid ocean, ruffled by only the occasional ripple or wave. ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

The choice lay out for me. Stay on land or plunge into the icy depths of the sea.

I always chose the sea. ~ Katherine McIntyre

Every drop in the ocean counts. ~ Yoko Ono

They dived into the ocean of shadow and smog, adding to it with the fumes of their own aircraft. The goggles were useless now, but Jacob kept them on, in case there might be some break in the murky pool. It was fitting that the Worldwaker had passed through there, with the shark emblem painted on brightly. In those deep waters it could not be seen. It almost felt like it had lured them in. The dolphins do not hunt the sharks. ~ Dean F. Wilson

Through all his years of roving, even on nights like this, he had remained blind to the beauty of the sea, and now his feeling toward it had settled into weary hatred. He knew its effects of blended color, its wide gradations of sound and action, the tireless charm of a sailing ship's effortless movement, the quality of silent distance and the wonder of the skies. Dimly at times, in moments of rare emotion, he had caught a glimpse of the mystic hand that beckons beyond the horizon and felt for a little while the fated urge of the wanderer. But that was in the beginning, long ago when he had first gone to sea, and he had forgotten it.
("Fire In The Galley Stove") ~ William Outerson

The sea complains upon a thousand shores. ~ Alexander Smith

You can never be lost when you learn to get lost into the blue of the sea.. ~ Munia Khan

The sea was surging among the pilings like the blithe mindless forces of dissolution. ~ Ross Macdonald

Tears have a purpose. they are what we carry of the ocean, and perhaps we must become the sea, give ourselves to it, if we are to be transformed. ~ Linda Hogan

The smell of roasting meat rose from the street stalls in a sizzle and a fiddle player begged for coin as he rasped a haunting melody. Life could not be more perfect. ~ Sara Sheridan

Perhaps they didn't know they were at sea. Was there a certain percentage of people at sea who lacked the knowledge that they were at sea? ~ Ben Marcus

Those who look at the surface of the sea must behold the birth and death of the waves, but those who seek the depths of the ocean behold one indivisible mass of water. Similarly, those who acknowledge "life" and "death" are tossed by sorrow, while those who live in the illimitable superconsciousness behold and feel the One Ineffable Bliss. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda

The true peace of God begins at any spot a thousand miles from the nearest land. ~ Joseph Conrad

Love the sea? I dote upon it
from the beach. ~ Douglas William Jerrold

The sea is a body in a thousand ways that don't add up, because adding is too stable a transaction for that flux, but the waves come in in a roar and then ebb, almost silent but for the fain suck of sand and snap of bubbles, over and over, a heartbeat rhythm, the sea always this body turned inside out and opened to the sky, the body always a sea folded in on itself, a nautical chart folded into a paper cup. ~ Rebecca Solnit

There's not a sea the passenger e'er pukes in, Turns up more dangerous breakers than the Euxine. ~ Lord Byron

The ocean, under the pulsation of lighthouses and noise of bell
buoys,
advances as usual, looking as if it were not that ocean in which
dropped things are bound to sink
in which if they turn and twist, it is neither with volition nor
consciousness. ~ Marianne Moore

I've swallowed fish-eyes whole
like an endoscope.
I once ate a trout cooked inside a dolphin.
Felt like a shark eating another shark,
inside the cold-blooded womb of yet another shark. ~ Yann Rousselot

What world lies beyond that stormy sea I do not know, but every ocean has a distant shore, and I shall reach it. ~ Cesare Pavese

... And the sound of the sea, like the wild-animal breath of the world itself, frightened them as it gasped and died at their feet. ~ Leonardo Sciascia

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

At the press conference for the film he impressed everyone with his complete sincerity and innocence. he said he had come to see the sea for the first time and marveled at how clean it was. someone told him that, in fact, it wasn't. 'when the world is emptied of human beings' he said, 'it will become so again ~ Werner Herzog

We have ploughed the vast ocean in a fragile bark. ~ Ovid

To your simple existence, do not boast;
merely to breathe or move or think is not to live.
The shore of the sea is but a ghost,
compared to the depth its wholeness gives.
You exist in the miry foam;
make the ocean depths your home. ~ Craig Froman

Eventually man, too, found his way back to the sea. Standing on its shores, he must have looked out upon it with wonder and curiosity, compounded with an unconscious recognition of his lineage. He could not physically re-enter the ocean as the seals and whales had done. But over the centuries, with all the skill and ingenuity and reasoning powers of his mind, he has sought to explore and investigate even its most remote parts, so that he might re-enter it mentally and imaginatively. ~ Rachel Carson

I don't see America as a mainland, but as a sea, a big ocean. Sometimes a storm arises, a formidable current develops, and it seems it will engulf everything. Wait a moment, another current will appear and bring the first one to naught. ~ Jacques Maritain

Lately we have been getting facts pointing to the "oceanic" nature of the floor of so-called inland seas. Through geological investigations it has been definitely established that in its deepest places, for instance, the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, the Earth's crust is devoid of granite stratum. The same may be said quite confidently about the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Could the interpretation of these data be that inland seas were the primary stage of the formation of oceanic basins? ~ Vladimir Belousov

In the deepest places, where physical norms collapse under the crushing water, bodies still fall softly through the dark, days after their vessels have capsized. They decay on their long journey down. Nothing will hit the black sand at the bottom of the world but algae-covered bones. ~ China Mieville

Don't eat shrimp - it's one of the most unsustainable fish. For every pound that's caught, 10 or 20 pounds of other stuff is killed and dumped back overboard. It's the number one killer of juvenile sea turtles in Mexico. Two good sustainable seafood guides that I'd recommend are from the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the Blue Ocean Institute. ~ Philippe Cousteau, Jr.

I shall go the way of the open sea, to the lands I knew before you came, and the cool ocean breezes shall blow from me the memory of your name. ~ Adela Florence Nicolson

The industrial way we fish for seafood is harming the marine habitats that all ocean life depends upon. Indiscriminate commercial fishing practices that include miles of driftnets, long lines with thousands of lethal hooks and bottom trawls are ruining ocean ecosystems by killing non-seafood species, including sea turtles and marine mammals. ~ Ted Danson

Shall I come to you, a boundless drop to a boundless ocean. ~ Kahlil Gibran

Bottom trawling is a ghastly process that brings untold damage to sea beds that support ocean life. It's akin to using a bulldozer to catch a butterfly, destroying a whole ecosystem for the sake of a few pounds of protein. We wouldn't do this on land, so why do it in the oceans? ~ Sylvia Earle

Hark, now hear the sailors cry, smell the sea, and feel the sky let your soul & spirit fly, into the mystic ... ~ Van Morrison

Doesn't it seem to you," asked Madame Bovary, "that the mind moves more freely in the presence of that boundless expanse, that the sight of it elevates the soul and gives rise to thoughts of the infinite and the ideal? ~ Gustave Flaubert

And suddenly I rejoiced in the great security of the sea as compared with the unrest of the land, in my choice of that untempted life presenting no disquieting problems, invested with an elementary moral beauty by the absolute straightforwardness of its appeal and by the singleness of its purpose. ~ Joseph Conrad

Fishing is taking a huge toll on the planet's ecosystem. We are emptying the oceans, seas, lakes, and rivers as we fish them dry. ~ Sharon Gannon

I was thinking recently, I've always loved the ocean. If I could do it all again, I might do an oceanography degree. You can do ocean archaeology, and I thought that might be fascinating to do - man-made structures, where the sea has risen above the structures. ~ Theo James

As long as there is a Southern Ocean whale sanctuary, Sea Shepherd crew will continue to patrol and defend it. ~ Paul Watson

Suppose that you could mark the molecules in a glass of water; then pour the contents of the glass into the ocean and stir the latter throughly so as to distribute the marked molecules uniformly throughout the seven seas; if then you took a glass of water anywhere out of the ocean, you would find in it about a hundred of your marked molecules. ~ Lord Kelvin

Thich Nhat Hanh. a venerated Vietnamese Buddhist, speaks of a solution that is so utterly simple it seems profane.

Be, body and mind, exactly where you are. That is, practice a mindfulness that makes you aware of each moment. Think to yourself, "I am breathing" when you're breathing; "I am anxious" when you're anxious; even, "I am washing the dishes" when you're washing the dishes. To be totally into this moment is the goal of mindfulness. Right now is precious and shall never pass this way again.

A wave is a precious moment, amplified: a dynamic natural sculpture that shall never pass this way again. Out interaction with waves - to be fully in the moment, without relationship troubles, bills, or worries - is what frees us. Each moment that we are fully with waves is evidence of our ability to live in the here and now. There is nothing else in the universe when you're making that elegant bottom turn.

Here. Now. Simple, but so elusive.

A wave demands your attention. It is very difficult to be somewhere else, in your mind, when there is such a gorgeous creation of nature moving your way. Just being close to a wave brings us closer to being mindful. To surf them is the training ground for mindfulness. The ocean can seem chaotic, like the world we live in. But somehow we're forced to slice through the noise - to paddle around and through the adversities of life and get directly to the joy. This is what we need for liberation. ~ Kia Afcari

I once had an Early Girl tomato at my friend Jay's house, and I thought that was the best thing I'd ever had. But then I visited friends in Senegal, and I ate sea urchin pulled fresh out of the sea. It tasted like the ocean. ~ Alice Waters

People ask: Why should I care about the ocean? Because the ocean is the cornerstone of earth's life support system, it shapes climate and weather. It holds most of life on earth. 97% of earth's water is there. It's the blue heart of the planet - we should take care of our heart. It's what makes life possible for us. We still have a really good chance to make things better than they are. They won't get better unless we take the action and inspire others to do the same thing. No one is without power. Everybody has the capacity to do something. ~ Sylvia A. Earle

Shrimp are the insects of the ocean. They're bottom feeders. So they're delicious, but they're the bugs of the sea. ~ Baron Vaughn

Even the upper end of the river believes in the ocean. ~ William Stafford

His lightest touch brought joy, brought comfort and a sense of belonging. ~ Sharon Brubaker

For me, the sea was a great comfort, Pilar. But it made my children restless. It exists now so we can call and wave from opposite shores. ~ Cristina Garcia

The sea has now changed from it's natural, to river coloured water, the probable consequence of some streams falling into the bay, or into the ocean to the north of it, through the low land. ~ George Vancouver

I'm not a natural ocean person. I married into a family of swimmers, and I've slowly been drawn into the sea. ~ Glenn Close

The evening darkens over
After a day so bright,
The windcapt waves discover
That wild will be the night. ~ Robert Bridges

I propose to construct a new chart for navigating, on which I shall delineate all the sea and lands of the Ocean in their proper positions under their bearings; and further, I propose to prepare a book, and to put down all as it were in a picture, by latitude from the equator, and western longitude. ~ Christopher Columbus

I lay down on one of [the rocks] in the fetal position. When I awoke it was after one a.m. and the tide was rising higher. My body was coated in salt and ocean foam. I felt like I was part of the rock and part of the ocean, and I wondered if this was how Sappho felt, even in her deepest desperation, part of the earth, like that desperation and longing or eternal cosmic want was something to be celebrated–something natural–holy even, or at least, not just something to be endured. ~ Melissa Broder (author)

I love the sea with its impenetrable fathoms, its wash and undertow, and rasp of shingle sucked anew. ~ Margaret E. Barber

To us large creatures, space-time is like the sea seen from an ocean liner, smooth and serene. Up close, though, on tiny scales, it's waves and bubbles. At extremely fine scales, pockets and bubbles of space-time can form at random, sputtering into being, then dissolving. ~ Gregory Benford

The air is sharp, and I understand why years ago sea air was prescribed as a tonic for the body. ~ Anita Shreve

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

[T]hen all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago. ~ Herman Melville

I looked upon the sea, it was to be my grave ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley