Sea Shanty Quotes

Come all you thoughtless young men,
a warning take by me
And never leave your happy homes
to sail the raging sea. ~ Patrick O'Brian

He [Alan Lomax] started right off trying to find people who could introduce folk songs to city people. He found a young actor named Burl Ives and said, "Burl, you know a lot of great country songs learned from your grandmother, don't you know people would love to hear them?" He put on radio programs. He persuaded CBS to dedicate "The School of the Air" for one year to American folk music. He'd get some old sailor to sing an old sea shanty with a cracked voice. Then he'd get me to sing it with my banjo. ~ Pete Seeger

The song was a sea-shanty, and Snugs loved that kind of song. The music had an accordion, and the tune reminded him of the ship, and the songs Captain LightOwler played, when he was off duty, about pirates and the baddies on the sea. ~ Suzy Davies

He wants to dream like a young man with the wisdom of a old man, he wants his home and securities, he wants to live like a sailor at sea. Beautiful loser..where you gonna fall? When you realize you just can't have it all, you just dont need it all. He is your oldest and your best friend, when you need him he'll be there again, he is always willing to be second best, a perfect lodger; a perfect guest." ~ Beautiful Loser ~ Bob Seger

Are we goldfish in a bowl
doomed eternally
to swim around our little world and think it is the sea?
and that we are the masters? ~ Bernie Morris

Vast tracts of ocean, whether Polynesia, Micronesia or Melanesia, contain island populations that remain outside the modern world. They know about it, they may have traveled to it, they appreciate artifacts and medical help from it, but they live their daily lives much as hundreds of generations of ancestors before them, without money, electricity, phones, TV or manufactured food. ~ Andrew Rayner

The creepiest thing is the silence.
The Hum is gone.
You remember the Hum.
Unless you grew up on top of a mountain or lived in a cave your whole life, the Hum was always around you. That's what life was. It was the sea we swam in. The constant sound of all the things we built to make life easy and a little less boring. The mechanical song. The electronic symphony. The Hum of all our things and all of us. Gone.
This is the sound of the Earth before we conquered it. ~ Rick Yancey

If you are the land, then I am the sea. I don't need you and you don't need me. ~ Maria Elena

Desert winds blow hard at me
Till we reach the shining sea.
And borne away across the waves
My lover's life I'll sail to save. ~ Anthony Ryan

And now Percy has his arms around me and Santorini and the sea are spread like a feast before us and there is sky all the way to the horizon.

And what a sky it is. ~ Mackenzi Lee

Those of us who know not the secret of properly regulating our own existence on this tumultuous sea of foolish troubles which we call life are constantly in a state of misery while vainly trying to appear happy and contented. We stagger in the attempt to keep our moral equilibrium, and see forerunners of the tempest in every cloud that floats on the horizon. Yet ~ Okakura Kakuzo

We are rats
We're quicker than cats
And we're twice as clever
Don't need shoes
Don't need socks
Don't need soap
Don't need clocks
Don't need rules
Don't need schools
We can writhe
We can wriggle
We can laugh
We can giggle
We can squeak
We can squeal
We can fart
We can burp
We can slobber
We can slurp
We can poo
We can pee
We can dribble in the sea
We are rats
We are alive
We will survive ~ James Francis Wilkins

I looked up its history, and, surprisingly, it has quite a history. You know how in Europe they make you study a lot of stuff about the old alchemists and all that kind of stuff, to give you an historical grounding.'

'Yes?'

Kemp laughed. 'You haven't got a witch around your place by any chance?'

'Eh!' The exclamation almost burned Marson's lips. He fought hard to hide the tremendousness of that shock.

Kemp laughed again. 'According to 'Die Geschichte der Zauberinnen' by the Austrian, Karl Gloeck, Hydrodendon Barelia is the modem name for the sinister witch's weed of antiquity. I'm not talking about the special witches of our Christian lore, with their childish attributes, but the old tribe of devil's creatures that came out of prehistory, regular full-blooded sea witches. It seems when each successive body gets old, they choose a young woman's body, attune themselves to it by living with the victim, and take possession any time after midnight of the first full moon period following the 21st of June. Witch's weed is supposed to make the entry easier. Gloeck says... why, what's the matter, sir?'

His impulse, his wild and terrible impulse, was to babble the whole story to Kemp. With a gigantic effort, he stopped himself; for Kemp, though he might talk easily of witches, was a scientist to the depths of his soul.

("The Witch") ~ A.E. Van Vogt

I discovered another analogy in the legacy of Prophet Muhammad that immediately clicked with me: that the angels put down their wings in humility for a person who seeks knowledge, and that all living things, even the ants in their anthill and the fish in the sea, pray for a person who teaches people good things.
When I read this, I literally felt the goodness flow out of my heart for all creatures. The beautiful mental image it evoked resonated with my concept of the universe as one unit, and of all living things seeking to live together in peace and harmony, and being grateful when humans tried to fit into the circle of life, instead of working so hard to disrupt its equilibrium ~ Sahar El-Nadi

We had a sunset of a very fine sort. The vast plain of the sea was marked off in bands of sharply-contrasted colors: great stretches of dark blue, others of purple, others of polished bronze; the billowy mountains showed all sorts of dainty browns and greens, blues and purples and blacks, and the rounded velvety backs of certain of them made one want to stroke them, as one would the sleek back of a cat. ~ Mark Twain

Her expression is fierce and uncompromising, full of the intrepid bravery of a small boat in an uncertain sea. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

We see the sea as this place of leisure and this place, you know, a blue patch on the map to fly over because we all go by plane these days, mostly. And we don't really see it as a place of industry anymore. ~ Rose George

It is only the pathetic shortness of human life that gives each individual a sense of the permanence of his background. The land we all walk upon has been under the sea many times, and it will be submerged again. ~ Jacquetta Hawkes

But there'll be plenty of room on Earth then because right now, what is it?-Only one-fifth of the Earth's surface is land, right? Whereas then there will be no more sea, it'll all be land, seas will be gone. The seas are the World's great septic tanks, its great cesspools, where all the waste of the World drains off into the sea. ~ David Berg

had gone to heaven. Enoch was "translated" and Elijah was "taken up." One could "ascend" a ladder (Jesus had told Nathanael that he would see angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man, and Jacob beheld a ladder in his midnight dream at Bethel) or one could "ascend" to Jerusalem, moving to a higher elevation from sea level. The term could be used figuratively to refer to the elevation of a king to his royal office. But no one ever had "ascended to heaven" in the sense in which Jesus was speaking. The ascension of Jesus was the supreme political event of world history. He ascended ~ R.C. Sproul

He felt like a man in a small boat under which a huge sea creature has passed, causing the boat to pitch gently. Like a man in a boat, he could chase it or run from it, and he picked chase. If he felt it on her lips, he put his mouth on her lips. If he found it on the palm of her hand, he opened her hand and licked it up. Her soul darted here and there, sensitive as any creature, tipping her center of balance back and forth as it oscillated. She liked this, and if she had any fear, she did not take it seriously. He liked it, too, so much that he could barely concentrate on the chase. ~ Mary Gaitskill

As if the ocean cares that it's been zoned residential – what the sea wants, the sea shall have. ~ Kirsty Eagar

She considered him further and decided he could definitely pass for a pirate. No, she thought, correcting herself. More like a sea captain, a younger version of the captain from that old movie where the pretty woman rents an old sea captain's house only to find the place haunted by the sea captain himself.
She let out a heavy breath. Man, she loved that movie. ~ Madison Thorne Grey

Long have you timidly waded
Holding a plank by the shore,
Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,
To jump off in the midst of the sea,
Rise again, nod to me, shout,
And laughingly dash with your hair. ~ Walt Whitman

The morning was on fire as the sun rose, seemingly from the ocean depths. The great, glowing orb came to the surface and set the horizon aflame. Many minutes passed, and it floated fully into the sky to light the day and gently warm the sea below. ~ Victoria Kahler

I was climbing high, high up Pen Dinas Head among the sparkling yellow gorse, sea birds and white heather, with the oily sheep huddled together against the wind ~ Suzy Davies

Imaginings and resonances and pain and small longings and prejudices. They mean nothing against the resolute hardness of the sea. They meant less than the marl and the mud and the dry clay of the cliff that were eaten away by the weather, washed away by the sea. It was not just that they would fade: they hardly existed, they did not matter, they would have no impact on this cold dawn, this deserted remote seascape where the water shone in the early light and shocked her with its sullen beauty. It might have been better, she felt, if there had never been people, if this turning of the world, and the glistening sea, and the morning breeze happened without witnesses, without anyone feeling, or remembering, or dying, or trying to love. She stood at the edge of the cliff until the sun came out from behind the black rainclouds, ~ Colm Toibin

It's all okay, it's all beautiful; but ah fear that this internal sea is gaunnae subside soon, leaving this poisonous shite washed up, stranded up in ma body. ~ Irvine Welsh

Love is
throwing yourself into a stormy sea
hoping there are arms to catch you
knowing that without the leap
there is only the safe
and lonely shore ~ Atticus Poetry

I am always yours to call, wherever the sea can reach. ~ Janet Morris

snowy mountains are, and the sea, they say, with the distant ~ Various

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

If diving once does not bring you pearls, you need not therefore conclude that the sea is without them. ~ Ramakrishna

I am entitled to say, if I like, that awareness exists in all the individual creatures on the planet-worms, sea urchins, gnats, whales, subhuman primates, superprimate humans, the lot. I can say this because we do not know what we are talking about: consciousness is so much a total mystery for our own species that we cannot begin to guess about its existence in others. ~ Lewis Thomas

The sea can swallow ships, and it can spit out whales like watermelon seeds. It will take what it wants, and it will keep what it has taken, and you may not take away from it what it does not wish to give. ~ Natalie Babbitt

Mr. Edwards and the Spider"

I saw the spiders marching through the air,
Swimming from tree to tree that mildewed day
In latter August when the hay
Came creaking to the barn. But where
The wind is westerly,
Where gnarled November makes the spiders fly
Into the apparitions of the sky,
They purpose nothing but their ease and die
Urgently beating east to sunrise and the sea;

What are we in the hands of the great God?
It was in vain you set up thorn and briar
In battle array against the fire
And treason crackling in your blood;
For the wild thorns grow tame
And will do nothing to oppose the flame;
Your lacerations tell the losing game
You play against a sickness past your cure.
How will the hands be strong? How will the heart endure?

A very little thing, a little worm,
Or hourglass-blazoned spider, it is said,
Can kill a tiger. Will the dead
Hold up his mirror and affirm
To the four winds the smell
And flash of his authority? It's well
If God who holds you to the pit of hell,
Much as one holds a spider, will destroy,
Baffle and dissipate your soul. As a small boy

On Windsor Marsh, I saw the spider die
When thrown into the bowels of fierce fire:
There's no long struggle, no desire
To get up on its feet and fly
It stretches out its feet
And dies. This is the sinner's last retreat;
Yes, and no ~ Robert Lowell

The water in a vessel is sparkling; the water in the sea is dark. The small truth has words which are clear; the great truth has great silence. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

When I wrote a long story about the retreat of sea ice, I made clear it could go the other way for a while, and that doesn't mean we don't know that a warmer world will have less sea ice. It just means there's a lot of variability and people can pay too much attention to the big swings in one direction or the other. ~ Andrew Revkin

The impression made upon them by the first view of a camel equipped and loaded for the desert. Custom, so fatal to other novelties, affects this feeling but little. At the end of long journeys with caravans, after years of residence with the Bedawin, the Western-born, wherever they may be, will stop and wait the passing of the stately brute. The charm is not in the figure, which not even love can make beautiful; nor in the movement, the noiseless stepping, or the broad careen. As is the kindness of the sea to a ship, so that of the desert to its creature. It clothes him with all its mysteries; ~ Lew Wallace

You do not ask a tame seagull why it needs to disappear from time to time toward the open sea. It goes, that's all. ~ Bernard Moitessier

Into that world inverted where left is always right, where the shadows are really the body, where we stay awake all night, where the heavens are shallow as the sea is now deep, and you love me." - Elizabeth Bishop, from Insomnia ~ Tina Ann Forkner

I'll be back at sea by then," Bradshaw put in, "so I'll comfort myself with the knowledge that you'll name
the infant after me."
"I don't think 'Half-wit' will pass muster with Georgie, but I'll let her know that's your suggestion. ~ Suzanne Enoch

From sky to sky
From sea to sea
Steady so I stand
And never will I flee. ~ Claire Legrand

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

Okay, listen up, dudes. We have to book. Yesterday, when I find you guys are, like, AWOL? I, like, freak. Yelling at everybody–where are they, why did you let them leave–the hotel people are, like, whaaaa? Anyway, I pack up all your stuff, figuring I may never see the place again, and down in the lobby I find my man Arif. I'm, like, help me, and he takes all of our stuff to this launch–and then we're halfway across the sea when Arif gets this radio message, and he's all excited, but I don't know what he's saying until he's, like, 'POLICE!' in English. And we see these cop cars and somebody's getting a big old boat, so we're, like, sayonara, only in Indonesian, and we tool out into this boat-traffic jam to try to loose them, and I'm hearing these radio reports that are half English–there's been a fire and somebody's dead, yada yada, and I'm totally wigging out–Why did you do that? Why did you and your sister leave me in a hotel without even a note? ~ Peter Lerangis

I said that the oceans were sick but they're not going to die. There is no death possible in the oceans - there will always be life - but they're getting sicker every year. ~ Jacques-Yves Cousteau

The sea listens. The sea knows. - Talia's mother ~ Joanna Ruth Meyer

I discovered that our clan included loads of cousins and uncles and aunts and animals of every shape. I was taught that chaos and competition were family values. And I learned that we all loved the sea. Somehow, the sea was about us-our past, our exuberance, our frailty, our longing. ~ Timothy Shriver

Your heart of devotion and obedience is not in vain. Who knows but God how many people have come near to you and were forever changed simply by the fragrance of his love in you? Who knows but God if he will put you before kings and leaders to speak the truth, redirecting the future of nations? Who knows when that small crack in the dam of our enemy's plans will give way and God's glory will truly cover the earth as the sea? Do not become distracted or discouraged by the death around you. Death must always give way when the life of Christ enters the picture. ~ Amy Layne Litzelman

Right or wrong, black or white. Live or die. In peace, he was lost in a sea of gray. Now it was time for war. ~ Dacre Stoker

What's the gun for? (Leta) I would lie and say it's for bears or snakes, but mostly I use it for trespassers. (Aiden) Wow, Dexter, I'm impressed. Since we're not in Miami and you haven't a boat to hide the hacked-up bodies at sea, where are you keeping them? (Leta) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon