Best Ocean Quotes & Nautical Sayings
We never need any added incentive to cruise, but these Ocean Quotes sure do excite us for our next sailing! You’ll find sayings from Whoopi Goldberg to Mark Twain. We even through in an Ocean Quote from The Princess Bride!
For the true nautical fan out there, make sure to also check out our Best Cruise Shirts post. There you’ll find 20 funny, inspiring, and nostalgic tees expressing your love for the ocean and cruising. If you’ve found yourself on this post, we recommend the “thalassophile” t-shirt!
Take your time and scroll through the following ocean quotes. Pin those that you’d like to remember and revisit when you miss the ocean. We hope it’ll get you even more excited to cruise.
Use the Pin It button above to save this post to your favorite Cruise Pinterest Board! You can also hover over any of the 99 Quotes to pin them individually!
And now, please check out the best Ocean quotes we could find.
99 Ocean Quotes & Sayings
“When I forget how talented God is, I look to the sea.”
– Whoopi Goldberg
“Waves are not measured in feet or inches, they are measured in increments of fear.”
– Buzzy Trent
“I start from the premise that no object created by man is as satisfying to his body and soul as a proper sailing yacht.”
– Arthur Beiser 1978, The Proper Yacht
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“When the draught of your vessel exceeds the depth of the water, you are most assuredly, aground.”
– Ian Walsh
“When a man comes to like a sea life, he is not fit to live on land.”
– Dr. Samuel Johnson, Writer
“We must free ourselves of the hope that the sea will ever rest. We must learn to sail in high winds.”
– Aristotle Onassis, Shipping Magnate
“Until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore, you will not know the terror of being forever lost at sea.”
– Charles Cook
“Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than those you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from safe harbor. Catch the wind in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
– Mark Twain, Great American Writer
“To sail is human… to power divine!”
– Preben Sejer Kristensen
“Anchor as though you plan to stay for weeks, even if you intend to leave in an hour.”
– Tommy Moran
“Without patience, a sailor I would never be.”
– Lee Allred
“Whenever your preparations for the sea are poor; the sea worms its way in and finds the problems.”
– Francis Stokes
Anchor Bracelet (Paracord)
This paracord anchor bracelet makes for an amazing gift to the Ocean Lover in your life!
“To my crew:
Please be reasonable and do it my way.”
The Captain
– Rusty Mills
“To be successful at sea we must keep things simple.”
– R. D. ( Pete ) Culler
“Time and Tide wait for no man.”
– St. Marher, 1225
“There is nothing more enticing, disenchanting, and enslaving than the life at sea.”
– Joseph Conrad, Writer
“There is nothing like lying flat on your back on the deck, alone except for the helmsman aft at the wheel, silence except for the lapping of the sea against the side of the ship. At that time you can be equal to Ulysses and brother to him.”
– Errol Flynn
“There is nothing absolutely nothing half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”
– Kenneth Grahame, Writer
“There is but a plank between a sailor and eternity.”
– Thomas Gibbons
“There are three sorts of people; those who are alive, those who are dead, and those who are at sea.”
– Old Capstan Chantey attributed to Anacharsis, 6th Century BC
“The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.”
– William Arthur Ward, Writer
“The only way to get a good crew is to marry one.”
– Eric Hiscock
“The ocean is an object of no small terror.”
– Edmund Burke
“The lovely thing about cruising is that planning usually turns out to be of little use.”
– Dom Degnon
“The goal is not to sail the boat, but rather to help the boat sail herself.”
– John Rousmaniere
“The difference between a fairy tale and a sea tale? A fairy tale starts with “Once upon a time”. A sea tale starts with ” This ain’t no $hit!”
– Edith Widder
“The desire to build a house is the tired wish of a man content thenceforward with a single anchorage. The desire to build a boat is the desire of youth, unwilling yet to accept the idea of a final resting place.”
– Arthur Ransome
“The days pass happily with me wherever my ship sails.”
– Joshua Slocum
“The cure for anything is saltwater – sweat, tears, or the sea.”
– Isak Dinesen
“The chance for mistakes is about equal to the number of crew squared.”
– Ted Turner
“The best bilge pump of all is a bucket in the hands of a frightened man.”
– Butch Dalrymple-Smith
“The art of the sailor is to leave nothing to chance.”
– Annie Van De Wiele
“Some years ago never mind how long precisely having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.”
– H. Melville, Opening Line from Moby Dick
“Ships are the nearest things to dreams that hands have ever made.”
– Robert N. Rose
“Sailors, with their built in sense of order, service and discipline, should really be running the world.”
– Nicholas Monsarrat
“Sailing unties the knots in my mind.”
– Al Noble
“Sailing The fine art of slowly going nowhere at great expense while being cold, wet and miserable.”
– Irv Heller
“Remember. It was a professional who built the Titanic, It was an amateur who built Noah’s Ark.”
– Vanessa Linsley
“Pull that thing.
Pull that other thing.
Sail faster.”
– from the movie The Princess Bride
“Out of sight of land the sailor feels safe. It is the beach that worries him.”
– Charles C. Davis
“Only two sailors, in my experience, never ran aground. One never left port and the other was an atrocious liar.
– Don Bamford
“Only fools and passengers drink at sea.”
– Allan Villiers
“One of the best temporary cures for pride and affection is seasickness.”
– Henry Wheeler Show
“Now bring me that horizon.”
– The last line from Pirates of the Caribbean
“Never a ship sails out of a bay, but carries my heart as a stowaway.”
– Roselle Mercier Montgomery
“Men in a ship are always looking up, and men ashore are usually looking down.”
– John Masefield
“Man marks the earth with ruin – his control stops with the shore.”
– Byron
“Mackerel skies and mares tails, soon will be time to shorten sails.”
– Old sailors proverb
“Life’s roughest storms prove the strength of our anchors.”
– unknown
“The planning stage of a cruise is often just as enjoyable as the voyage itself, letting one’s imagination loose on all kinds of possibilities. Yet translating dreams into reality means a lot of practical questions have to be answered.”
– Jimmy Cornell (World Cruising Handbook)
“The right of way goes to the vessel with the least competent crew.”
– Mike Baiocchi
“The sea drives truth into a man like salt.”
– Hilaire Belloc
“The sea finds out everything you did wrong.”
– Francis Stokes
“The sea hates a coward.”
– Eugene O’Neill
“The sea is the same as it has been since before men ever went on it in boats.”
– Ernest Hemingway
“The thing I realized this last few days is that the earth is a big place.”
– Paul Cayard
“The wind and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigator.”
– Edmund Gibbon, Historian
“There are more sharks on the land than in the sea.”
– Neil Wheatley
“There are only two colors to paint a boat, black or white, and only a fool would paint a boat black.”
– Nathanael G. Herreshoff
“Land was created to provide a place for boats to visit.”
– Brooks Atkinson
“It’s scary to have a 30 foot wave chasing you. If you are steering, you don’t look back. The crew looks back for you, and you watch their faces. When they look straight up, then get ready!”
– Magnus Olsson
“It’s remarkable how quickly a good and favorable wind can sweep away the maddening frustrations of shore living.”
– Ernest K. Gann
“It’s out there at sea that you are really yourself.”
– Vito Dumas
“It is not the ship so much as the skillful sailing that assures the prosperous voyage.”
– George William Curtis, Writer
“It is not that life ashore is distasteful to me. But life at sea is better.”
– Sir Francis Drake, Sea Captain
“If your ship doesn’t come in, swim out to it.”
– Jonathan Winters
“If you’re not getting close to capsize, you’re probably not pushing hard enough.”
– James Spithill, ORACLE Racing Team USA
“If you can’t tie a knot, tie a lot.”
– Motto of a representative of the Winslow Liferaft Company
“If you can’t repair it, maybe it shouldn’t be on board.”
– Lin and Larry Pardey
“If a man is to be obsessed by something, I suppose a boat is as good as anything, perhaps a bit better than most.”
– E. B. White
“I’m telling you that India is that way, now set my course.”
– Christopher Columbus
“I was born in the breezes, and I had studied the sea as perhaps few men have studied it, neglecting all else.”
– Joshua Slocum
“I wanted freedom, open air and adventure. I found it on the sea.”
– Alaine Gerbault, Sailor
“I want a boat that drinks 6, eats 4, and sleeps 2.”
– Earnest K. Gann
“I once knew a writer who, after saying beautiful things about the sea, passed through a Pacific hurricane, and he became a changed man.”
– Joshua Slocum
“I need the Sea because it teaches me.”
– from THE SEA by Pablo Neruda
“I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky.
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by.”
– John Masefield
“I loved cruising the coast of Maine. For one thing, it helped me conquer my fear of fog. Not that I have learned to feel secure in the fog, but at least I have learned how to grope without panic.”
– Herb Payson
“I don’t know who named them swells. There’s nothing swell about them. They should have named them awfuls.”
– Hugo Vihlen
“I cannot not sail.”
– E. B. White
“I am not afraid of storms for I am learning how to sail my ship.”
– Louisa May Alcott in Little Women
“However bad the storm you are in, there is still sun somewhere over your horizon.”
– Ken Nutt
“Headwinds are sore vexations and the more passengers the sorer.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
“He that will not sail till all dangers are over must never put to sea.”
– Thomas Fuller
“Give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Give him a fishing lesson and he’ll sit in a boat drinking beer every weekend.”
– Alex Blackwell
“Everyone must row with the oars he has.”
– Dutch proverb
“Cruising has two pleasures. One is to go out in wider waters from a sheltered place. The other is to go into a sheltered place from wider waters.”
– Howard Bloomfield
“Can we go downwind now please. I’ve been hit in the face by a grill pan.”
– Julian Megson
“Boats, like whiskey, are all good.”
– R. D. Culler
“At sea, I learned how little a person needs, not how much.”
– Robin Lee Graham
“A tourist remains an outsider throughout his visit; but a sailor is part of the local scene from the moment he arrives.”
– Anne Davison
“A Smooth Sea NEVER made a Skilled Sailor.”
– John George Hermanson English Proverb
“A small craft in an ocean is, or should be, a benevolent dictatorship.”
– Tristan Jones
“A ship is safe in harbor but that’s not what ships are for.”
– William G.T. Shedd
“A ship is always referred to as “she” because it costs so much to keep her in paint and powder.”
– ADM. Chester Nimitz
“A sailor’s joys are as simple as a child’s.”
– Bernard Moitessier
“A sailor is an artist whose medium is the wind.”
– Webb Chiles
“Any damn fool can navigate the world sober. It takes a really good sailor to do it drunk.”
– Sir Francis Chichester while loading his boat with gin
We hope that you’ve enjoyed these Ocean Quotes and Nautical Sayings. Which was your favorite? Did we miss any? Use the comment section below and add your best quote or tell us which you like best!
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Happy cruising!