Best 20 quotes in «sailors quotes» category

A fight is like the perfect storm. It is risky and dangerous. But, as the African proverb goes, Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors. Fights are often learning opportunities—if we’re willing to dig deep enough past our own egos.

A wind that howled like a drowning man.

Black seamen - or "Black Jacks" as African sailors were known - enjoyed a refreshing world of liberty and equality. Even if they were generally regulated to jobs such as cooks, servants, and muscians and endured thier fellow seamen's racism, they were still freemen in the Royal Navy. One famous black sailor wrote, "I liked this little ship very much. I now became the captian's steward, in which I was very happy; for I was extremely well treated by all on board, and I had the leisure to improve myself in reading and writing.

He penned a letter to the Company in London, a letter whose unfailing spirit would become legendary among the sailors of the East India Company. 'I cannot tell where you should looke for me.' he wrote, 'because I live at the devotion of the winds and seas.' (Written by/about Captain James Lancaster, on the ship Red Dragon, during a terrible storm, 1603)

I had a romance novel inside me, but I paid three sailors to beat it out of me with steel pipes.

O Sailor! It’s the way I want to be It’s beyond the pale for me It’s what being unknown is all about It’s the path I choose to take It’s the destiny I make It’s my life now – the only way out Out of circulation in another dimension I carry you right inside my heart As we’re one, moulded together Always and forever, never apart It’s a world where I’m alone It’s a place where I can atone It’s a severing of all ties I know I feel so free and yet I’m bound I’m invisible and yet around I know I’ve got to go with the flow My life now is like a sailboat ride, Destiny is the wind – with you by my side, I’m the sailor, who sets the course, Empowered by an incredible force.

If they will only hold their hands until the season is over, he promises them a royal carnival, when all grudges can he settled and the survivors may toss the non-survivors overboard and arrange a story as to how the missing men were lost at sea.

Fawn supposed Black's treaty had been made long ago. He was tall and unwavering, like one of the shaded lighthouses scattered across Cadoett's waters. How many ships were still lost? How many sailors never made it home? Black was resolute, and the mountain appeared to empower him.

The Mayflower sped across the white-tipped waves once the voyage was under way, and the passengers were quickly afflicted with seasickness. The crew took great delight in the sufferings of the landlubbers and tormented them mercilessly. "There is an insolent and very profane young man, Bradford wrote, "who was always harrassing the poor people in their sickness, and cursing them daily with greivous execrations." He even laughed that he hoped to 'throw half of them overboard before they came to their journey's end.' The Puritans believe a just God punished the young sailor for his cruelty when, halfway through the voyage, 'it pleased God...to smite the young man with a greivous disease, of which he died in a desperate manner." He was the first to be thrown overboard.

The strongest storms make the best sailors. The strongest games make the best players. Tougher challenges make the best leaders.

There are no whores in Scaithe’s Ebb, or none that consider themselves as such, although there have always been many women who, if pressed, would describe themselves as much-married, with one husband on this ship here every six months, and another husband on that ship, back in port for a month or so every nine months. The mathematics of the thing have always kept most folk satisfied; and if ever it disappoints and a man returns to his wife while one of her other husbands is still in occupancy, why, then there is a fight — and the grog shops to comfort the loser. The sailors do not mind the arrangement, for they know that this way there will, at the least, be one person who, at the last, will notice when they do not come back from the sea, and will mourn their loss; and their wives content themselves with the certain knowledge that their husbands are also unfaithful, for there is no competing with the sea in a man’s affections, since she is both mother and mistress, and she will wash his corpse also, in time to come, wash it to coral and ivory and pearls.

They don't take the Bible as a general thing, sailors don't; though I will say that I never saw the man at sea who didn't give it the credit of being an uncommon good yarn. ("Kentucky's Ghost")

The true substance of love lies in the act of howling words of love with a desperation of a man jumping into the high seas.

To-day a rude brief recitative, Of ships sailing the seas, each with its special flag or ship-signal, Of unnamed heroes in the ships—of waves spreading and spreading far as the eye can reach, Of dashing spray, and the winds piping and blowing, And out of these a chant for the sailors of all nations, Fitful, like a surge. Of sea-captains young or old, and the mates, and of all intrepid sailors, Of the few, very choice, taciturn, whom fate can never surprise nor death dismay. Pick'd sparingly without noise by thee old ocean, chosen by thee, Thou sea that pickest and cullest the race in time, and unitest nations, Suckled by thee, old husky nurse, embodying thee, Indomitable, untamed as thee. (Ever the heroes on water or on land, by ones or twos appearing, Ever the stock preserv'd and never lost, though rare, enough for seed preserv'd.) Flaunt out O sea your separate flags of nations! Flaunt out visible as ever the various ship-signals! But do you reserve especially for yourself and for the soul of man one flag above all the rest, A spiritual woven signal for all nations, emblem of man elate above death, Token of all brave captains and all intrepid sailors and mates, And all that went down doing their duty, Reminiscent of them, twined from all intrepid captains young or old, A pennant universal, subtly waving all time, o'er all brave sailors, All seas, all ships.

We are the Amazons, killers of men. Only the feeble-headed try their luck with us.

Springtime blooms the starry tree Bearing fruit the mariners see. High by night and low by dawn The silver apple guides us home.

We are the Amazons" said Myrina."We are the killers of beasts and men. Wild ourselves, we inhabit the wild places. Freedom courses in our blood, and death whispers at the tip of our arrows. We fear nothing, fear runs from us. Try to stop us, and you will feel our rage.

...when a storm was coming on, and they anticipated that a ship might sink, they swam before it, and sang most sweetly of the delight to be found beneath the water, begging the seafarers not to be afraid of coming down below.

You could start now, and spend another forty years learning about the sea without running out of new things to know.

Yeux mi-clos, il humait à présent dans les souffles du large l’âcreté du sel, il écoutait les vents siffler à son oreille, messagers rafraîchissants annonciateurs d’orage. Célian sentait à travers le tissu du hamac la peau réchauffée de Nyssa toujours endormie, sa longue chevelure princière apanagée de la lumière du jour. L’agile équipage de l’Astéropée, muscles tendus, œuvrait d’un bel ensemble autour des écoutes, habitué à manœuvrer les cordages et les voiles sur les mâts protégés de plusieurs couches d’huile de lin ; mais à cet instant les marins qui prenaient leur quart étaient allongés sur le pont pour admirer le lever de soleil.