"My experience with engines is that if you depend on them they fail you, but if it just doesn't matter, they serve you."
-Frank Wightman
"He was now convinced that the most valuable sail on board was the diesel."
-Ray Kauffman
"Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm."
-Syrus Pubilius
"It isn't that life ashore is distasteful to me. But life at sea is better."
-Sir Francis Drake
"The art of the sailor is to leave nothing to chance."
-Annie Van De Wiele
"If you can't repair it, maybe it shouldn't be on board."
-Lin and Larry Pardey
"Ships are the nearest thing to dreams that hands have ever made."
-Robert N. Rose
"There is nothing- absolutely nothing-
half so much worth doing
as simply messing about in boats."
-Ratty said to Mole in Kenneth Grahame's beloved 1908
classic, The Wind in the Willows.
"The sail, the play of its pulse so like our own lives: so thin and yet
so full of life, so noiseless when it labors hardest, so noisy and
impatient when least effective."
-Henry David Thoreau
"Land was created to provide a place for boats to visit."
-Brooks Atkinson
"You're only as young as the last time you changed your mind."
-Timothy Leary
"Only two sailors, in my experience, never ran aground. One never left
port and the other was an atrocious liar."
-Don Bamford
"Out of sight of land the sailor feels safe. It is the beach that
worries him."
-Charles G. Davis
"The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist
expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails."
-William A. Ward
"Ships that pass in the night and speak each other in passing;
Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;
So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another,
Only a look and a voice; then darkness again and a silence."
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss!
Her lips suck forth my soul: see, where it flies!"
Christopher Marlowe
"For me, my craft is sailing on,
Through mists to-day, clear seas anon.
Whate'er the final harbor be
'T is good to sail upon the sea!"
John Kendrick Bangs
"My soul to-day
Is far away
Sailing the Vesuvian Bay."
Thomas Buchanan Read
The only way to get a good crew is to marry one.
-Eric Hiscock
The sea finds out everything you did wrong.
-Francis Stokes
"It is by no means enough that an officer of the navy should be a capable mariner. He must be that, of course, but also a great deal more. He should be as well a gentleman of liberal education, refined manners, punctilious courtesy, and the nicest sense of personal honor.
He should be the soul of tact, patience, justice, firmness, and charity. no meritorious act of a subordinate should escape his attention or be left to pass without its reward, even if the reward is only a word of approval. Conversely, he should not be blind to a single fault in any subordinate, though, at the same time, he should be quick and unfailing to distinguish error from malice, thoughtlessness from incompetency, and well meant shortcoming from heedless or stupid blunder."
Based on Letters to the Naval Committee
By John Paul Jones 14 September 1775
"Do they ask me what pleasure I find on the sea?
- Why, absence from land is a pleasure to me:
A hamper of porter, and plenty of grog,
A friend, when too sleepy, to give me a jog,
A coop that will always some poultry afford,
Some bottles of gin, and no parson on board,
A crew that is brisk when it happens to blow,
One compass on deck and another below,
A girl, with more sense than the girl at the head,
To read me a novel, or make up me bed --
The man that has these, has a treasure in store
That millions possess not who live upon shore."
Philip Freneau
