Top 35 Quotes About the Sea (2024 Update)

1. “Don’t sit and wait. Get out there, feel life. Touch the sun, and immerse in the sea.”

— Rumi

Also featured in: Quotes About Waiting

2. “Calm seas never made a good sailor.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

3. “If the literature we are reading does not wake us, why then do we read it? A literary work must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us.”

— Franz Kafka

Also featured in: Reading Quotes

4. “The heart of man is very much like the sea, it has its storms, it has its tides and in its depths it has its pearls too.”

— Vincent van Gogh

5. “We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch – we are going back from whence we came.”

— John F. Kennedy

Also featured in: Quotes About Ocean

6. “I am no longer the wave of consciousness thinking itself separated from the sea of cosmic consciousness. I am the ocean of Spirit that has become the wave of human life.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

7. “Stop running after the waves. Let the sea come to you.”

— Elif Shafak

8. “Meet me where the sky touches the sea. Wait for me where the world begins.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

Also featured in: Sky Quotes

9. “How many roads must a man walk down, Before you call him a man? How many seas must a white dove sail, Before she sleeps in the sand? Yes, and how many times must the cannon balls fly, Before they’re forever banned?”

— Bob Dylan

10. “You belong among the wildflowers You belong in a boat out at sea You belong with your love on your arm You belong somewhere you feel free.”

— Tom Petty

11. “Water adopts the shape of its receptacle, it is sometimes a trickle and sometimes a wild sea.”

— Miyamoto Musashi

Also featured in: Quotes About Water

12. “Fishing is more than fish; it is the vitalizing lure to outdoor life.”

— Herbert Hoover

13. “The earth, the sea and air are the concern of every nation. And science, technology, and education can be the ally of every nation.”

— John F. Kennedy

Also featured in: Technology Quotes

14. “So Matilda’s strong young mind continued to grow, nurtured by the voices of all those authors who had sent their books out into the world like ships on the sea. These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: You are not alone.”

— Roald Dahl

Also featured in: Strong Quotes, Book Quotes, Reading Quotes

15. “One must be a sea, to receive a polluted stream without becoming impure.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

16. “Only a god can save us.”

— Martin Heidegger

17. “We’re all islands shouting lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding.”

— Rudyard Kipling

18. “I was a child and she was a child, In this kingdom by the sea; But we loved with a love that was more than love- I and my Annabel Lee; With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven Coveted her and me.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

Also featured in: Quotes About Children, Heaven Quotes

19. “Nothing that happens on the surface of the sea can alter the calm of its depths.”

— Andrew Harvey

20. “I cannot live on an island of prosperity when I’m surrounded by a sea of misery.”

— Ayrton Senna

21. “Sailors on a becalmed sea, we sense the stirring of a breeze.”

— Carl Sagan

22. “There must be something strangely sacred about salt. It is in our tears and in the sea.”

— Khalil Gibran

23. “I never saw a moor, I never saw the sea; Yet know I how the heather looks, And what a wave must be. I never spoke with God, Nor visited in Heaven; Yet certain am I of the spot, As if a chart were given.”

— Emily Dickinson

24. “To be bitter is to attribute intent and personality to the formless, infinite, unchanging and unchangeable void. We drift on a chartless, resistless sea. Let us sing when we can, and forget the rest...”

— H.P. Lovecraft

25. “Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you.”

— Wendell Berry

26. “If you would behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the body of life. For life and death are one, even as the river and sea are one.”

— Khalil Gibran

27. “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

28. “Eternity. It is the sea mingled with the sun.”

— Arthur Rimbaud

29. “My best fishing-memory is about some fish that I never caught.”

— George Orwell

Also featured in: Quotes About Memories

30. “For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.”

— Khalil Gibran

31. “God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools.”

— John Muir

32. “But our love was stronger by far than the love Of those who were older than we Of many far wiser than we And neither the angels in heaven above, Nor the demons down under the sea, Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

33. “The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.”

— Kate Chopin

34. “The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. From it we have learned most of what we know. Recently, we have waded a little out to sea, enough to dampen our toes or, at most, wet our ankles. The water seems inviting. The ocean calls.”

— Carl Sagan

35. “Home is like the ship at sea, Sailing on eternally; Oft the anchor forth we cast, But can never make it fast.”

— Charles Dickens

36. “My ties and ballasts leave me – I travel – I sail – My elbows rest in the sea-gaps. I skirt the sierras. My palms cover continents – I am afoot with my vision.”

— Walt Whitman

37. “I need the sea because it teaches me.”

— Pablo Neruda

38. “Our knowledge is a little island in a great ocean of nonknowledge.”

— Isaac Bashevis Singer

Also featured in: Quotes About Ocean

39. “For plague and pestilence, plunder and pollution, the hazards of nature and the hunger of children are the foes of every nation. The earth, the sea and the air are the concern of every nation.”

— John F. Kennedy