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70+ Funny, Famous And Inspirational Quotes About Sailing

Take a break from the chaos of everyday living by hoisting the mainsail from the comfort of your desk. Learning how to sail takes years to master, but reading about sailing is much easier for beginners to accomplish, so sit down with a fresh squeezed margarita and some music and the rest of your day will be instantly easier. You will feel like you've been set adrift on Mark Twain Lake in Missouri when you read the following quotes you're sure to love about sailing. Nothing stands between you and the inspiration or the humor of a glittering, bright blue sea.
If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

If you live a life of make-believe, your life isn’t worth anything until you do something that does challenge your reality. And to me, sailing the open ocean is a real challenge, because it’s life or death.
Morgan Freeman


It is not that life ashore is distasteful to me. But life at sea is better.
Sir Francis Drake

The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.
Jacques Yves Cousteau

It is not the ship so much as the skillful sailing that assures the prosperous voyage.
George William Curtis

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

The days pass happily with me wherever my ship sails.
Joshua Slocum

The cabin of a small yacht is truly a wonderful thing; not only will it shelter you from a tempest, but from the other troubles in life, it is a safe retreat.
Francis Herreshoff

There’s no thrill in easy sailing when the skies are clear and blue, there’s no joy in merely doing things which any one can do. But there is some satisfaction that is mighty sweet to take, when you reach a destination that you never thought you’d make.
Author Unknown

I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning how to sail my ship.
Louisa May Alcott

I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning to sail my ship.
Aeschylus


There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm.
Willa Cather

Sailing a boat calls for quick action, a blending of feeling with the wind and water as well as with the very heart and soul of the boat itself. Sailing teaches alertness and courage, and gives in return a joyousness and peace that but few sports afford.
George Matthew Adams

There is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.
Kenneth Grahame

When a man comes to like a sea life, he is not fit to live on land.
Dr. Samuel Johnson

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 am a citizen of the most beautiful nation on earth, a nation whose laws are harsh yet simple, a nation that never cheats, which is immense and without borders, where life is lived in the present. In this limitless nation, this nation of wind, light, and peace, there is no other ruler besides the sea.
Bernard Moitessier

There is nothing more enticing, disenchanting, and enslaving than the life at sea.
Joseph Conrad

If the Lord says to give more than you think you are able to give, know that He will provide for you. Whether things are sailing smoothly or the bottom has dropped out, He is always trustworthy. You can count on Almighty God to keep His everlasting Word.
Charles Stanley


There is a rule in sailing where the more maneuverable ship should give way to the less maneuverable craft. I think this is sometimes a good rule to follow in human relationships as well.
Joyce Brothers

The cure for anything is saltwater – sweat, tears, or the sea.
Isak Dinesen


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

Sailors, with their built-in sense of order, service and discipline, should really be running the world.
Nicholas Monsarrat

I’d love to have a proper sailing boat and go around the world.
Jonathan Powell

Nothing comes sailing by itself.
Alexander Dale Oen

I keep sailing on in this middle passage. I am sailing into the wind and the dark. But I am doing my best to keep my boat steady and my sails full.
Arthur Ashe

I love cities that are on the water. I love the water element, specifically the sea. I grew up on the sea and I grew up sailing – I love sailing – and the presence of the sea gives the air and the light a very special quality that I absolutely adore.
Connie Nielsen

Flying might not be all plain sailing, but the fun of it is worth the price.
Amelia Earhart

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

I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving – we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it – but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Out of sight of land the sailor feels safe. It is the beach that worries him.
Charles Davis

A sailor is an artist whose medium is the wind.
Webb Chiles


The man who has experienced shipwreck shudders even at a calm sea.
Ovid

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.
Antoine de Saint Exupery

The art of the sailor is to leave nothing to chance.
Annie Van De Wiele

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

No literature is richer than that of the sea. No story is more enthralling, no tradition is more secure.
Felix Riesenberg

At sea, I learned how little a person needs, not how much.
Robin Lee Graham

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

Clouds do not really look like camels or sailing ships or castles in the sky. They are simply a natural process at work. So too, perhaps, are our lives.
Roger Ebert

It’s remarkable how quickly a good and favorable wind can sweep away the maddening frustrations of shore living.
Ernest K. Gann


Any damn fool can navigate the world sober. It takes a really good sailor to do it drunk.
Sir Francis Chichester


What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it, all the rest are not only useless, but disastrous.
Thomas Merton

They were singing, Gillette, the best a man can get, with a lot of guys hugging their fathers and sailing and riding bikes. I suddenly felt a long way from the best a man could get and I thought it would be nice to get from there to the best.
Craig Ferguson

To reach a port we must set sail –
Sail, not tie at anchor
Sail, not drift.
Franklin D. Roosevelt


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

Sailing round the world in a dirty gondola oh, to be back in the land of Coca-Cola!
Bob Dylan

Thought is the wind, knowledge the sail, and mankind the vessel.
Augustus Hare

Wonders are many, and none is more wonderful than the power that crosses the white sea, driven by the stormy wind, making a path under surges that threaten to engulf him.
Sophocles

Any fool can carry on, but a wise man knows how to shorten sail in time.
Joseph Conrad

The wind and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigator.
Edmund Gibbon

Mackerel skies and mares tails, soon will be time to shorten sails.
Sailors proverb

Instead of sailing off into the sunset, he hopes to sail into the next century.
Dave Anderson

We must free ourselves of the hope that the sea will ever rest. We must learn to sail in high winds.
Aristotle Onassis


I wanted freedom, open air and adventure. I found it on the sea.
Alaine Gerbault

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

He who lets the sea lull him into a sense of security is in very grave danger.”
Hammond Ines

Success soon palls. The joyous time is when the breeze first strikes your sails, and the waters rustle under your bows.
Charles Buxton

The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.
William Arthur Ward


For the most part, a sailboat navigates through its world of wind and water not leaving a single trace of its passage. Nothing is consumed. Nothing is altered. The winds and the water are left in exactly the same condition for the next user. Sailing is forever.
Michael B. McPhee

Sailing is just the bottom line, like adding up the score in bridge. My real interest is in the tremendous game of life.
Dennis Conner

Only two sailors, in my experience, never ran aground. One never left port and the other was an atrocious liar.
Don Bamford

The house was built on the highest part of the narrow tongue of land between the harbor and the open sea. It had lasted through three hurricanes and it was built solid as a ship.
Ernest Hemingway

The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.
Vincent Van Gogh

On life‘s vast ocean diversely we sail. Reasons the card, but passion the gale.
Alexander Pope

Sailing – The fine art of slowly going nowhere at great expense while being cold, wet and miserable.
Irv Heller

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