133 Sailor Quotes

Following is our list of sailor quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about old sailor.

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Famous Sailor Quotes

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

A sailor's joys are as simple as a child's. — Bernard Moitessier

What do you want to be a sailor for? There are greater storms in politics than you will ever find at sea. Piracy, broadsides, blood on the decks. You will find them all in politics. — David Lloyd George

Sail while the breeze blows, wind and tide wait for no man. — Danish Proverbs

You know who the good seamen are when the storm comes — Greek Proverbs

A woman knows the face of the man she loves as a sailor knows the open sea. — A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

For a sailor to sail around the world, the thought is just, sometimes, too much. Thus, one simply goes from port to port in the same direction. — Hal Moore

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 Edward Masefield

There is but a plank between a sailor and eternity. — Thomas Gibbons

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

A Marine should be sworn to the patient endurance of hardships, like the ancient knights; and it is not the least of these necessary hardships to have to serve with sailors. — Bernard Law Montgomery

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

In a calm sea every man is a pilot. — John Ray

Great sea captains are made in rough waters and deep seas. — Kathryn Kuhlman

A sailing ship is no democracy; you don't caucus a crew as to where you'll go anymore than you inquire when they'd like to shorten sail. — Sterling Hayden

Short Sailor Quotes

  • Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors. John P. Weiss about persistence in life.African Proverbs
  • I wanted freedom, open air and adventure. I found it on the sea. — Alain Gerbault
  • At sea, I learned how little a person needs, not how much. — Robin Lee Graham
  • A politician complaining about the media is like a sailor complaining about the sea. — Enoch Powell
  • It isn't that life ashore is distasteful to me. But life at sea is better. — Francis Drake
  • He believed in it, as certain good women believe in the leviathan-by faith, not by reason. — Jules Verne
  • We are imprisoned in the realm of life, like a sailor on his tiny boat, on an infinite ocean. — Anna Freud
  • Calm seas never made a good sailor — Franklin D. Roosevelt
  • Bad cooking is responsible for more trouble at sea than all other things put together. — Thomas Fleming Day
  • The sea hath no king but God alone. — Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Sailor Image Quotes

Sailor quote A smooth sea never made a skillful sailor
A smooth sea never made a skillful sailor

There is a witchery in the sea, its songs and stories, and in the mere sight of a ship, and the sailor's dress, especially to a young mind, which has done more to man navies, and fill merchantmen, than all the pressgangs of Europe. — Richard Henry Dana, Jr.

On 9/11, 2001, the Navy stood at 316 ships. By 2008, after one of the great military buildups in American history, we were at 278 ships and had 49,000 fewer sailors. — Ray Mabus

A man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company — Samuel Johnson

Sailors have the cleanest bodies and the filthiest minds. — Eleanor Roosevelt

I'm obsessed with the Victorian era and the British Royal Navy... I'd love to play a troubled sailor or captain or a boatman on a three masted ship. — Nick Offerman

As an enlisted sailor, I don't feel that the Navy is advancing me in rank fast enough, so I'm going to change my last name to Stains. My guess is they would rather promote me than to have to refer to me as Seaman Stains. — Brad Wilkerson

Old Sailor Quotes

All things on earth point home in old October; sailors to sea, travellers to walls and fences, hunters to field and hollow and the long voice of the hounds, the lover to the love he has forsaken. — Thomas Wolfe

The Ancient Mariner would not have taken so well if it had been called The Old Sailor. — Samuel Butler

There was once an old sailor my grandfather knew, Who had so many things which he wanted to do That, whenever he thought it was time to begin, He couldn't because of the state he was in. — A. A. Milne

I've had some 'riotous excursions of the human spirit' alongside the young Sailors and Marines, and it's time to leave the stage to the young leaders who got their rank the old-fashioned way - they earned their stripes in combat. — James Mattis

It's an old sailor's idea that every ship has a rope with one end made fast to her bows and the other held by the loved ones at home. — Bruce Chatwin

Shortly after Christopher Columbus and his sailors returned from their voyage to the New World, a horrifying new disease began to make its way around the Old. The "pox," as it was often called, erupted with dramatic severity. — Peter Lewis Allen

I muttered a swear word to myself. After I heard Angel cussing like a sailor when she stubbed her toe, my new resolution was to watch my language. All I needed was a six-year-old mutant with a potty mouth — James Patterson

Since I was a child, I hated having to deal with my hair. I hated having to change my clothes. As a kid, I had a sailor shirt and the same old corduroy pants, and that's what I wanted to wear everyday. — Patti Smith

Good Sailor Quotes

Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates. — Mark Twain

A great mind is a good sailor, as a great heart is. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I saw Donald [Trump] saying that there were some Iranian sailors on a ship in the waters off of Iran, and they were taunting American sailors who were on a nearby ship. He said, you know, if they taunted our sailors, I'd blow them out of the water and start another war. That's not good judgment. — Hillary Clinton

A good sailor knows everything is always changing. — Luanne Rice

For sailors who love the wind, memory is a good port of departure. — Eduardo Galeano

One sailor will do us more good than two soldiers. — John Adams

Nobody is so heartily despised as a pusillanimous, lazy, good-for-nothing, land-lubber; a sailor has no bowels of compassion for him. — Herman Melville

There's a sureness to good writing even when what's being written about doesn't make all that much sense. It's the sureness of the so-called seat of an accomplished horseback rider or a sailor coming about in a strong wind. The words have both muscle and grace, familiarity and surprise. — Anne Bernays

There are good sailors. Well, some good sailors. In a way they are ideal as husbands. They drop in every six months for a wild celebration, then they drop out again before one gets bored with their company or annoyed with by their habits. — Kerry Greenwood

Sailors And The Sea Quotes

Hark, now hear the sailors cry, smell the sea, and feel the sky let your soul & spirit fly, into the mystic. — Van Morrison

And the voices in the waves are always whispering to Florence, in their ceaseless murmuring, of love - of love, eternal and illimitable, not bounded by the confines of this world, or by the end of time, but ranging still, beyond the sea, beyond the sky, to the invisible country far away! — Charles Dickens

I don't know who named them swells. There's nothing swell about them. They should have named them awfuls. — Hugo Vihlen

I believe in living, I believe in birth, I believe in the sweat of love and in the fire of truth and I believe that a lost ship, steered by tired, sea sick sailors, can still be guided home to port — Assata Shakur

At last the anchor was up, the sails were set, and off we glided. It was a sharp, cold Christmas; and as the short northern day merged into night, we found ourselves almost broad upon the wintry ocean, whose freezing spray cased us in ice, as in polished armor. — Herman Melville

And then, the unspeakable purity - and freshness of the air! There was just enough heat to enhance the value of the breeze, and just enough wind to keep the whole sea in motion, to make the waves come bounding to the shore, foaming and sparkling, as if wild with glee. — Anne Bronte

We are like sailors who have to rebuild their ship on the open sea, without ever being able to dismantle it in dry-dock and reconstruct it from the best components. — Otto Neurath

Let America add Mexico to Texas, and pile Cuba upon Canada; let the English overswarm all India, and hang out their blazing banner from the sun; two thirds of this terraqueous globe are the Nantucketer's. For the sea is his; he owns it. — Herman Melville

So there'll be no guiding light for you and me We are not sailors lost out on the sea We were always headed toward eternity Hoping for a glimpse of Galilee — Emmylou Harris

Psycho-babble is that language spoken by sailors who have become so interested in navigating their way around their boat that they have forgotten to read the stars and sea. They may be able to get from the galley to the head but will be lost in their journey from point to port. — Rich Mullins

Sailing And The Sea Quotes

When you can’t change the direction of the wind — adjust your sails — H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Smell the sea and feel the sky. — Van Morrison

You do not ask a tame seagull why it needs to disappear from time to time toward the open sea. It goes, that's all. — Bernard Moitessier

later down the road of life, i made the discovery that salt water was also good for the mental abrasions one inevitably acquires on land. — Jimmy Buffett

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

Until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore, you will not know the terror of being forever lost at sea. — Charlie Cook

I went to sea from the most tender age and have continued in a sea life to this day. Whoever gives himself up to this art wants to know the secrets of Nature here below. It is more than forty years that I have been thus engaged. Wherever any one has sailed, there I have sailed. — Christopher Columbus

My real log is written in the sea and sky; the sails talking with the rain and the stars amid the sounds of the sea, the silences full of secret things between my boat and me, like the times I spent as a child listening to the forest talk. — Bernard Moitessier

Darius was clearly of the opinion That the air is also man's dominion, And that, with paddle or fins or pinion, We soon or late Shall navigate The azure, as now we sail the sea. — John Townsend Trowbridge

My soul is full of longing for the secret of the sea, and the heart of the great ocean sends a thrilling pulse through me. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Sailing Ships Quotes

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

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

What wings are to a bird, and sails to a ship, so is prayer to the soul. — Corrie Ten Boom

Every flyer who ventures across oceans to distant lands is a potential explorer; in his or her breast burns the same fire that urged adventurers of old to set forth in their sailing-ships for foreign lands. — Jean Batten

Land was created to provide a place for boats to visit. — Brooks Atkinson

If my ship sails from sight, it doesn't mean my journey ends, it simply means the river bends. — John Enoch Powell

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

O my son! The dunya (world) is a deep ocean in which many have drowned! Let your ship be taqwallah (fear of Allah), and load your ship with Iman-billah (believe in Allah), and let her sail be tawakkal (trust) on Allah! Insha'Allah you will survive then. — Luqman

There are ships sailing to many ports, but not a single one goes where life is not painful. — Fernando Pessoa

To young men contemplating a voyage I would say go. - Joshua Slocum

To young men contemplating a voyage I would say go. — Joshua Slocum

Crossing at a ford occurs often in a man's lifetime. It means setting sail even though your friends stay in harbour, knowing the route, knowing the soundness of your ship and the favour of the day. — Miyamoto Musashi

Sailboat Quotes

Go with the wind, you know, like a sailboat. I think that's really important when it comes to peace… inner peace especially. You can't help anyone else if you don't have it together for yourself. — Jhene Aiko

I try to look at this music career thing as the means to an end. And really, at the end of it, I see myself on a sailboat, sailing off the edge of the world. — Michelle Shocked

It's out there at sea that you are really yourself. — Vito Dumas

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

I am happy because I want nothing from anyone. I do not care for money. Decorations, titles or distinctions mean nothing to me. I do not crave praise. The only thing that gives me pleasure, apart from my work, my violin and my sailboat, is the appreciation of my fellow workers. — Albert Einstein

There is little man has made that approaches anything in nature, but a sailing ship does. There is not much man has made that calls to all the best in him, but a sailing ship does. — Alan Villiers

Wind is to us what money is to life on shore. — Sterling Hayden

I think we d like life to be like a train..but it turns out to be a sailboat. — Barbara Brown Taylor

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. — Lewis Francis Herreshoff

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

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Read quotes by A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

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More Sailor Quotes

We must always remember with gratitude and admiration the first sailors who steered their vessels through storms and mists, and increased our knowledge of the lands of ice in the South. — Roald Amundsen

My piano is to me what a ship is to the sailor, what a steed is to the Arab. It is the intimate personal depository of everything that stirred wildly in my brain during the most impassioned days of my youth. It was there that all my wishes, all my dreams, all my joys, and all my sorrows lay. — Franz Liszt

Istanbul, a universal beauty where poet and archeologist, diplomat and merchant, princess and sailor, northerner and westerner screams with same admiration. The whole world thinks that this city is the most beautiful place on earth. — Edmondo De Amicis

Honor to the soldier and sailor everywhere, who bravely bears his country's cause. Honor, also, to the citizen who cares for his brother in the field and serves, as he best can, the same cause. — Abraham Lincoln

It’s similar to what sailors feel when they are out at sea – if they meet another ship, they probably feel some kind of brotherhood; it doesn’t matter which flag is on the ship. — Sergei Krikalev

Ten geographers who think the world is flat will tend to reinforce each other's errors ... Only a sailor can set them straight. — John Ralston Saul

I wanted every sailor to feel responsible for the successful outcome on that ship – because they were. I couldn’t do it on my own. We constantly challenged every mindset. — Michael Abrashoff

I got a part as a chorus girl in a show called Every Sailor and I had fun doing it. Mother didn't really approve of it, through. — James Cagney

The disc, being flat, has no real horizon. Any adventurous sailor who got funny ideas from staring at eggs and oranges for too long and set out for the antipodes soon learned that the reason why distant ships sometimes looked as though they were disappearing over the edge of the world was that they were disappearing over the edge of the world. — Terry Pratchett

My body is a journal in a way. It's like what sailors used to do, where every tattoo meant something, a specific time in your life when you make a mark on yourself, whether you do it yourself with a knife or with a professional tattoo artist. — Johnny Depp

One of the things that makes our military the best in the world is the certain knowledge of each soldier, sailor, airman, and Marine that they can always count on their comrades should they need help - that they will never be abandoned. — Jon Kyl

It's rather nice to think of oneself as a sailor bending over the map of one's mind and deciding where to go and how to go. The great thing to remember is we can do whatever we wish to do provided our wish is strong enough. — Katherine Mansfield

... the basic principles of the military services are unchangeable. Courage and candor, obedience and comradeship, love of fatherland and loyalty to the State: these are ever the distinguishing characteristics of the soldier and sailor. Building character through intelligent training and education is always the first and greatest goal. — Erich Raeder

But are sailors, frequenters of fiddlers' greens, without vices? No; but less often than with landsmen do their vices, so called, partake of crookedness of heart, seeming less to proceed from viciousness than exuberance of vitality after long constraint: frank manifestations in accordance with natural law. — Herman Melville

A sailor chooses the wind that takes the ship from a safe port. Ah, yes, but once you're abroad, as you have seen, winds have a mind of their own. Be careful, Charlotte, careful of the wind you choose. — Avi

How odd it is that sewing is thought to be 'women's work' when surgeons, sailors, and cowboys sew too. Yet how many female thoracic surgeons are there? And if precision motor activities are thought to be performed better by women, why wouldn't they make better surgeons too? — Gretel Ehrlich

The northern people are riders and the southern people sailors; it is said quite true. — Liu Bei

Far out in the ocean, where the water is as blue as the prettiest cornflower, and as clear as crystal, it is very, very deep; so deep, indeed, that no cable could fathom it: many church steeples, piled one upon another, would not reach from the ground beneath to the surface of the water above. There dwell the Sea King and his subjects. — Hans Christian Andersen

He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast. — Leonardo da Vinci

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