Boats Quotes

“I really don't know why it is that all of us are so committed to the sea, except I think it's because in addition to the fact that the sea changes, and the light changes, and ships change, it's because we all came from the sea. And it is an interesting biological fact that all of us have in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea - whether it is to sail or to watch it - we are going back from whence we came.

[Remarks at the Dinner for the America's Cup Crews, September 14 1962]”
― John F. Kennedy

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

“Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.”
― Warren Buffet

“Rosencrantz: We might as well be dead. Do you think death could possibly be a boat?
Guildenstern: No, no, no... Death is...not. Death isn't. You take my meaning. Death is the ultimate negative. Not-being. You can't not-be on a boat.
Rosencrantz: I've frequently not been on boats.
Guildenstern: No, no, no--what you've been is not on boats.”
― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“I spent uncounted hours sitting at the bow looking at the water and the sky, studying each wave, different from the last, seeing how it caught the light, the air, the wind; watching patterns, the sweep of it all, and letting it take me.
The sea.”
― Gary Paulsen, Caught by the Sea

“A war of ideas can no more be won without books than a naval war can be won without ships. Books, like ships, have the toughest armor, the longest cruising range, and mount the most powerful guns.”
― Franklin Delano Roosevelt

“There’s nothing––absolutely nothing––half so much worth doing as messing about in boats.”
― Kenneth Grahame, Wind in the Willows

“...this beginning motion, this first time when a sail truly filled and the boat took life and knifed across the lake under perfect control, this was so beautiful it stopped my breath...”
― Gary Paulsen, Caught by the Sea

“How do men act on a sinking ship? Do they hold each other? Do they pass around the whisky? Do they cry?”
― Sebastian Junger, The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea

“Thing about boats is, you can always sell them if you don't like them. Can't sell kids.”
― Lin Pardey, Bull Canyon: A Boatbuilder, a Writer and Other Wildlife

“That's what sailing is, a dance, and your partner is the sea. And with the sea you never take liberties. You ask her, you don't tell her. You have to remember always that she's the leader, not you. You and your boat are dancing to her tune.”
― Michael Morpurgo, Alone on a Wide Wide Sea

“Are you watching the boats?" Cornelia guessed. She craned her neck to see if there was any excitement on the river.
Heavens no, I'm spying on people," Virginia responded unrepentantly.
-Cornelia E and Virginia Somerset”
― Lesley M.M. Blume, Cornelia and the Audacious Escapades of the Somerset Sisters

“White-crested waves crash on the shore. The masts sway violently, every which way. In the gray sky the gulls are circling like white flakes. Rain squalls blow past like gray slanting sails, and blue gaps open in the sky. The air brightens.
A cold silvery evening. The moon is overhead, and down below, in the water; and all around it-a wide frame of old, hammered, scaly silver. Etched on the silver-silent black fishing boats, tiny black needles of masts, little black men casting invisible lines into the silver. And the only sounds are the occasional plashing of an oar, the creaking of an oarlock, the springlike leap and flip-flop of a fish. ("The North")”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, The Dragon: Fifteen Stories

“It takes just one wave to capsize a boat, and one more to take it down.”
― Federico Chini, The Sea Of Forgotten Memories

“I couldn't help wondering where porpoises had learned this game of running on the bows of ships. Porpoises have been swimming in the oceans for seven to ten million years, but they've had human ships to play with for only the last few thousand. Yet nearly all porpoises, in every ocean, catch rides for fun from passing ships; and they were doing it on the bows of Greek triremes and prehistoric Tahitian canoes, as soon as those seacraft appeared. What did they do for fun before ships were invented?
Ken Norris made a field observation one day that suggests the answer. He saw a humpback whale hurrying along the coast of the island of Hawaii, unavoidably making a wave in front of itself; playing in that bow wave was a flock of bottlenose porpoises. The whale didn't seem to be enjoying it much: Ken said it looked like a horse being bothered by flies around its head; however, there was nothing much the whale could do about it, and the porpoises were having a fun time. ”
― Karen Pryor, Lads Before the Wind: Diary of a Dolphin Trainer

“I had no fear of the stream's perils, and I listened with the greatest contentment to the quiet slap of water on rocks, the running whisper of the current, and the taps and creaks and croaks that rose with the mist around me. Overhead swing the glittering stars, and the bright moon shone down and lit the curling ripples of the water. At no time in my life had I been in greater danger from the elements, and yet if I learned that heaven is such as that night was, I should deem it a joy worth the dying.”
― Clare B. Dunkle, The House of Dead Maids

“I grew to judge every purchase by how many bronze screws I could buy for the boat if I didn't spend on this or made do without that.”
― Lin Pardey, Bull Canyon: A Boatbuilder, a Writer and Other Wildlife

“You have to understand the sea, he said, to listen to her, to look out for her moods, to get to know her and respect her and love her. Only then can you build boats that feel at home on the sea.”
― Michael Morpurgo, Alone on a Wide Wide Sea

“Boating, my dear Mrs. Bedel, is the dullest of all things; don't you think so? Because a boat looks very pretty from the shore, we fancy that the shore must look very pretty from a boat; and when we try it, we find we have only got down into a pit and can see nothing rightly. For my part, I hate boating and I hate the water...”
― Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, The Haunted Baronet and Others: Ghost Stories 1861-70

“The Vikings thought they were big shots because they had boats. You know how obnoxious people get when they own a boat. They always want to go on the boat. "We're taking the boat out this weekend. It's supposed to be beautiful. Why don't you come? You never come. You're always working. You know how many people wish they would get invited to come on the boat? And you turn it down.”
― Colin Quinn, The Coloring Book: A Comedian Solves Race Relations in America

“Med människor i en liten båt sker något sällsamt. Vad de upplever är att de känner sig ensamma. Vad de känner är att de är ensamma tillsammans, tillsammans med de andra i båten. Därför uppstår mellan människor i små båtar en tillfällig tillgivenhet. Man har ju bara varandra och djupa vatten är skrämmande och små båtar är mycket bräckliga. Var och en blir den andres livboj. Är inte du rädd så inte är jag det.”
― Stig Dagerman, A Burnt Child

“When he returned to Florida in the early part of 1939, Hemingway took his boat the Pilar across the Straits of Florida to Havana, where he checked into the Hotel Ambos Mundos. Shortly thereafter, Martha joined him in Cuba and they first rented, and later in 1940, purchased their home for $12,500. Located 10 miles to the east of Havana, in the small town of San Francisco de Paula, they settled into what they called Finca Vigía, the Lookout Farm. On November 20, 1940, after a difficult divorce from Pauline, Ernest and Martha got married. Even though Cuba had become their home, they still took editorial assignments overseas, including one in China that Martha had for Collier’s magazine. Returning to Cuba just prior to the outbreak of World War II, he convinced the Cuban government to outfit his boat with armaments, with which he intended to ambush German submarines. As the war progressed, Hemingway went to London as a war correspondent, where he met Mary Welsh. His infatuation prompted him to propose to her, which of course did not sit well with Martha.
Hemingway was present at the liberation of Paris and attended a party hosted by Sylvia Beach. He, incidentally, also renewed a friendship with Gertrude Stein. Becoming a famous war correspondence he covered the Battle of the Bulge, however he then spent the rest of the war on the sidelines hospitalized with pneumonia. Even so, Ernest was awarded the Bronze Star for bravery. Once again, Hemingway fell in lust, this time with a 19-year-old girl, Adriana Ivancich. This so-called platonic, wink, wink, love affair was the essence of his novel Across the River and Into the Trees, which he wrote in Cuba.”
― Captain Hank Bracker, "The Exciting Story of Cuba"

“How do you become like her, so relentlessly optimistic and cheerful, despite having life throwing at you one of the cruelest blows that it can?”
― Carole Matthews, Sunny Days and Sea Breezes

“I don’t know whether it’s the company or the place, but this is the happiest I’ve felt in a very long.”
― Carole Matthews, Sunny Days and Sea Breezes

“but I’m not ready to leave and the longer I’m here, the more I want to stay.”
― Carole Matthews, Sunny Days and Sea Breezes

“If anyone tells you that shopping isn’t fabulous therapy, then don’t believe them.”
― Carole Matthews, Sunny Days and Sea Breezes

“This night has proved that I can heal the emptiness inside me and that I can learn to love life once more. He’s helped me to feel normal again when I had actually lost sight of what normal might be. And, for that, I’m truly grateful.”
― Carole Matthews

“So that has to be a good thing, right? Given time, I suppose, he’ll be a distant memory.”
― Carole Matthews, Sunny Days and Sea Breezes

“Life is short. You of all people know that. Don’t spend it with the wrong person.”
― Carole Matthews, Sunny Days and Sea Breezes

“I’ve been through a terrible time, but I’ve survived and I’m still here. I have a lot in my life to be thankful for. I’m young - relatively speaking. I’m healthy and, by most people’s reckoning, wealthy. I have life experiences and, for all the sad times, I’ve been blessed by an equal amount of good times. It’s not all been plain sailing - far from it - but I’ve weathered the storm and have come out on the other side of it, battered, bruised, but not broken.”
― Carole Matthews, Sunny Days and Sea Breezes