The Quotes canon
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Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Narrative poem3 quotes
Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide wide sea! — Samuel Taylor Coleridge · 1798The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,
The furrow followed free;
We were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge · 1798Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge · 1798Scientific literature3 quotes
For all at last returns to the sea...the beginning and the end. — Rachel Carson · 1951The edge of the sea is a strange and beautiful place. All through the long history of Earth it has been an area of unrest where waves have broken heavily against the land, where the tides have pressed forward over the continents, receded, and then returned. For no two successive days is the shore line precisely the same. — Rachel Carson · 1955The sea lies all about us. The commerce of all lands must cross it. The very winds that move over the lands have been cradled on its broad expanse and seek ever to return to it. The continents themselves dissolve and pass to the sea, in grain after grain of eroded land. So the rains that rose from it return again in rivers. In its mysterious past it encompasses all the dim origins of life and receives in the end, after, it may be, many transmutations, the dead husks of that same life. For all at least return to the sea—to Oceanus, the ocean river, like the everflowing stream of time, the beginning and the end. — Rachel Carson · 1951Didactic poem2 quotes
Lovely it is, when the winds are churning up the waves on the great sea, to gaze out from the land on the great efforts of someone else; not because it's an enjoyable pleasure that somebody is in difficulties, but because it's lovely to realize what troubles you are yourself spared. — Lucretius · 55 BCNever trust her at any time when the calm sea shows her false alluring smile. — Lucretius · 55 BCNature writing2 quotes
The edge of the sea is a strange and beautiful place. All through the long history of Earth it has been an area of unrest where waves have broken heavily against the land, where the tides have pressed forward over the continents, receded, and then returned. For no two successive days is the shore line precisely the same. — Rachel Carson · 1955The sea lies all about us. The commerce of all lands must cross it. The very winds that move over the lands have been cradled on its broad expanse and seek ever to return to it. The continents themselves dissolve and pass to the sea, in grain after grain of eroded land. So the rains that rose from it return again in rivers. In its mysterious past it encompasses all the dim origins of life and receives in the end, after, it may be, many transmutations, the dead husks of that same life. For all at least return to the sea—to Oceanus, the ocean river, like the everflowing stream of time, the beginning and the end. — Rachel Carson · 1951Philosophical literature2 quotes
Lovely it is, when the winds are churning up the waves on the great sea, to gaze out from the land on the great efforts of someone else; not because it's an enjoyable pleasure that somebody is in difficulties, but because it's lovely to realize what troubles you are yourself spared. — Lucretius · 55 BCNever trust her at any time when the calm sea shows her false alluring smile. — Lucretius · 55 BCEpic poem1 quote
Ocean, who is the source of all. — Homer · 700 BCHistorical literature1 quote
The sea! the sea! — Xenophon · 370 BCModernist literature1 quote
The sea... The snotgreen sea, the scrotumtightening sea. — James Joyce · 1922Religious literature1 quote
All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full. — Ecclesiastes 1:7 · 931 BCTravel writing1 quote
As to the sea itself, love it you cannot. Why should you? I will never believe again the sea was ever loved by anyone whose life was married to it. It is the creation of Omnipotence, which is not of humankind and understandable, and so the springs of its behavior are hidden. — Henry Major Tomlinson · 1912