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Let our highly encouraging metaphoric sailing quotes and sayings from famous authors make you optimistically tackle all life hardships.
What are some best sailing quotes?
An inspirational saying from author Charles Bukowski on how to keep the ship called life sailing smoothly.
He says,
‘ My dear
Find what you love and let it kill you.
Let it drain you of your all,
Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness.
Let it kill you, and let it devour your remains.
For all things will kill you, both slowly and vastly,
But it’s much better to be killed by a lover.’
Remember, we are not born to live a well-adjusted and compromised life and experience recurring outbursts of anger, frustration, and disappointment in everyday living.
Our life can effectively sail through stormy water if we choose to live in the backdrop of emotional stability and mental clarity.
Live what you love and let your life has a flavor of realness, depth, beauty, and originality even if the majority doesn’t approve of it.
Never flow with life blindly because everybody lives in that way, be a scapegoat for the mind’s impulsive fantasies, and later regret a wasted life on petty things.
Instead, be observant, live deeply, and be available to the immediate reality of life. Know where you stand in life right now and work on improving things that drain you mentally.
What are the best inspirational sailing quotes?
One of the enriching sailing quotes from Bertha Calloway says, ‘ we cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails.’
Take life’s unpredictable situation less seriously; instead, do your best in life where you have control.
The outside world is highly uncertain, but one’s inner world is always in one’s control.
When we realize what is in our control and what is not, one drops the tendency to play a victim and starts knowing the infinite strength within.
Say yes to inner clarity and understanding to smoothly sail through life’s upside downs.
Remember, we all deserve the highest life. Hence never settle for anything less.
And to make that happen, never fall prey to misunderstood emotional outbursts. Instead, dare to see the facts of your current daily reality and realize how inner mental haziness stops you from living your best life.
We hope our handpicked sailing quotes and sayings uplift your spirits to a higher life.
Best Sailing Quotes and Sayings
We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails.
– Bertha Calloway
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 pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.
– William Arthur Ward
The art of the sailor is to leave nothing to chance.
– Annie Van De Wiele
A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.
– John A. Shedd
I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning how to sail my ship.
– Louisa May Alcott
It isn’t that life ashore is distasteful to me. But life at sea is better.
– Sir Francis Drake
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
There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm.
– Willa Cather
To reach a port we must sail, sometimes with the wind, and sometimes against it. But we must not drift or lie at anchor.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes
If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.
– Seneca
I wanted freedom, open air and adventure. I found it on the sea.
– Alain Gerbault
We must free ourselves of the hope that the sea will ever rest. We must learn to sail in high winds.
– Aristotle Onassis
Without goals, and plans to reach them, you are like a ship that has set sail with no destination.
– Fitzhugh Dodson
The sail, the play of its pulse so like our own lives: so thin and yet so full of life, so noiseless when it labors hardest, so noisy and impatient when least effective.
– Henry David Thoreau
Motivational Sailing Quotes and Sayings
A man can pretend to be a lot of things in this world; but he can only pretend to be a sailor for as long as it takes to clear the harbour mouth!
– Bernard Hayman
It is not the ship so much as the skillful sailing that assures the prosperous voyage.
– George William Curtis
Only two sailors, in my experience, never ran aground. One never left port and the other was an atrocious liar.
– Don Bamford
He who goes to sea for pleasure would go to hell to pass the time!
– Anonymous
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
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
Success soon palls. The joyous time is when the breeze first strikes your sails, and the waters rustle under your bows.
– Charles Buxton
A bad day sailing is 100 times better than a good day at work.
– Anonymous
The questions that used to bother me at times, do not weigh anything before the immensity of a wave so close to the sky and filled with the wind of the sea.
– Bernard Moitessier
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
On life’s vast ocean diversely we sail. Reasons the card, but passion the gale.
– Alexander Pope
On a day when the wind is perfect, the sail just needs to open and the world is full of beauty.
– Rumi
Tis the set of the sail that decides the goal, and not the storm of life.
– Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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 where we came.
– John F. Kennedy
Less judgment than wit is more sail than ballast.
– William Penn
Inspirational Sailing Quotes and Sayings
He that will not sail till all dangers are over must never put to sea.
– Dr. Thomas Fuller
Hoist up sail while gale doth last, Tide and wind stay no man’s pleasure.
– Robert Southwell
I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning to sail my ship.
– Aeschylus
Flying might not be all plain sailing, but the fun of it is worth the price.
– Amelia Earhart
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
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
Thought is the wind, knowledge the sail, and mankind the vessel.
– August Hare
They that go down to the sea in ships; and occupy their business in great waters; these men see the works of the Lord; and His wonders in the deep.
– Book of Common Prayer
The sea speaks a language polite people never repeat. It is a colossal scavenger slang and has no respect.
– Carl Sandburg
Out of sight of land the sailor feels safe. It is the beach that worries him.
– Charles G. Davis
My goal in sailing isn’t to be brilliant or flashy in individual races, just to be consistent over the long run.
– Dennis Conner
When a man comes to like a sea life, he is not fit to live on land.
– Dr. Samuel Johnson
The wind and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigator.
– Edmund Gibbon
The sooner we learn to be jointly responsible, the easier the sailing will be.
– Ella Maillart
Never in my life before have I experienced such beauty, and fear at the same time.
– Ellen MacArthur
Keep Sailing Quotes On Life
The sea is the same as it has been since before men ever went on it in boats.
– Ernest Hemingway
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
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
No literature is richer than that of the sea. No story is more enthralling, no tradition is more secure.
– Felix Riesenberg
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 which may be even more disturbing, it is a safe retreat.
– Francis Herreshoff
To reach a port we must set sail – Sail, not tie at anchor. Sail, not drift.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars or sailed to an uncharted land or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.
– Helen Keller
The cure for anything is saltwater – sweat, tears, or the sea.
– Isak Dinesen
The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonders forever.
– Jacques Yves Cousteau
I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by, And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking, And a gray mist on the sea’s face, and a gray dawn breaking.
– John Masefield
There is nothing more enticing, disenchanting, and enslaving than the life at sea.
– Joseph Conrad
The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.
– Joseph Conrad
Any fool can carry on, but a wise man knows how to shorten sail in time.
– Joseph Conrad
To young men contemplating a voyage, I would say go.
– Joshua Slocum
The days pass happily with me wherever my ship sails.
– Joshua Slocum
Epic Sailing Quotes for Strong Living
There is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.
– Kenneth Grahame
Theory without practice cannot survive and dies as quickly as it lives. He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may be cast.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.
– Mark Twain
Sailors, with their built-in sense of order, service and discipline, should really be running the world.
– Nicholas Monsarrat
The man who has experienced shipwreck shudders even at a calm sea.
– Ovid
To be successful at sea we must keep things simple.
– Pete Culler
Why do we love the sea? It is because it has some potent power to make us think things we like to think.
– Robert Henri
At sea, I learned how little a person needs, not how much.
– Robin Lee Graham
Mackerel skies and mares tails, soon will be time to shorten sails.
– Sailor’s proverb
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
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.
– Unknown
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
A sailor is an artist whose medium is the wind.
– Webb Chiles
Sailing – The fine art of slowly going nowhere at great expense while being cold, wet and miserable.
– Irv Heller
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 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
Emotional Stability and Sailing Quotes
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