Sailing Through Inspiration: A Collection of Quotes

"You are the one that possesses the keys to your being. You carry the passport to your own happiness."

- Diane von Furstenberg

"You can. You should. And if you are brave enough to start, you will."

- Stephen King

"If you talk about it, it’s a dream, if you envision it, it’s possible, but if you schedule it, it’s real."

- Tony Robbins

"I am not afraid. I was born to do this."

- Joan of Arc

"That's what a ship is, you know—it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs. But what a ship is, really is, is freedom."

- Captain Jack Sparrow

"Hark, now hear the sailors cry, Smell the sea, and feel the sky, Let your soul & spirit fly, into the mystic."

- Van Morrison

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

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

"One of the greatest discoveries a person makes, one of their great surprises, is to find they can do what they were afraid they couldn’t do."

- Henry Ford

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

- Alaine Gerbault

"When you sail for the first time, you have one of two experiences. It becomes a one-time, bucket-list thing you check off your list, or it becomes a part of your soul forever."

- Michelle Segrest

"It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end."

- Ernest Hemingway

"No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars or sailed to an uncharted land or opened a new heaven to the human spirit."

- Helen Keller

"The big challenge is to become all that you have the possibility of becoming. You cannot believe what it does to the human spirit to maximize your human potential and stretch yourself to the limit."

- Jim Rohn

"You can waste your lives drawing lines. Or you can live your life crossing them."

- Shonda Rhimes

"When defeat comes, accept it as a signal that your plans are not sound, rebuild those plans, and set sail once more toward your coveted goal."

- Napoleon Hill

"To reach a port, we must sail - sail, not tie at anchor - sail, not drift."

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

"I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning how to sail my ship."

- Louisa May Alcott

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So, throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."

- Mark Twain

"I wanted freedom, open air, adventure. I found it on the sea."

- Alain Gerbault

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

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

"If you really want to do something, you’ll find a way. If you don’t, you’ll find an excuse."

- Jim Rohn

"A sailor is an artist whose medium is the wind. Live passionately, even if it kills you, because something is going to kill you anyway."

- Webb Chiles

"I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven, 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, Sr.

"To desire nothing beyond what you have is surely happiness. Aboard a boat, it is frequently possible to achieve just that. That is why sailing is a way of life, one of the finest of lives."

- Carleton Mitchell

"If your ship doesn’t come in, swim out and meet it."

- Jonathan Winters

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

- Aristotle Onassis

"There is no better tool or equipment you can have on board than a well-trained crew."

- Larry Pardey

"She loved the sea. She liked the sharp salty smell of the air, and the vastness of the horizons bounded only by a vault of azure sky above. It made her feel small, but free as well."

- George R.R. Martin

"Seas were meant to be sailed by those with salt in their veins, and love in their heart."

- Anthony T.Hincks

"Jobs fill your pocket, but adventures fill your soul."

- Jamie Lyn Beatty

"Learning to sail is a lifetime commitment and not just a one-course seminar."

- Michelle Segrest

"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

"You can never cross the ocean unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore."

- Christopher Columbus

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

- Jacques Cousteau

"I can’t control the wind but I can adjust the sail."

- Ricky Skaggs

"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

"Go small, go simple, go now."

- Larry Pardey

"If you are going to do something, do it now. Tomorrow is too late."

- Pete Goss

"The sea was not meant to be controlled. The sea was meant to be sailed."

- Jon Acuff

"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."

- John F. Kennedy

"We clear the harbor and the wind catches her sails and my beautiful ship leans over ever so gracefully, and her elegant bow cuts cleanly into the increasing chop of the waves. I take a deep breath and my chest expands and my heart starts thumping so strongly I fear the others might see it beat through the cloth of my jacket. I face the wind and my lips peel back from my teeth in a grin of pure joy."

- L.A. Meyer

"I can't control the wind but I can adjust the sail."

- Ricky Skaggs

"A man is never lost at sea."

- Ernest Hemingway

"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

"On life's vast ocean diversely we sail. Reasons the card, but passion the gale."

- Alexander Pope

"The most challenging times bring us the most empowering lessons."

- Karen Salmansohn

"Adventure comes in all shapes and sizes. It can be dramatic or poetic, heart pounding or profound. It can be all of the above or something totally and completely unexpected."

- Michelle Segrest

"What makes something special is not just what you have to gain, but what you feel there is to lose."

- Andre Agassi

"Confronting a storm is like fighting God. All the powers in the universe seem to be against you and, in an extraordinary way, your irrelevance is at the same time both humbling and exalting."

- Francis LeGrande

"If you nurse every wound you get on a sailboat, you will spend all your time nursing wounds. It’s best to just blurt a four-letter word and keep going."

- Michelle Segrest

"Live your life by a compass, not a clock."

- Erica Jong

"Now—bring me that horizon."

- Captain Jack Sparrow

"There’s a big, wonderful world out there for you. It belongs to you. It’s exciting and stimulating and rewarding. Don’t cheat yourselves out of this promise."

- Nancy Reagan

"Sail through the good days, and on bad days pick a spot of blue sky to steer toward."

- Richelle E. Goodrich

"The sea finds out everything you did wrong."

- Francis Stokes

"Thought is the wind and knowledge the sail."

- David Hare

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

- Joseph Conrad

"The boat is safer anchored at the port; but that is not the aim of boats."

- Paulo Coelho

"If we are strong, and have faith in life and its richness of surprises, and hold the rudder steadily in our hands. I am sure we will sail into quiet and pleasant waters for our old age."

- Freya Stark

"A small boat that sails the river is better than a large ship that sinks in the sea."

- Matshona Dhliwayo

"Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor."

- Thomas Babington Macaulay

"Never weather-beaten sail more willing bent to shore."

- Thomas Campion

"When I'm all grown up, come what may, I'll build a boat to carry me away"

- Guy Gavriel Kay

"You must never despise the port you were born because no matter how small or how bad it is, it is the place you have started sailing to the universe!"

- Mehmet Murat ildan

"Bad, or good, as it happens to be, that is what it is to exist! . . . It is as though I have been silent and fuddled with sleep all my life. In spite of all, I know now that at least it is better to go always towards the summer, towards those burning seas of light; to sit at night in the forecastle lost in an unfamiliar dream, when the spirit becomes filled with stars, instead of wounds, and good and compassionate and tender. To sail into an unknown spring, or receive one's baptism on storm's promontory, where the solitary albatross heels over in the gale, and at last come to land. To know the earth under one's foot and go, in wild delight, ways where there is water."

- Malcolm Lowry

"Not all treasure is silver and gold, mate."

- Captain Jack Sparrow

"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

"I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts."

- Herman Melville

"Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be Pirates."

- Mark Twain

"A sailor is an artist whose medium is the wind."

- Webb Chiles

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

- Isak Dinesen

"The sea is the same as it has been since before men ever went on it in boats."

- Ernest Hemingway

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

- Edmond Gibbon

"Just about a month from now I'm set adrift, with a diploma for a sail and lots of nerve for oars."

- Richard Halliburton

"The days pass happily with me wherever my ship sails."

- Joshua Slocum

"She found out that having something to do prevented you from feeling seasick, and that even a job like scrubbing a deck could be satisfying, if it was done in a seamanlike way. She was very taken with this notion, and later on she folded the blankets on her bunk in a seamanlike way, and put her possessions in the closet in a seamanlike way, and used 'stow' instead of 'tidy' for the process of doing so. After two days at sea, Lyra decided that this was the life for her."

- Philip Pullman

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

- Felix Riesenberg

"...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

"And I shall watch the ferry boats, and they'll get high, On a bluer ocean against tomorrow's sky, And I will never grow so old again, And I will walk and talk, in gardens all wet with rain."

- Van Morrison

"What she really loved was to hang over the edge and watch the bow of the ship slice through the waves. She loved it especially when the waves were high and the ship rose and fell, or when it was snowing and the flakes stung her face."

- Kristin Cashore

"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

"Possibly a man who hates the land should dwell on shore forever. Alienation and the long voyages at sea will compel him once again to dream of it, torment him with the absurdity of longing for something that he loathes."

- Yukio Mishima

"Keep your hand on the helm."

- Matthew Goldman

"You can’t believe how bleeding scary the sea is! There’s, like, whales and storms and shit! They don’t bloody tell you that!"

- Libba Bray

"She watched the gap between ship and shore grow to a huge gulf. Perhaps this was a little like dying, the departed no longer visible to the others, yet both still existed, only in different worlds."

- Susan Wiggs

"To be successful at sea we must keep things simple."

- Pete Culler

"Go small, go simple, go now"

- Larry Pardey

"Thing about boats is, you can always sell them if you don't like them. Can't sell kids."

- Lin Pardey

"A ship in harbour is safe, but that is not what ships are built for."

- John A. Shedd

"Carpe diem! Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary."

"The big boats get the glory, but small boats make the sailor."

"The good seaman weathers the storm he cannot avoid and avoids the storm he cannot weather."

"A bad day sailing is 100 times better than a good day at work."