Quotes about the sea and the sky
Here are 40 passages (out of 49) from classic authors that speak of the sea and the sky, for example by Henry David Thoreau, Victor Hugo and Li Bai.
We kept the passages whose text touches on the theme, starting with those where it comes up most. Each is given word for word, with its author, its work and the reference of the passage. To browse an author’s quotes, follow the name.
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“Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.”
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“There is a spectacle more grand than the sea; it is heaven: there is a spectacle more grand than heaven; it is the inmost recesses of the soul.”
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“I lift my cup to Heaven and smile. / Heaven turns round, the sun shines in the West. / I am willing to sit on this rock forever, / Perpetually casting my fish-line like Yen Ling.”
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“Frost and sun, the day is wondrous! / Thou still art slumbering, charming friend. / 'Tis time, O Beauty, to awaken: / Ope thine eyes, now in sweetness closed, / To meet the Northern Dawn of Morning / Thyself a north-star do thou appear!”
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“If you shed tears when you miss the sun, you also miss the stars.”
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“The air is pure and fresh, like the kiss of a child; the sun is bright, the sky is blue, what more could one possibly wish for?”
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“But now was turning my desire and will, Even as a wheel that equally is moved, The Love which moves the sun and the other stars.”
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“You might just as well take the sun out of the sky as friendship from life; for the immortal gods have given us nothing better or more delightful.”
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“The sun smiles and watches your toilet. The sky watches over you when you sleep in your mother’s arms, and the morning comes tiptoe to your bed and kisses your eyes.”
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“Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, Which we ascribe to heaven: the fated sky Gives us free scope; only doth backward pull Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull.”
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“WAKE! For the Sun, who scatter’d into flight / The Stars before him from the Field of Night, / Drives Night along with them from Heav’n, and strikes / The Sultan’s Turret with a Shaft of Light.”
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“In front of my bed the moonlight is very bright. / I wonder if that can be frost on the floor? / I lift up my head and look full at the full moon, the dazzling moon. / I drop my head, and think of the home of old days.”
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“Laughter is the sun which drives winter from the human face.”
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“I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning how to sail my ship.”
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“Though there be night within us, we may still possess the stars.”
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“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
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“Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, / Or what’s a heaven for?”
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“They change their climate, not their disposition, who run beyond the sea.”
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“I tell you: one must still have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star.”
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“'Twas the new moon’s light / Since then I have watched it, and waited / And lo! — to-night!”
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“How was it I did not see that lofty sky before? And how happy I am to have found it at last!”
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“But the sun stood up there--orange-coloured and happy--and put courage into the whole world.”
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“Thus wandering My thought in this immensity is drowned; And sweet to me is shipwreck on this sea.”
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“Why need we call thee fair, O night of Spring? / Dost thou not lie between Spring evening / And dawn of Spring?”
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“Wendy, when you are sleeping in your silly bed you might be flying about with me saying funny things to the stars.”
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“To run o’er better waters hoists its sail The little vessel of my genius now, That leaves behind itself a sea so cruel;”
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“If our hearts were always disposed to receive the benefits Heaven sends us, we should acquire strength to support evil when it comes.”
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“To-day the spring sun rests upon the world like the eye of a mother, and shines warm upon every heart, the wicked as well as the good.”
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“My heart is like a rainbow shell / That paddles in a halcyon sea; / My heart is gladder than all these, / Because my love is come to me.”
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“Wind of the dawn that passest by, / Swift to the street of my fairy hie, / Whisper the tale of Hafiz true, / Fresh and afresh and new and new!”
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“The most manifest sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness; her state is like that of things in the regions above the moon, always clear and serene.”
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“I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more—the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men.”
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“I love the sticky little leaves as they open in spring. I love the blue sky, I love some people, whom one loves you know sometimes without knowing why.”
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“Helen, thy beauty is to me / Like those Nicèan barks of yore / That gently, o’er a perfumed sea, / The weary way-worn wanderer bore / To his own native shore.”
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“The peaceful stars shine like points of flame; the whole air is filled with a blue and tender light, which seems to sleep in the network of vapor wherein it lies.”
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“The quality of mercy is not strain’d, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest, It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.”
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“In summer, I love the night, not only when the moon is shining, but the dark too, when the fireflies cross each other’s paths in their flight, or when the rain is falling.”
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“Like to a ship that storms urge on its course, By its own trials our soul is surer made. The very things that make the voyage worse Do make it better; its peril is its aid.”
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“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness! / Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; / Conspiring with him how to load and bless / With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run.”
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“Why, who makes much of a miracle? / As to me I know of nothing else but miracles, / Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan, / Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky.”