Your Favorite Boat, Cruising, Nautical Quotes

[Richard]

For years I have collected quotes about boats, cruising, the sea, etc. and this morning, lying in my hammock (unfortunately NOT on a boat) I was reading through some of them on an old notebook computer I don't use very often and came across pages of quotes. I can't believe I'm the only person here that does that sort of thing. I thought I might share a couple of them to start off this thread and hope others will share their's as well:

The difference between a house and a boat according to Arthur Ransom:

Houses are but badly built boats so firmly aground that you can not think
of moving them. They are definitely inferior things, belonging to the
vegetable, not the animal world, rooted and stationary, incapable of gay
transition.... The desire to build a house is the tired wish of a man
content thenceforward with a single anchorage. The desire to build a boat
is the desire of youth, unwilling yet to accept the idea of a final resting
place.

One of the best temporary cures for pride and affectation is seasickness; a man who wants to vomit never puts on airs.---Henry Wheeler Snow

"One day many years ago a man walked along and stood in the sound of the ocean on a cold, sunless shore and said, 'We need a voice to call across the water, to warn ships; I'll make one. I'll make a voice like all of time and all the fog that ever was; I'll make a voice that is like an empty bed beside you all night long, and like an empty house when you open the door, and like trees in autumn with no leaves. A sound like the birds flying south, crying, and a sound like November wind and the sea on the hard cold shore. I'll make a sound that's so alone that no one can miss it, that whoever hears it will weep in their soul, and hearths will seem warmer, and being inside will seem better to all who hear it in distant towns. I'll make me a sound and an apparatus and they'll call it a foghorn and whoever hears it will know the sadness of eternity and the briefness of life.'---Ray Bradbury

And the bright horizon calls! Many a thing will keep till the world's work is done, and youth is only a memory. When the old enchanter came to my door laden with dreams, I reached out with both hands. For I knew that he would not be lured with the gold that I might later offer, when age had come upon me.--- Richard MacCullough/Viking's Wake

I'll have a lot more, but now it's over to y'all.

[Suky]

wisdom well remembered

[Richard]

A borrowed saw will cut anything!

--Anonymous

[Jeremy]

"You cannot change the wind, you can only adjust your sails."
-Unknown

[Richard]

This has nothing to do with boats, but I like it anyway. . .

"There are two theories about arguing with women. Neither of them works."

[Richard]

The minimalist theory of maintenance: If it doesn't move and it should, spray it with WD40. If it does move and it shouldn't, wrap it with duct tape.

[debbie]

and if you can't tie a knot tie a lot!

[Franc]

BERNARD MOITISSIER (in The Long Way):

I am a citizen of the most beautiful nation on earth. A nation whose laws are harsh but simple, a nation that never cheats, which is immense and without borders, where life is lived in the present. In this limitless nation, this nation of wind, light and peace, there is no oher ruler besides the sea.

[John Shasteen]

In March of this year while running before a Force 10 storm in the Gulf, about 3:00am one of the 30 foot following seas partially broke into the cockpit. When the confusion was over and the cockpit mostly drained, a member of our August sailing crew says: "It must be hell ashore on a night like this" - not sure it was original or he was repeating it.

[Richard]

It's an old saying, but certainly a good one, that's for sure.

[Richard]

But as we live in a time when the young tend to measure success by how often they are propositioned, then I want her to be propositioned daily, but to resist. I want her to be on
the arm of the most desirable man in London and if he is the kind to save the whale then he must at least look as if he could harpoon one as well.
Alan Loren (Brit writer) on his
daughter Victoria (16)

[Richard]

NOTE ON THE REFRIGERATOR, BROWNS HEAD LIGHT,
VINALHAVEN ISLAND, MAINE 1988
Heaven is where the police are British, the cooks French, the mechanics German, the lovers Italian, and all is organized by the Swiss.
Hell is where the police are German, the cooks British, the mechanics French, the lovers Swiss, and all is organized by the Italians.

[Franc]

One more:

"What's important in life is not how many breaths we get to take,
but those moments that take our breath away"
- Jaques Cousteau