They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea. -Francis Bacon, essayist, philosopher, and statesman(1561-1626)

Books are the compasses and telescopes and sextants and charts which other men have prepared to help us navigate the dangerous seas of human life. -Jesse Lee Bennett

It is our relation to circumstances that determines their influence over us. The same wind that carries one vessel into port may blow another off shore. -Christian Bovee

Each of us has capacities. The real trick is knowing the machinery of the boat in which you are crossing the channel. -- Joseph Campbell

A man without a goal is like a ship without a rudder.- Thomas Carlyle

The light which experience gives is a lantern on the stern, which shines only on the waves behind us. -Samuel Taylor Coleridge, poet, critic
(1772-1834)

I can't change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination. -- Jimmy Dean

Without goals, and plans to reach them, you're like a ship that has set sail with no destination. -- Fitzhugh Dodson

A smooth sea never made a skilled mariner. - English proverb

A ship ought not to be held by one anchor, nor life by a single hope. -Epictetus, philosopher (c. 60-120)

What a heavy oar the pen is, and what a strong current ideas are to row in! -Gustave Flaubert, novelist (1821-1880)

Beware of small expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship. -Benjamin Franklin

The winds and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.Edward Gibbon ~(1737-1794, British Historian)

I steer my bark with hope in the head, leaving fear astern. My hopes indeed sometimes fail, but not oftener than the forebodings of the gloomy. — Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) 3rd US President, Democrat

We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now." --Martin Luther King, Jr.

You cannot discover new oceans until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore. - Hawai'ian saying.

If the wind will not serve, take to the oars. -Latin proverb

I feel we are all islands -- in a common sea. -Anne Morrow Lindbergh, writer (1906-2001)

Ships that pass in the night and speak each other in passing; / Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness; / So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another, / Only a look and a voice; then darkness again and a silence. -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, poet (1807-1882)

Don't think there are no crocodiles because the water is calm. - Malayan Proverb

Pray to God, but keep rowing to shore. -- Russian Proverb

If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. -Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Only the guy who isn't rowing has time to rock the boat. Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), writer and philosopher 

Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind. -Seneca

A ship in harbor is safe -- but that is not what ships are for. - John A. Shedd

Today I know that I cannot control the ocean tides. I can only go with the flow. When I struggle and try to organize the Atlantic to my specifications, I sink. If I fail and thrash and growl and grumble, I go under. But if I let go and float, I am borne aloft.-Marie Stillkind

Who is the happier man, He who has braved the storm of life and lived. Or he who has stayed securely on the shore and merely existed.-Hunter S. Thompson:

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

"Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm. Publilius Syrus (first century B.C.), Maxim 358

One ship drives east and another drives west
With the selfsame winds that flow.
'Tis the set of sails and not the gales
Which tells us the way to go.
--Ella Wheeler Wilcox

A pessimist is one who is seasick on the entire voyage of life.

You can't direct the wind, but you can adjust your sails.