108 Inspiring Ocean Quotes for Sea Lovers
The ocean has a way of calming the soul and stirring the imagination, which is why we’ve gathered all the best ocean quotes to capture its beauty and power.
And if you’re looking for short ocean sayings for Instagram, we also have you covered.
Now go ahead and browse through to find your favorite.
Short Ocean Quotes
“You’re not a wave, you’re a part of the ocean.” – Mitch Albom
“Life is like the ocean, it goes up and down.” – Vanessa Paradis
“I have always been fascinated by the ocean, to dip a limb beneath its surface and know that I’m touching eternity, that it goes on forever until it begins here again.” – Lauren DeStefano
“Even castles made from sand fall to the ocean.” – Jimi Hendrix
“Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“I go to the ocean to calm down, to reconnect with the creator, to just be happy.” – Nnedi Okorafor
“The sea has boundless patience.” – Craig Robertson
“Blue, green, grey, white, or black; smooth, ruffled, or mountainous; that ocean is not silent.” – H. P. Lovecraft
“The sea is emotion incarnate. It loves, hates, and weeps. It defies all attempts to capture it with words and rejects all shackles. No matter what you say about it, there is always that which you can’t.” – Christopher Paolini
“What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams.” – Werner Herzog
“Ocean: A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man – who has no gills.” – Ambrose Bierce
“If the ocean can calm itself, so can you. We are both salt water mixed with air.” ― Nayyirah Waheed
“The sea lives in every one of us.” – Robert Wyland
“Because there’s nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline, no matter how many times it’s sent away.” – Sarah Kay
“Those who live by the sea can hardly form a single thought of which the sea would not be part.” – Hermann Broch
“Ocean is more ancient than the mountains, and freighted with the memories and the dreams of Time.” – H. P. Lovecraft
“The ocean is a central image. It is the symbolism of a great journey.” – Enya
“The ocean is a mighty harmonist.” – William Wordsworth
“Every drop in the ocean counts.” – Yoko Ono
“The sea does not like to be restrained.” – Rick Riordan
I love the ocean. I’ve always liked the blue, so tranquil and peaceful and gliding. And the fear of it.” – Siouxsie Sioux
“No matter how rough the sea, I refuse to sink.”
“The ocean makes me feel really small and it makes me put my whole life into perspective.” – Beyoncé Knowles
“The sea is a desert of waves, A wilderness of water.” – Langston Hughes
“The calming movement of the sea along with the restless ocean breeze gently caresses me.” – M. L. Borges
“I couldn’t imagine living in a state that didn’t reach the ocean.” – Avery Sawyer
“In one drop of water are found all the secrets of all the oceans.” – Kahlil Gibran
“The ocean is both my mistress and my lover. How else can I explain her salty kiss that is still on my lips.” – Anthony T. Hincks
“The edge of the sea is a strange and beautiful place.” – Rachel Carson
“If we look at the ocean in a calm, there is something imposing in its aspect; stretched out in its sleeping tranquility.”– Jenny M Parker
“Together we can face challenges as deep as the ocean and as high as the sky” – Sonia Gandhi
“A pool just isn’t the same as the ocean. It has no energy. No life.” – Linda Gerber
“She made gentle the wild oceans of my soul.” — Atticus
“The breaking of a wave cannot explain the whole sea.” – Vladimir Nabokov
“The sea, the great unifier, is man’s only hope. Now, as never before, the old phrase has a literal meaning: we are all in the same boat.” – Jacques Yves Cousteau
“Health to the ocean means health for us.” – Sylvia Earle
“The ocean stirs the heart, inspires the imagination and brings eternal joy to the soul.” – Wyland
“To me the sea is a continual miracle; The fishes that swim—the rocks—the motion of the waves—the ships, with men in them, What stranger miracles are there?” – Walt Whitman
“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
“The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.” – Joseph Conrad
“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
“We know that when we protect our oceans we’re protecting our future.” – Bill Clinton
“The sea! the sea! the open sea!, The blue, the fresh, the ever free!” – Bryan W. Procter
“The sea hath no king but God alone.” – Dante Gabriel Rossetti
“The oceans deserve our respect and care, but you have to know something before you can care about it.” – Sylvia Earle
“ of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.” – Kate Chopin
“Waves are the voices of tides. Tides are life.” – Tamora Pierce
“The sea is not a bargain basement.” – Jacques Cousteau
“Ocean separates lands, not souls.” – Munia Khan
“There is nothing more enticing, disenchanting, and enslaving than the life at sea.” – Joseph Conrad
“The Sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.” – Jacques Cousteau
“One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach – waiting for a gift from the sea.” – Anne Morrow Lindbergh
“Take me to the ocean. Let me sail the open sea. To breathe the warm and salty air and dream of things to be.” – Erica Billups
“Follow the river and you will find the sea.” – French Proverb
“My course is set for an uncharted sea.” – Dante
“But where, after all, would be the poetry of the sea were there no wild waves?” – Joshua Slocum
“You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.” – Rumi
“The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea.” – Isak Dinesen
“How I long to be the shore and feel your waves crash upon me over and over again.” – Timothy Joshua Chia
“If everyone could just live near the ocean, I think we’d all be happier.” – Crystal Woods
“I am a shipwrecked man who fears every sea.” – Ovid
“I’m pretty sure my birthstone is a sea shell.”
“Life is like the ocean. It can be calm or still, and rough or rigid, but in the end, it is always beautiful.”
“What world lies beyond that stormy sea I do not know, but every ocean has a distant shore, and I shall reach it.” – Cesare Pavese
“The sea has neither meaning nor pity.” – Anton Chekhov
“The sea hates a coward.” – Eugene O’Neill
“There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm.” – Willa Cather
“A beach is not only a sweep of sand but shells of sea creatures, the sea glass, the seaweed, the incongruous objects washed up by the ocean.” – Henry Grunwald
“Together we can face any challenges as deep as the ocean and as high as the sky.” – Sonia Gandhi
“How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is clearly Ocean.” – Arthur C. Clarke
“Every time I slip into the ocean, it’s like going home.” – Sylvia Earle
“The best cure for sea sickness is to sit under a tree.” – Spike Milligan
“Ah, well, then you’ve never stood on a beach as the waves came crashing in, the water stretching out from you until it’s beyond sight.” – Patrick Ness
“I feel we are all islands – in a common sea.” – Anne Morrow Lindbergh
“The secrets of the sea are forgotten at the seashore.” – Giorgos Seferis
“Summer is calling me with the music of an ocean breeze. I must go dance with the waves of love.” – Debasish Mridha
“I like the peace and quiet of being at sea.” – Rafael Nadal
“It is pleasant to watch the wild sea.” – Lucretius
“Life is a sea of vibrant Jump in.” – A.D. Posey
“It’s always our self we find in the sea.” – E. E. Cummings
“Dance with the waves, move with the sea. Let the rhythm of the water set your soul free.” — Christy Ann Martine
“She loves the serene brutality of the ocean, loves the electric power she felt with each breath of wet, briny air.” – Holly Black
“The ocean was the best place, of course. It was a feeling like no other, and yet a feeling of communion with all the other places and creatures the water touched.” – Ann Brashares
“The sea is as near as we come to another world.” – Anne Stevenson
“My soul is full of longing for the secrets of the sea, and the heart of the great ocean sends a thrilling pulse through me.” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“The ceaseless twinkling of laughter of the waves of the sea.” – Aeschylus
“Let the waves carry you where the light cannot.” – Mohit Kaushik
“Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering.” – Saint Augustine
“The three great elemental sounds in nature are the sound of rain, the sound of wind in a primeval wood, and the sound of outer ocean on a beach.” – Henry Beston
“The waves came up towards us, fumbling and gnawing at the beach like an immense soft mouth.” – Ross Macdonald
“It’s when I go down to the beach that the waves come up to greet me.” – Anthony T. Hincks
“We are tied to the ocean.” – John F. Kennedy
“The sound and smell of the sea cleanses my soul.”
“When she saw the waves crashing on the shore, her heart leaped inside her in excitement. She still had a love affair with the ocean.” – Sharon Brubaker
“The ocean is a place of skin, rich outer membranes hiding thick juicy insides, laden with the soup of being.” – Vera Nazarian
“The sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper; I cannot quite make it out.” – Annie Dillard
“Waves keep coming, that’s the one thing you can count on in life.” – Gerry Lopez
“The sea is very beautiful and gives us many things, but it must be understood and respected, or it will slap you …” – J.Z. Colby
“The sea speaks a language polite people never repeat. It is a colossal scavenger slang and has no respect.” – Carl Sandburg
“Smell the sea and feel the sky.” – Van Morrison
“On the ocean of life let your mind be the ship and your heart be the compass.” – James David Manning
“Just as the ocean has waves or the sun has rays, so the minds’ own radiance is its thoughts and emotions.” – Sogyal Rinpoche
“Faith is knowing there is an ocean because you have seen a brook.” – William Arthur Ward
“Either you decide to stay in the shallow end of the pool or you go out in the ocean.” – Christopher Reeve
“A frog in a well cannot conceive of the ocean.” – Zhuangzi
“Asking is the beginning of receiving. Make sure you don’t go to the ocean with a teaspoon. At least take a bucket so the kids won’t laugh at you.” – Jim Rohn
“Don’t try to describe the ocean if you’ve never seen it.” – Jimmy Buffett
