#sailing

What is time to a water rat? What is time to the river? Only we humans obsess over days and minutes, hours and seasons. ↗

— Matthew Goldman

#love

The first glance at the pillow showed me a repulsive sentinel perched upon each end of it--cockroaches as large as peach leaves--fellows with long, quivering antennae and fiery, malignant eyes. They were grating their teeth like tobacco worms, and appeared to be dissatisfied about something. I had often heard that these reptiles were in the habit of eating off sleeping sailors' toe nails down to the quick, and I would not get in the bunk any more. I lay down on the floor. But a rat came and bothered me, and shortly afterward a procession of cockroaches arrived and camped in my hair. In a few moments the rooster was crowing with uncommon spirit and a party of fleas were throwing double somersaults about my person in the wildest disorder, and taking a bite every time they stuck. I was beginning to feel really annoyed. I got up and put my clothes on and went on deck. The above is not overdrawn; it is a truthful sketch of inter-island schooner life. ↗

— Mark Twain

#exaggeration #humor #pests #sailing #sailor

Their elegant shape, showy colours, and slow, sailing mode of flight, make them very attractive objects, and their numbers are so great that they form quite a feature in the physiognomy of the forest, compensating for the scarcity of flowers. ↗

— Henry Walter Bates

#colours #elegant #feature #flight #flowers

The fleet being thus more inclosed will more readily observe the signals, and with greater facility form itself into the line of battle a circumstance which should be kept in view in every order of sailing. ↗

— William Falconer

#being #circumstance #every #facility #fleet

Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea. ↗

— John Updike

#fiction #hugging #open #poetry #sailing

Instead of sailing off into the sunset, he hopes to sail into the next century. ↗

— Dave Anderson

#hopes #instead #into #next #off

Nothing comes sailing by itself. ↗

— Alexander Dale Oen

#itself #nothing #sailing

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

#ocean #sailing #dreams

...now and then a giggling trail of mermaids appeared in our wake. We fed them oatmeal. ↗

— Tove Jansson

#mermaids #oatmeal #sailing #humor

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 D. Roosevelt

#books #ideas #sailing #ships #guns