Boating Quotes

“Writing is an affair of yearning for great voyages and hauling on frayed ropes.”
― Israel Shenker

“I grew to judge every purchase by how many bronze screws I could buy for the boat if I didn't spend on this or made do without that.”
― Lin Pardey, Bull Canyon: A Boatbuilder, a Writer and Other Wildlife

“Boating, my dear Mrs. Bedel, is the dullest of all things; don't you think so? Because a boat looks very pretty from the shore, we fancy that the shore must look very pretty from a boat; and when we try it, we find we have only got down into a pit and can see nothing rightly. For my part, I hate boating and I hate the water...”
― Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, The Haunted Baronet and Others: Ghost Stories 1861-70

“The Vikings thought they were big shots because they had boats. You know how obnoxious people get when they own a boat. They always want to go on the boat. "We're taking the boat out this weekend. It's supposed to be beautiful. Why don't you come? You never come. You're always working. You know how many people wish they would get invited to come on the boat? And you turn it down.”
― Colin Quinn, The Coloring Book: A Comedian Solves Race Relations in America

“If you don't try new things, you stay stupid.”
― Alexander Watson, River Queens: Saucy Boat, stout mates, spotted dog, America

“Read on and I will tell you what to do in the future to avoid getting smashed and find yourself with nothing but little pieces of drift floating around in the ship's wake.”
― John W. Trimmer, How to Avoid Huge Ships

“Don't stop and drift in the middle of the traffic lane, even if the fish are biting. The fish you catch might weigh many tons and have a propeller on the end and a bulbous bow on the other.”
― John W. Trimmer, How to Avoid Huge Ships

“A good shell has to have life and resiliency to get in harmony with the swing of the crew.”
― Daniel James Brown, The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics

“Ducking beneath the low-hanging limbs of giant trees, she churned slowly through thicket for more than a hundred yards, as easy turtles slid from water-logs. A floating mat of duckweed colored the water as green as the leafy ceiling, creating an emerald tunnel. Finally, the trees parted, and she glided into a place of wide sky and reaching grasses, and the sounds of cawing birds. The view a chick gets, she reckoned, when it finally breaks its shell.
Kya tooled along, a tiny speck of a girl in a boat, turning this way and that as endless estuaries branched and braided before her. Keep left at all the turns going out, Jodie had said. She barely touched the throttle, easing the boat through the current, keeping the noise low. As she broke around a stand of reeds, a whitetail doe with last spring's fawn stood lapping water. Their heads jerked up, slinging droplets through the air. Kya didn't stop or they would bolt, a lesson she'd learned from watching wild turkeys: if you act like a predator, they act like prey. Just ignore them, keep going slow. She drifted by, and the deer stood as still as a pine until Kya disappeared beyond the salt grass.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“In the stream of life, you row your boat alone.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, Song of a Nature Lover

“Whatever the water touched was riparian: that moist layer of air and rich earth along the shore was an Eden for many forms of life. Some drowned in a daily flood, while those that knew how, thrived. There was something riparian too about the people who spent most of their time on the water. Those whose language and equilibrium had been dictated by the elements around them. Who’d learned to hang on in the ever-shifting swell and drift of water under their feet. Contrast and contradictions abounded for those who had learned to meander despite limited space or to be still in the midst of all that rocking.”
― Brian K. Friesen, At the Waterline

“I have a hunch the world is darker than I could ever imagine and there is less reason for hope than I am able to see. It makes me grateful there is only so much I can see, and I am left mostly with questions. Grateful, also, that hope is not a reasonable thing. Though I have seen my share of darkness, I am spared perceiving much of it. And here is why I hope beyond a reasonable doubt: I think that as the darkness grows, it makes the dim lights that are left seem brighter. And the darker it gets, the brighter the light appears, until it is so luminous, eventually, even falling shadows are filled with it.”
― Brian K. Friesen, At the Waterline

“...liberty ran its fingers through my hair, reaching straight to my soul.”
― Amy K. Sorrells, How Sweet the Sound

“There was water and waves all around. They ran towered the shore, and made way for the boat as it ran through. At the back of the boat, water squirted out and some of it was white.
It was magical.”
― Jesse Haubert, A Stranger In Everyone

“the presence of an old salt aboard the Elizabeth Seaman was profoundly reassuring. “Iron men in wooden boats,” they were called, as opposed to the wooden men in iron boats of today, like Kittredge, Farmingdale, and Eddie himself. Old salts partook of an origin myth, being close to the root of all things, including language. Eddie had never noticed how much of his own speech derived from the sea, from “keeled over” to “learning the ropes” to “catching the drift” to “freeloader” to “gripe” to “brace up” to “taken aback” to “leeway” to “low profile” to “the bitter end,” or the very last link on a chain. Using these expressions in a practical way made him feel close to something fundamental—a deeper truth whose contours he believed he’d sensed, allegorically, even while still on land. Being at sea had brought Eddie nearer that truth. And the old salts were nearer still.”
― Jennifer Egan

“Get YachtAway from it all”
― YachtAway

“The river grew dark and on the boat a peaceful silence reigned. Some voices wafted over from the opposite bank and a stray canoe made its way to the boat-house. Saturnin disappeared for a while and returned with freshly-made black coffee. I offered him a cigarette and indicated an empty deck-chair. The sky was now pitch black and the atmosphere had cooled to a pleasant temperature.”
― Zdeněk Jirotka, Saturnin

“Bridgetown lets me park the boat at the front door and then walk home.”
― Anthony T. Hincks

“The boat was a type called an Optimist dinghy. It is a beginner's boat. If that little boat had been able to speak, no one would have believed all the stories it could have told: tales of victory and defeat, tales of oceans and islands and fjords it had brought its occupants to.”
― Margareta Magnusson, The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning: How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter

“Like streamers on top of a sailboat indicating wind pattern changes, when long-term rates are lower than short-term rates, it's a telltale that trends are likely changing.”
― Coreen T. Sol, CFA

“The monster under my bed is pitchpoling. See, when you’re in heavy seas you always face the bow forward. Steer into the waves. Seems to break the laws of nature but most times it works. You're gonna live to see another day. If your vessel gets turned sideways though, you get stuck in the trough and in heavy seas you can capsize. I don’t even worry about that so much. I can control that- I just steer the boat into the oncoming waves. Problem solved. Until it’s not.”
― Kristy McGinnis, Motion of Intervals

“Just because I stay calm, doesn't mean that I have no wind in my sails.”
― Anthony t hincks