Off Cape Horn there are but two kinds of weather, neither one of them a pleasant kind.

I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky; and all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by.

I hold that when a person dies / His soul returns again to earth; / Arrayed in some new flesh disguise / Another mother gives him birth / With sturdier limbs and brighter brain.

Poetry is a mixture of common sense, which not all have, with an uncommon sense, which very few have.

The Thames is a wretched river after the Mersey and the ships are not like Liverpool ships and the docks are barren of beauty ... it is a beastly hole after Liverpool; for Liverpool is the town of my heart and I would rather sail a mudflat there than command a clipper out of London

Success is the brand on the brow of the man who aimed too low.

Love is a flame to set the will on fire