Masts Quotes

• I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Travel, Journey, Wish

  Henry David Thoreau (1995). “Walden, Or, Life in the Woods”, p.209, Courier Corporation

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• The horns came riding in like the rainbow masts of silver ships.

  Peter S. Beagle

  Rainbow, Horny, Riding

  Peter S. Beagle (2003). “A fine and private place: The last unicorn”

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• The ship was masted according to the proportion of the navy; but on my application the masts were shortened, as I thought them too much for her, considering the nature of the voyage.

  William Bligh

  Navy, Too Much, Voyages

  William Bligh (2009). “The Voyage of the Bounty”, p.2, BoD – Books on Demand

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• Oh yeah - I watched Knife in the Water, saw the shot, and repeated it. But even if I hadn't seen that film, inevitably the camera would've ended up on top of that mast, I mean if you think of it there are only so many dynamic shots on a boat.

  Phillip Noyce

  Mean, Thinking, Knives

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• And the wind plays on those great sonorous harps, the shrouds and masts of ships.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Wind, Play, Ships

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1851). “The prose works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow”, p.30

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• Haul up the flag, you mourners, Not half-mast but all the way; The funeral is done and disbanded; The devil's had the final say.

  Karl Shapiro

  Funeral, Devil, Finals

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• The vessel, though her masts be firm,Beneath her copper bears a worm.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Bears, Worms, Copper

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.148, Penguin

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• Effort ceases. Time flaps on the mast. There we stop; there we stand. Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame

  Virginia Woolf

  Skeletons, Effort, Habit

  Virginia Woolf (2012). “Mrs. Dalloway - Broadview Edition”, p.49, Broadview Press

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• The white face of the winter day came sluggishly on, veiled in a frosty mist; and the shadowy ships in the river slowly changed to black substances; and the sun, blood-red on the eastern marshes behind dark masts and yards, seemed filled with the ruins of a forest it had set on fire.

  Charles Dickens

  Nature, Winter, Dark

  Charles Dickens (2016). “Our Mutual Friend”, p.74, Xist Publishing

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• Day by day. No yesterdays and no tomorrows. The barometer never changes, the flag is always at half-mast.

  Henry Miller

  Yesterday, Flags, Half

  Henry Miller (1977). “Tropic of Cancer”

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• He rested sitting on the un-stepped mast and sail and tried not to think but only to endure.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Thinking, Sitting, Sail

  Ernest Hemingway, Nick Lyons, Jack Hemingway (2012). “Hemingway on Fishing”, p.204, Simon and Schuster

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• O'er Ocean, with a thousand masts, sails forth the stripling bold-
  One boat, hard rescued from the deep, draws into port the old!

  Friedrich Schiller

  Life, Ocean, Boat

  Friedrich Schiller (1852). “Poems and Ballads ... translated by Sir E. B. Lytton ... With a brief sketch of Schiller's life”, p.248

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• Give me a spirit that on this life's rough sea Loves t'have his sails filled with a lusty wind, Even till his sail-yards tremble, his masts crack, And his ship run on her side so low That she drinks water, and her keel plows air.

  George Chapman

  Life, Running, Wind

  George Chapman (1990). “The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles Duke of Byron”, p.35, Manchester University Press

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• The mountains and moors, the wild uplands, are to be staked out like vampires in the sun, their chests pierced with rows of five-hundred-foot wind turbines and associated access roads, masts, pylons, and wires.

  Paul Kingsnorth

  Wind Turbines, Feet, Mountain

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• A tempest ceases, a cyclone passes over, a wind dies down, a broken mast can be replaced, a leak can be stopped, a fire extinguished, but what will become of this enormous brute of bronze?

  Victor Hugo

  Fire, Wind, Broken

  Victor Hugo (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Victor Hugo (Illustrated)”, p.6889, Delphi Classics

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• A man never is happy, but spends his whole life in striving after something which he thinks will make him so; he seldom attains his goal, and when he does, it is only to be disappointed; he is mostly shipwrecked in the end, and comes into harbor with mast and rigging gone. And then, it is all one whether he has been happy or miserable; for his life was never anything more than a present moment always vanishing; and now it is over.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Men, Thinking, Goal

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2014). “Suffering, Suicide and Immortality: Eight Essays from The Parerga”, p.21, Courier Corporation

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• As I look back, I feel a touch of pride at my younger self's dedication to literature, which gave him the strength of mind to resist the blandishments of the enemies of promise. The sirens of ad-land sang sweetly and seductively, but I thought of Odysseus lashing himself to the mast of his ship, and somehow stayed on course.

  Salman Rushdie

  Pride, Dedication, Land

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• Look at The Adventure. A boat by night is a wonderful sight. This is the way to start a new life, with a hurricane lamp shining at the top of the mast, and the coastline disappearing behind one as the whole world lies sleeping. Making a journey by night is more wonderful than anything in the world.

  Tove Jansson

  Lying, Adventure, Sleep

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• If I can leave a single message with the younger generation, it is to lash yourself to the mast, like Ulysses if you must, to escape the siren calls of complacency and indifference.

  Edward Kennedy

  Generations, Sirens, Complacency

  Edward Moore Kennedy (1979). “Our Day and Generation: The Words of Edward M. Kennedy”

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• Going up the mast is one of the most dangerous things you can do as a solo sailor.

  Abby Sunderland

  Sailor, Solo, Dangerous

  Abby Sunderland, Lynn Vincent (2011). “Unsinkable: A Young Woman's Courageous Battle on the High Seas”, p.145, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• A mighty mass of brick, and smoke, and shipping, Dirty and dusty, but as wide as eye Could reach, with here and there a sail just skipping In sight, then lost amidst the forestry Of masts; a wilderness of steeples peeping On tiptoe through their sea-coal canopy; A huge, dun cupola, like a fools-cap crown On a fool's head - and there is London Town.

  Lord Byron

  Dirty, Eye, Sight

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• Security in human systems we're told will always, always last. Emotions are the sail, and blind faith is the mast. Without the breath of real freedom we're getting nowhere fast.

  Sting

  Real, Lasts, Emotion

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• All the men she's been with and now you, just you, and the barges going by, masts and hulls, the whole damned current of life flowing through you, through her, through all the guys behind you and after you, the flowers and the birds and the sun streaming in and the fragrance of it choking you, annihilating you.

  Henry Miller

  Flower, Men, Guy

  Henry Miller, Norman Mailer (1976). “Genius and lust: a journey through the major writings of Henry Miller”, Grove Press

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• It is certainly not then-not in dreams- but when one is wide awake, at moments of robust joy and achievement, on the highest terrace of consciousness, that mortality has a chance to peer beyond its own limits, from the mast, from the past and its castle tower. And although nothing much can be seen through the mist, there is somehow the blissful feeling that one is looking in the right direction.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Dream, Truth, Past

  Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (1989). “Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited”

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• When I die I have visions of fags singing 'Over the Rainbow' and the flag at Fire Island being flown at half mast.

  Judy Garland

  Fire, Islands, Rainbow

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