If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
Why do we love the sea? It is because it has some potent power to make us think things we like to think.
The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea.
Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.
Love one another, but make not a bond of love.
A woman knows the face of the man she loves as a sailor knows the open sea.
There is the life of the plankton in almost endless variety; there are the many kinds of fish, both surface and bottom living; there are the hosts of different invertebrate creatures on the sea-floor; and there are those almost grotesque forms of pelagic life in the oceans depths. Then there are the squids and cuttlefish, and the porpoises, dolphins and great whales.
When I was a boy the Dead Sea was only sick.
Duty is the great business of a sea officer; all private considerations must give way to it, however painful it may be.
The sea heaves up, hangs loaded o'er the land, Breaks there, and buries its tumultuous strength.
At the age of 18, I made up my mind to never have another bad day in my life. I dove into a endless sea of gratitude from which I've never emerged.
I also know there are timeless waters, endless seas, and lots of people in this world whose names don't matter to anyone but themselves. I look up at the sky and I see you there.
I now understand the need for faith - pure, blind, fly-in-the-face-of-reason faith - as a small life preserver in the wild and endless sea of a universe ruled by unfeeling laws and totally indifferent to the small, reasoning beings that inhabit it.
The sea with an end can be Greek or Roman: the endless sea is Portuguese.
If you want to build a ship, teach the men to yearn for the vast and endless sea.
When you want to build a ship, then do not drum the men together in order to procure wood, to give instructions or to distribute the work, but teach them longing for the wide endless sea.
or simply:
