Sails Quotes

The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails. (William Arthur Ward)
He who studies medicine without books sails an uncharted sea, but he who studies medicine without patients does not go to sea at all. View quote
William Osler
I can't change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination. View quote
Jimmy Dean
We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails. View quote
Dolly Parton
Raphael paints wisdom Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakespeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it. View quote
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Success soon palls. The joyous time is when the breeze first strikes your sails, and the waters rustle under your bows. View quote
Charles Buxton
The effect of sailing is produced by a judicious arrangement of the sails to the direction of the wind. View quote
William Falconer
Those who spread their sails in the right way to the winds of the earth will always find themselves born by a current towards the open seas. View quote
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
You know it's never fifty-fifty in a marriage. It's always seventy-thirty, or sixty-forty. Someone falls in love first. Someone puts someone else up on a pedestal. Someone works very hard to keep things rolling smoothly; someone else sails along for the ride. View quote
Jodi Picoult
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. View quote
George Chapman
The boat dipped and swayed and sometimes took on water, but it did not sink; the two brothers had waterproofed it well. I do not know where it finally fetched up, if it ever did; perhaps it reached the sea and sails there forever like a magic boat in a fairytale. All I know is that it was still afloat and still running on the breast of the flood when it passed the incorporated town limits of Derry, Maine, and there it passes out of this tale forever. (Stephen King)
So fine was the morning except for a streak of wind here and there that the sea and sky looked all one fabric, as if sails were stuck high up in the sky, or the clouds had dropped down into the sea. View quote
Virginia Woolf
There was this book I read and loved, The story of a ship Who sailed around the world and found That nothing else exists Beyond its own two sails And wooden shell And what is held within. All else is sure to pass. We clutch and grasp And debate what's truly permanent. View quote
Conor Oberst
It is the set of the sails, not the direction of the wind that determines which way we will go. View quote
Jim Rohn
Mother, mother ocean, I have heard you call. Wanted to sail upon your waters Since I was three feet tall. You've seen it all, you've seen it all.Watched the men who rode you, Switch from sails to steam. And in your belly you hold the treasure That few have ever seen. Most of them dreams, Most of them dreams. View quote
Jimmy Buffett
Whither, O splendid ship, thy white sails crowding, Leaning across the bosom of the urgent West, That fearest nor sea rising, nor sky clouding, Whither away, fair rover, and what thy quest? View quote
Robert Bridges
Yeah." He took one last look at the cityscape of Rome, turning bloodred in the sunset. "Festus, raise the sails. We've got some friends to save. View quote
Rick Riordan
In my grammar school years back in the 1920s I used my ten-cents-a-week allowance for Saturday matinees of Douglas Fairbanks movies. All that swashbuckling and leaping about in the midst of the sails of ships! View quote
Beverly Cleary
A sail boat that sails backwards can never see the sun rise. View quote
Bill Cosby
Gotta make you love me the way you used to do Gotta get back the feeling and put wind in my sails And chart a course that gets me back to you, back to you. Oh, the lonely days, the lonely nights lookin' back in time. Time, don't run out on me. View quote
Carole King
Defeat I can endure with cheerfulness, my lady. But betrayal is like taking the wind from my sails, or the earth from beneath my feet. It chills my spirits like a rainy day, and all I can do is draw the curtains and cry into my pillow. (Margaret George)
Wisdom sails with wind and time. View quote
John Florio
To run over better waters the little vessel of my genius now hoists her sails, as she leaves behind her a sea so cruel. View quote
Dante Alighieri
There is (so to speak) "a mighty stream of tendency" to good in the human mind, upon which all objects float and are imperceptibly borne along; and though in the voyage of life we meet with strong rebuffs, with rocks and quicksands, yet there is a "a tide in the affairs of men," a heaving and a restless aspiration of the soul, by means of which, "with sails and tackle torn," the wreck and scattered fragments of our entire being drift into the port and haven of our desires! View quote
William Hazlitt
The teacher offers guidance here and there, but the primary factor, the driving force, in your relationship and work together is the student's own commitment and desire to learn. Teaching is like sailing: The wind and the sails give the boat its motion. Your role (as a teacher) is to steer and guide. View quote
Yehudi Menuhin
📖 Sails Proverbs