If you’ve never read The Old Man and the Sea, or any of Hemingway’s works, you need to. He is a master at storytelling. The Old Man and the Sea is actually pretty short, it’s more of a short story than a novel.
My Wife Nancy just so happens to be a distant cousin of Ernest Hemingway, so we do feel a bit of a kinship. There’s no doubt he is one of the greatest American writers. Enjoy these quotes about the sea from Ernest Hemingway.
Top 15 Ernest Hemingway Quotes About Sailing and the Sea:
The house was built on the highest part of the narrow tongue of land between the harbor and the open sea. It had lasted through three hurricanes and it was built solid as a ship. –Ernest Hemingway
A man is never lost at sea. –Ernest Hemingway
Why did they make birds so delicate and fine as those sea swallows when the ocean can be so cruel? –Ernest Hemingway
It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end. –Ernest Hemingway
The setting of the sun is a difficult time for all fish. –Ernest Hemingway
But man is not made for defeat he said. A man can be destroyed, but not defeated. –Ernest Hemingway
Why did they make birds so delicate and fine as those sea swallows when the ocean can be so cruel. –Ernest Hemingway
Before we take to the sea, we walk on land … Before we create, we must understand –Ernest Hemingway
The clouds were building up now for the trade wind and he looked ahead and saw a flight of wild ducks etching themselves against the sky over the water, then blurring, then etching again and he knew no man was ever alone on the sea. –Ernest Hemingway
The sea is the same as it has been since before men ever went on it in boats. –Ernest Hemingway
No good book has ever been written that has in it symbols arrived at beforehand and stuck in … I tried to make a real old man, a real boy, a real sea and a real fish and real sharks. But if I made them good and true enough they would mean many things. –Ernest Hemingway
Anglers have a way of romanticizing their battles with fish. –Ernest Hemingway
It was considered a virtue not to talk unnecessarily at sea … –Ernest Hemingway
The old man knew he was going far out and he left the smell of the land behind and rowed out into the clean early morning smell of the ocean. –Ernest Hemingway
Then there is the other secret. There isn’t any symbolysm [sic]. The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish. The shark are all sharks no better and no worse. All the symbolism that people say is shit. What goes beyond is what you see beyond when you know. –Ernest Hemingway
Let me know if you think there are any other quotes I should add to this list though our contact page.
Be Wild.