Great words about the Sea

This week marks our first anniversary in our new house. We moved from our town in the Adelaide Hills where we've lived for over twenty-five years to a seaside suburb. The need to move was fairly sudden, and I felt devastated at the time. But it didn't take long for the beauty of living so close to the beach to win me over. To mark the occasion, I thought I'd collect a list of quotes from authors who have agreed with me about the restorative power of the ocean, and put it in their own unique words. 

'The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy or too impatient. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach, waiting for a gift from the sea.'
Anne Morrow Lindbergh

'I had my first view of the Pacific Ocean. To say it is beautiful does not half express it. It is simply beyond words. The water is such a a deep, wonderful blue and the sound of the waves breaking on the beach and their whisper as they flow back is something to dream about.'
Laura Ingalls Wilder, (during a visit to San Francisco, in a letter home to her husband. Here's my review of West From Home.)

'The waves rolled in like metal tubes carrying an egg white of foam on their peaks that broke into a thousand glittering splinters'
Elena Ferrante, from My Brilliant Friend (Review coming soon.)

'There is nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline, no matter how many times it is sent away.'
Sarah Kay

'How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when it is clearly Ocean.'
Arthur C. Clarke

'You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the whole ocean does not become dirty.'
Mahatma Gandhi

'To me, the sea is a continual miracle. The fishes that swim, the rocks, the motion of the waves, the ships with men in them. What stranger miracles are there?'
Walt Whitman

'I wish I could see how the ocean is lashing
The foam of its billows to whirlwinds of spray.
I wish I could see how its proud waves are dashing
And hear the wild roar of their thunder today.'
Anne Bronte

'When anxious, uneasy and bad thoughts come, I go to the sea and the sea drowns them out with its great wide sounds, cleanses me with its noise and imposes a rhythm upon everything in me that is bewildered and confused.'
Rainer Maria Rilke 

There are many others, but those are some of my favourites. That's me wading in the photo above, taken by my daughter.