Ocean Quotes, Sayings, Captions

These famous ocean quotes come from authors, poets, scientists, and other lovers of nature and the sea.

Use them to caption your trip to the beach on Instagram, share with friends, or even inspire conservation efforts.

1. Beautiful and inspirational ocean quotes

Let’s begin with ten of our favorite ocean-inspired sayings. Stick your toes in the sand and enjoy!

Top 10 best ocean quotes

1.) You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean, in a drop.
Rumi

2.) The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.
Jacques Cousteau

3.) Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

4.) We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch – we are going back from whence we came.
John F. Kennedy

5.) The universe is an ocean upon which we are the waves. While some decide to surf, others venture to dive.
Charbel Tadros

6.) Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean.
Ryunosuke Akutagawa

7.) The beauty and mystery of the ocean, fills our lives with wonders, vast beyond our imagination.
M. L. Borges, By The Sea

8.) We are in reach of a whole new relationship with the ocean, a wise, more sustainable relationship. The choice lies with us.
David Attenborough

9.) Hark, now hear the sailors cry,
Smell the sea, and feel the sky,
Let your soul & spirit fly, into the mystic.
Van Morrison, Into the Mystic

10.) Limitless and immortal, the waters are the beginning and end of all things on earth.
Heinrich Zimmer

2. The ocean is calling quotes

I have an immoderate passion for water; for the sea, though so vast, so restless, so beyond one’s comprehension.
Guy de Maupassant

Positive ocean quotes

Take me to the ocean. Let me sail the open sea. To breathe the warm and salty air and dream of things to be.
Erica Billups

You can either see yourself as a wave in the ocean or you can see yourself as the ocean.
Oprah Winfrey

Water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing, in the end, can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone.
Margaret Atwood

Uplifting

The ocean makes me feel really small and it makes me put my whole life into perspective… it humbles you and makes you feel almost like you’ve been baptized. I feel born again when I get out of the ocean.
Beyoncé Knowles

You will love the ocean. It makes you feel small, but not in a bad way. Small because you realize you’re part of something bigger.
Lauren Myracle

Ocean sailing

You can never cross the ocean until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.
Christopher Columbus

The ocean is a central image. It is the symbolism of a great journey.
Enya

Sail the sea quotes

You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.
Rabindranath Tagore

I wanted freedom, open air and adventure. I found it on the sea.
Alain Gerbeault

3. The ocean is beautiful sayings

The ocean was magical to her, its depths and mysteries were boundless, its call irresistible.
Jeff Mariotte

Where sea meets sky

Meet me where the sky touches the sea.
Jennifer Donnelly

Ocean is blue

I love the ocean. I’ve always liked the blue, so tranquil and peaceful and gliding. And the fear of it.
Siouxsie Sioux

The sea! the sea! the open sea! The blue, the fresh, the ever free!
Bryan W. Procter

Vastness ocean quotes

‎I have always been fascinated by the ocean, to dip a limb beneath its surface and know that I’m touching eternity, that it goes on forever until it begins here again.
Lauren DeStefano

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

Eternity begins and ends with the ocean’s tides.
Unknown

Waves

I have seafoam in my veins, I understand the language of waves.
Le Testament d’Orphée

Let the waves carry you where the light can not.
Mohit Kaushik

Wild waves rise and fall when they arrive and that’s what makes the calm sea alive.
Munia Khan

I pray to be like the ocean, with soft currents, maybe waves at times. More and more, I want the consistency rather than the highs and the lows.
Drew Barrymore

Waves tossed themselves against the shore, dragging grit and sand between their nails as they were slowly pulled back out to sea.
Holly Black

Check out these inspirational dolphin quotes.

4. Ocean quotes about love

As the ocean is never full of water, so is the heart never full of love.
Unknown

It was one of those days when the ocean takes on all the colors of the rainbow and smiles up from the coral reef in glowing hues.
Matt Warshaw, The History of Surfing

Why do we love the sea? It is because it has some potent power to make us think things we like to think.
Robert Henri

Romantic ocean sayings for couples

Because there’s nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline, no matter how many times it’s sent away.
Sarah Kay

The sea always filled her with longing, though for what she was never sure.
Cornelia Funke

The ocean is everything I want to be. Beautiful, mysterious, wild, and free.
Unknown

Missing you

Ocean separates lands, not souls.
Munia Khan

There is an ocean of silence between us… and I am drowning in it.
Ranata Suzuki

5. Ocean quotes about life

Life is like the ocean, it goes up and down.
Vanessa Paradis

What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams.
Werner Herzog

On the ocean of life let your mind be the ship and your heart be the compass.
James David Manning

You can’t cross the ocean of life just by dreaming about it, you have to jump in and swim.
Debasish Mridha

Those who live by the sea can hardly form a single thought of which the sea would not be part.
Hermann Broch

The sea is everything. It covers seven-tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and healthy. It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely, for he feels life stirring on all sides.
Jules Verne

I go to the ocean to say goodbye.
Charlotte Eriksson

Quotes about self

I was always an unusual girl. My mother told me I had a chameleon soul, no moral compass pointing due north, no fixed personality; just an inner indecisiveness that was as wide and as wavering as the ocean.
Lana Del Rey

Happiness

At sea, I learned how little a person needs, not how much.
Robin Lee Graham

I was happy anywhere I could see the ocean.
Ai Yazawa

Her happiness floated like waves of ocean along the coast of her life. She found lyrics of her life in his arms but she never sung her song.
Santosh Kalwar

Being out there in the ocean, God’s creation, it’s like a gift He has given us to enjoy.
Bethany Hamilton

The human desire to obtain more is a sieve that can never be filled with all the water from the world’s oceans.
Will Bowen

Check out these famous whale quotes.

6. Inspirational ocean quotes

To reach a port we must set sail. Sail, not tie at anchor. Sail, not drift.
Franklin D. Roosevelt

The sea will grant each man new hope, and sleep will bring dreams of home.
Christopher Columbus

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

We know only too well that what we are doing is nothing more than a drop in the ocean. But if the drop were not there, the ocean would be missing something.
Mother Teresa

There must be something strangely sacred in salt. It is in our tears and in the sea.
Khalil Gibran

That the sea is one of the most beautiful and magnificent sights in Nature, all admit.
John Joly

Either you decide to stay in the shallow end of the pool or you go out in the ocean.
Christopher Reeve

Sayings about teamwork

One drop of water helps to swell the ocean… none are too small, too feeble, too poor to be of service. Think of this and act.
Hannah More

We ourselves feel what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.
Mother Teresa

Together we can face any challenges as deep as the ocean and as high as the sky.
Sonia Gandhi

You’ll enjoy these octopus quotes and sayings.

7. Spiritual ocean quotes

My altars are the mountains and the ocean.
Lord Byron

In one drop of water are found all the secrets of all the oceans.
Kahlil Gibran

Sand lines my soul which is filled with the breath of the ocean.
A.D. Posey

Dance with the waves, move with the sea, let the rhythm of the water set your soul free.
Christy Ann Martine

The ocean stirs the heart, inspires the imagination and brings eternal joy to the soul.
Robert Wylan

The voice of the sea speaks to the soul.
Kate Chopin

My soul is full of longing for the secret of the sea, and the heart of the great ocean sends a thrilling pulse through me.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Faith is knowing there is an ocean because you have seen a brook.
William Arthur Ward

Emotion

The heart of man is very much like the sea, it has its storms, it has its tides and in its depths it has its pearls too.
Vincent van Gogh

The sea is emotion incarnate. It loves, hates, and weeps. It defies all attempts to capture it with words and rejects all shackles. No matter what you say about it, there is always that which you can’t.
Christopher Paolini

The ocean has a life of its own. Its tides, whirlpools, currents and eddies are a testament to its conflicting emotions.
Anthony T. Hincks

Calm and Peace

If the ocean can calm itself, so can you. We are both salt water mixed with air.
Nayyirah Waheed

At night, when the sky is full of stars and the sea is still you get the wonderful sensation that you are floating in space.
Natalie Wood

Healing ocean quotes

Every time I slip into the ocean, it’s like going home.
Sylvia Earle

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

Reflection and Meditation

Be alone with the sea for it is there you will find answers to questions you didn’t realize exist.
Khang Kijarro Nguyen

Philosophy

The sea knows no limits, makes no concessions. It has given us everything and it can take everything away from us.
John Ajvide Lindqvist

Just as every drop of the ocean carries the taste of the ocean, so does every moment carry the taste of eternity.
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

We are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface but connected in the deep.
William James

I feel we are all islands — in a common sea.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Therapy

If peace flows like a river, may it flow into the ocean of our souls.
J. Autherine

To me, the sea is like a person — like a child that I’ve known a long time. It sounds crazy, I know, but when I swim in the sea I talk to it. I never feel alone when I’m out there.
Gertrude Ederle

Zen

Your thoughts, feelings and sensations are the waves of the ocean — coming and going. There are big strong waves and there are soft gentle waves; they are all water and all part of the ocean.
Rose-Marie Sorokin

8. Short ocean quotes

The sea does not like to be restrained.
Rick Riordan

I wonder if the ocean smells different on the other side of the world.
J.A. Redmerski

Every drop in the ocean counts.
Yoko Ono

The sea is a desert of waves,
A wilderness of water.
Langston Hughes

The ocean is a mighty harmonist.
William Wordsworth

Follow the river and you will find the sea.
French Proverb

The sea appears all golden. Beneath the sun-lit sky.
Heinrich Heine

A woman’s heart is a deep ocean of secrets.
Gloria Stuart

The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea.
Isak Dinesen

9. Funny ocean quotes

Ocean, n. A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man — who has no gills.
Ambrose Bierce

Whenever I look at the ocean, I always want to talk to people, but when I’m talking to people, I always want to look at the ocean.
Haruki Murakami

There’s nothing wrong with enjoying looking at the surface of the ocean itself, except that when you finally see what goes on underwater, you realize that you’ve been missing the whole point of the ocean. Staying on the surface all the time is like going to the circus and staring at the outside of the tent.
Dave Barry

10. Ocean conservation quotes

For most of history, man has had to fight nature to survive; in this century he is beginning to realize that, in order to survive, he must protect it.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau

We know that when we protect our oceans we’re protecting our future.
William J. Clinton

The sea, the great unifier, is man’s only hope. Now, as never before, the old phrase has a literal meaning: we are all in the same boat.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau

Environment

No water, no life. No blue, no green.
Sylvia Earle

It’s simple; the oceans are the life support system of our planet.
Phillipe Cousteau

The living world can’t operate without a healthy ocean and neither can we.
David Attenborough

With every drop of water you drink, every breath you take, you’re connected to the sea. No matter where on Earth you live.
Sylvia Earle

Ocean exploration quotes

Would you learn the secret of the sea? Only those who brave its dangers, comprehend its mystery!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The ocean is this beautiful, unexplored place. Why on Earth everyone isn’t down there, I don’t know.
Graham Hawkes

Well, when I was a kid, I grew up in San Diego next to the ocean. The ocean was my friend — my best friend.
Robert Ballard

The ocean’s bottom is at least as important to us as the moon’s behind.
Gordon G. Lill

The sea is an underwater museum still awaiting its visitors.
Phillip Diole

Most of the southern hemisphere is unexplored. We had more exploration ships down there during Captain Cook’s time than now. It’s amazing.
Robert Ballard

The future is in the hands of those who explore… and from all the beauty they discover while crossing perpetually receding frontiers, they develop for nature and for humankind an infinite love.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau

Nature

A beach is not only a sweep of sand, but shells of sea creatures, the sea glass, the seaweed, the incongruous objects washed up by the ocean.
Henry Grunwald

The three great elemental sounds in nature are the sound of rain, the sound of wind in a primeval wood, and the sound of outer ocean on a beach.
Henry Beston

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

Just as the ocean has waves or the sun has rays, so the mind’s own radiance is its thoughts and emotions.
Sogyal Rinpoche

11. Ocean quotes from movies, songs, books

Way down below the ocean
Where I wanna be, she may be.
Donovan, “Atlantis”

It’s the ocean, silly, we’re not the only two in here.
Finding Nemo

See the line where the sky meets the sea? It calls me. And no one knows, how far it goes.
Moana, “How Far I’ll Go”

There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath…
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

She loves the serene brutality of the ocean, loves the electric power she felt with each breath of wet, briny air.
Holly Black, Tithe

But her heart is like an ocean, so mysterious and dark.
Bob Dylan

We got no troubles
Life is the Bubbles
Under the Sea
The Little Mermaid, “Under the Sea”

I am the shore and the ocean, awaiting myself on both sides.
Dejan Stojanovic, The Shape

And I shall watch the ferry boats, and they’ll get high,
On a bluer ocean against tomorrow’s sky,
And I will never grow so old again,
And I will walk and talk, in gardens all wet with rain.
Van Morrison, Sweet Thing

Ocean blue eyes looking in mine
I feel like I might sink and drown and die
Taylor Swift, Oceans

The deep sea breaking miles away on the reef made an undertone less perceptible than the susurration of the blood.
William Golding, Lord of the Flies

Sing along with these fun sea shanties.