A sturdy oak, which nature forms
To brave a hundred winter's storms.
While round its head the whirlwinds blow.
Remains with root infix'd below:
When fell'd to earth, a ship it sails
Through dashing waves and driving gales
And now at sea, again defies
The threatening clouds and howling skies. [ Hoole ]

Behold the threaden sails.
Borne with the invisible and creeping wind,
Draw the huge bottoms through the furrow'd sea,
Breasting the lofty surge. [ William Shakespeare ]

He was a man
Versed in the world as pilot in his compass;
The needle pointed ever to that interest
Which was his loadstar; and he spread his sails
With vantage to the gale of others' passions. [ Ben Jonson ]

Yet the best pilots have need of mariners, besides sails, anchor and other tackle. [ Ben Jonson ]

When Nature fills the sails, the vessel goes smoothly on; and when judgment is the pilot, the insurance need not be high. [ Sir T. Browne ]

With poetry, as with going to sea, we should push from the shore and reach a certain elevation before we unfurl all our sails. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Self-love is always the mainspring, more or less concealed, of our actions; it is the wind which swells the sails, without which the ship could not go. [ Mme. du Chatelet ]

When the wandering demon of Drunkenness finds a ship adrift - no steady wind in its sails, no thoughtful pilot directing its course - he steps on board, takes the helm and steers straight for the maelstrom. [ Holmes ]

There are so many things to lower a man's top-sails - he is such a dependent creature - he is to pay such court to his stomach, his food, his sleep, his exercise - that, in truth, a hero is an idle word. Man seems formed to be a hero in suffering, not a hero in action. Men err in nothing more than in the estimate which they make of human labor. [ Cecil ]

Candlesticks and incense not being portable into the maintop, the sailor perceives these decorations to be, on the whole, inessential to a maintop mass. Sails must be set and cables bent, be it never so strict a saint's day; and it is found that no harm comes of it. Absolution on a lee-shore must be had of the breakers, it appears, if at all; and they give plenary and brief without listening to confession. [ Ruskin ]