Across Islands and Oceans Quotes

“Sure, you can stay home and work towards the day when you have the perfect boat, perfectly outfitted, as most people try to do. You might even wait and do your cruising as a retired person clutching a fistful of platinum credit cards on a finely fitted boat filled with expensive gadgets needed to maintain your increased demands for comfort and security. But by that time you are somewhat lacking in the robust health and enthusiasm to fully engage in your long-postponed adventure. If I chose to sail as a young adventurer, poorly equipped in the material sense, I make no apologies. I was well-fitted out in health and spirit. As all sailors ultimately learn, it is easier to prepare a boat for sea than to clear the decks of your life for a voyage into unknown waters.”
― James Baldwin, Across Islands and Oceans

“They went on working for the promise of a pension and their “health benefits,” which was ironic in that almost any other job would benefit their health better than any doctor’s pills.”
― James Baldwin, Across Islands and Oceans

“It’s a strange thing to dream of faraway places, only to find when I reach them, I am dreaming of home. The affliction of the dreamer, I suppose.”
― James Baldwin, Across Islands and Oceans

“To know a thing you must see it first, and to see you must look with an open mind.”
― James Baldwin, Across Islands and Oceans

“Solitude is the home of the strong; silence, their prayer. -”
― James Baldwin, Across Islands and Oceans

“The sea, especially in its moments of fury, demands first your attention, then your endurance, and finally your patience and acceptance. If you lack this capacity, the sea will soon find you out and make it known to you that the shore is where you should make your home. Each”
― James Baldwin, Across Islands and Oceans

“Ashore, the palms gently bowed before the wind, mixing the rustling of fronds with the murmur of surf in a captivating voice of mid-ocean solitude. With fully restored mind and body, I sailed away the next morning on a light wind, headed for a distant island of a million people.”
― James Baldwin, Across Islands and Oceans

“At night I studied the stars, memorizing the sky charts by penlight and then locating them in the real world planetarium reeling overhead. Where one man sees emptiness, another man sees his world bursting with fullness. No”
― James Baldwin, Across Islands and Oceans

“But Napoleon was merely an emperor, while Edmund Halley holds the greater glory as a man of science. With”
― James Baldwin, Across Islands and Oceans

“There is no conqueror, but Allah,” it said. Perhaps, but could not Allah’s disciples put more emphasis on conquering ignorance, intolerance, hate and cruelty, than stoning women and putting infidels to the sword?”
― James Baldwin, Across Islands and Oceans

“The world over, an angry person sees corruption wherever he looks, while the thoughtful person sees beauty.”
― James Baldwin, Across Islands and Oceans

“I knew these would be the freest, happiest days of my life. I walked the island with empty pockets, as rich a man there, as ever I would be.”
― James Baldwin, Across Islands and Oceans

“There’s no way to feel this state of being, alone in the sea-world, or even to understand it, if you spend most of your days and nights hidden within the walls and roof of a house, then take a car to an office or factory.”
― James Baldwin, Across Islands and Oceans

“Why go against the wind to certain islands if there are some equally beautiful ones to leeward?”
― James Baldwin, Across Islands and Oceans

“If there were similarities between Gauguin and myself, they were mainly limited to a mutual distrust of the minions of bureaucracy, and perhaps a desire to cultivate the savage within.”
― James Baldwin, Across Islands and Oceans

“As all sailors ultimately learn, it is easier to prepare a boat for sea than to clear the decks of your life for a voyage into unknown waters.”
― James Baldwin, Across Islands and Oceans

“You might even wait and do your cruising as a retired person clutching a fistful of platinum credit cards on a finely fitted boat filled with expensive gadgets needed to maintain your increased demands for comfort and security. But by that time you are somewhat lacking in the robust health and enthusiasm to fully engage in your long-postponed adventure. If I chose to sail as a young adventurer, poorly equipped in the material sense, I make no apologies. I was well-fitted out in health and spirit.”
― James Baldwin, Across Islands and Oceans

“Voyaging belongs to seamen, and to the wanderers of the world who cannot, or will not, fit in.”
― James Baldwin, Across Islands and Oceans

“To be truly challenging, a voyage, like a life, must rest on a firm foundation of financial unrest. Otherwise, you are doomed to a routine traverse, the kind known to yachtsmen who play with their boats at sea…“cruising” it is called.”
― James Baldwin, Across Islands and Oceans

“You can always drive to your destination, but a true journey is made on foot.”
― James Baldwin, Across Islands and Oceans

“I existed somewhere between yesterday’s memories and tomorrow’s expectations. The time allotted by the gods to a sedentary man with a sedentary mind can be too much; and yet, for a seeker, it is never enough.”
― James Baldwin, Across Islands and Oceans

“You can talk about doing a thing until everyone finally talks you out of it or you can actually do the thing.”
― James Baldwin, Across Islands and Oceans

“To be truly challenging, a voyage, like a life, must rest on a firm foundation of financial unrest.”
― James Baldwin, Across Islands and Oceans