Two Years Before the Mast Quotes

“There is a witchery in the sea, its songs and stories, and in the mere sight of a ship, and the sailor's dress, especially to a young mind, which has done more to man navies, and fill merchantmen, than all the pressgangs of Europe.”
― Richard Henry Dana Jr., Two Years Before the Mast: A Sailor's Life at Sea

“Yet a sailor's life is at best, but a mixture of a little good with much evil, and a little pleasure with much pain. The beautiful is linked with the revolting, the sublime with the commonplace, and the solemn with the ludicrous.”
― Richard Henry Dana Jr., Two Years Before the Mast: A Sailor's Life at Sea

“A dozen men are shut up together in a little bark upon the wide, wide sea, and for months and months see no forms and hear no voices but their own, and one is taken suddenly from among them, and they miss him at every turn. It is like losing a limb. There are no new faces or new scenes to fill up the gap. There is always an empty berth in the forecastle, and one man wanting when the small night-watch is mustered. There is one less to take the wheel, and one less to lay out with you upon the yard. You miss his form, and the sound of his voice, for habit had made them almost necessary to you, and each of your senses feels the loss.”
― Richard Henry Dana Jr., Two Years Before the Mast: A Sailor's Life at Sea

“The Californians are an idle, thriftless people, and can make nothing for themselves.”
― Richard Henry Dana Jr., Two Years Before the Mast: A Sailor's Life at Sea

“They seem to be a doomed people. The curse of a people calling themselves Christian, seems to follow them everywhere;”
― Richard Henry Dana Jr., Two Years Before the Mast: A Sailor's Life at Sea

“Let him then have powers commensurate with his utmost possible need, only let him be held strictly responsible for the exercise of them. Any other course would be injustice as well as bad policy”
― Richard Henry Dana Jr., Two Years Before the Mast: A Sailor's Life at Sea

“So quiet, too, was the sea, and so steady the breeze, that if these sails had been sculptured marble they could not have been more motionless. Not a ripple upon the surface of the canvas; not even a quivering of the extreme edges of the sail, so perfectly were they distended by the breeze. I was so lost in the sight that I forgot the presence of the man who came out with me, until he said (for he, too, rough old man-of-war’s-man as he was, had been gazing at the show), half to himself, still looking at the marble sails,— ``How quietly they do their work!”
― Richard Henry Dana Jr., Two Years Before the Mast

“There is not so helpless and pitiable an object in the world as a landsman beginning a sailor's life.”
― Richard Henry Dana Jr., Two Years Before the Mast: A Sailor's Life at Sea

“work hard, live hard, die hard, and go to hell after all, would be hard indeed!”
― Richard Henry Dana Jr., Two Years Before the Mast: A Sailor's Life at Sea

“There is no prettier sight in the world than a full-rigged, clipper-built brig, sailing sharp on the wind.”
― Richard Henry Dana Jr., Two Years Before the Mast

“September 22d, when, upon coming on deck at seven bells in the morning, we found the other watch aloft throwing water upon the sails; and, looking astern, we saw a small clipper-built brig with a black hull heading directly after us. We went to work immediately, and put all the canvas upon the brig which we could get upon her, rigging out oars for extra studding-sail yards, and continued wetting down the sails by buckets of water whipped up to the mast-head, until about nine o’clock, when there came on a drizzling rain. The vessel continued in pursuit, changing her course as we changed ours, to keep before the wind. The captain, who watched her with his glass, said that she was armed, and full of men, and showed no colors. We continued running dead before the wind, knowing that we sailed better so, and that clippers are fastest on the wind. We had also another advantage. The wind was light, and we spread more canvas than she did, having royals and sky-sails fore and aft, and ten studding-sails; while she, being an hermaphrodite brig, had only a gaff topsail aft. Early in the morning she was overhauling us a little, but after the rain came on and the wind grew lighter, we began to leave her astern. All hands remained on deck throughout the day, and we got our fire-arms in order; but we were too few to have done anything with her, if she had proved to be what we feared. Fortunately there was no moon, and the night which followed was exceedingly dark, so that, by putting out all the”
― Richard Henry Dana Jr., Two Years Before the Mast

“If California ever becomes a prosperous country, this bay will be the centre of its prosperity.”
― Richard Henry Dana Jr., Two Years Before the Mast: A Sailor's Life at Sea

“know there are many men who, when a few cases of great hardship occur, and it is evident that there is an evil somewhere, think that some arrangement must be made, some law passed, or some society got up, to set all right at once. On this subject there can be no call for any such movement; on the contrary, I fully believe that any public and strong action would do harm, and that we must be satisfied to labor in the less easy and less exciting task of gradual improvement, and abide the issue of things working slowly together for good. Equally”
― Richard Henry Dana Jr., Two Years Before the Mast: A Sailor's Life at Sea

“We must come down from our heights, and leave our straight paths, for the byways and low places of life, if we would learn truths by strong contrasts; and in hovels, in forecastles, and among our own outcasts in foreign lands, see what has been wrought upon our fellow-creatures by accident, hardship, or vice. Two”
― Richard Henry Dana Jr., Two Years Before the Mast: A Sailor's Life at Sea

“The sail being nearly all forward, it lifted her out of the water, and she seemed actually to jump from sea to sea. From the time her keel was laid, she had never been so driven; and had it been life or death with every one of us, she could not have borne another stitch of canvas.”
― Richard Henry Dana Jr., Two Years Before the Mast

“A sailor's liberty is but for a day; yet while it lasts it is perfect.”
― Richard Henry Dana Jr., Two Years Before the Mast: A Sailor's Life at Sea

“A well man at sea has little sympathy with one who is seasick; he is too apt to be conscious of a comparison favorable to his own manhood.”
― Richard Henry Dana Jr., Two Years Before the Mast: A Sailor's Life at Sea

“Monterey, as far as my observation goes, is decidedly the pleasantest and most civilized-looking place in California.”
― Richard Henry Dana Jr., Two Years Before the Mast: A Sailor's Life at Sea

“one of the finest sights that I have ever seen, was an albatross asleep upon the water, during a calm, off Cape Horn, when a heavy sea was running. There being no breeze, the surface of the water was unbroken, but a long, heavy swell was rolling, and we saw the fellow, all white, directly ahead of us, asleep upon the waves, with his head under his wing; now rising on the top of a huge billow, and then falling slowly until he was lost in the hollow between. He was undisturbed for some time, until the noise of our bows, gradually approaching, roused him, when, lifting his head, he stared upon us for a moment, and then spread his wide wings and took his flight.”
― Richard Henry Dana Jr., Two Years Before the Mast: A Sailor's Life at Sea

“As has often been said, a ship is like a lady's watch, always out of repair.”
― Richard Henry Dana Jr., Two Years Before the Mast: A Sailor's Life at Sea

“With all my imperfections on my head," I joined the crew, and we hauled out into the stream, and came to anchor for the night.”
― Richard Henry Dana Jr., Two Years Before the Mast: A Sailor's Life at Sea

“With the sailor, as with all other men in fact, the cultivation of the intellect, and the spread of what is commonly called useful knowledge, while religious instruction is neglected, is little else than changing an ignorant sinner into an intelligent and powerful one.”
― Richard Henry Dana Jr., Two Years Before the Mast: A Sailor's Life at Sea

“H. H. Bancroft's History of the Pacific States of North America.”
― Richard Henry Dana Jr., Two Years Before the Mast: A Sailor's Life at Sea

“George Wharton James's In and out of the old Missions of California,”
― Richard Henry Dana Jr., Two Years Before the Mast: A Sailor's Life at Sea

“Bryant, Sturgis, & Co.”
― Richard Henry Dana. Jr, Two Years Before the Mast

“My better nature returned strong upon me. Everything was in accordance with my state of feeling, and I experienced a glow of pleasure at finding that what of poetry and romance I ever had in me had not been entirely deadened by the laborious life, with its paltry, vulgar associations, which I had been leading.”
― Richard Henry Dana. Jr, Two Years Before the Mast

“The Californians are an idle, thriftless people, and can make nothing for themselves. The country abounds in grapes, yet they buy, at a great price, bad wine made in Boston and brought round by us, and retail it among themselves at a real (12 1/2 cents) by the small wineglass.”
― Richard Henry Dana. Jr, Two Years Before the Mast

“you hear his voice, and in an instant he is gone, and nothing but a vacancy shows his loss. Then, too, at sea—to use a homely but expressive phrase—you miss a man so much. A dozen men are shut up together in a little bark, upon the wide, wide sea, and for months and months see no forms and hear no voices but their own, and one is taken suddenly from among them, and they miss him at every turn. It is like losing a limb. There are no new faces or new scenes to fill up the gap. There is always an empty berth in the forecastle, and one man wanting when the small night watch is mustered. There is one less to take the wheel, and one less to lay out with you upon the yard. You miss his form, and the sound of his voice, for habit had made them almost necessary to you, and each of your senses feels the loss.”
― Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before the Mast

“The prospect of a change is a green spot in the desert, and the probability of great events and exciting scenes creates a feeling of delight, and sets life in motion, so as to give a pleasure which any one not in the same state would be unable to explain.”
― Richard Henry Dana Jr., Two Years Before the Mast

“There he lived in solitary grandeur, eating and sleeping alone (and these were his principal occupations), and communing with his own dignity”
― Richard Henry Dana Jr., Two Years Before the Mast; A Personal Narrative