Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
The sea does not hug you but holds you with weeds on dangerous rocks.
In plain terms
The ocean is cold and rough instead of warm and safe.
What can you take from it?
Nature does not care for human comfort.

Where it applies

  • nature writing
  • reflection
  • warning

Putting it to work

  • poetry
  • cautionary tale

Questions to consider

  • What keeps you safe in the wild?
  • Is nature cruel?

Another view

It personifies nature as hostile rather than simply indifferent.

More from Rudyard Kipling

  1. Cities and Thrones and Powers, Stand in Time's eye, Almost as long as flowers, Which daily die: But, as new buds put forth To glad new men, Out of the spent an…

    Permalink to quote #2
  2. Five and twenty ponies Trotting through the dark- Brandy for the Parson, 'Baccy for the Clerk. Them that asks no questions isn't told a lie - Watch the wall, m…

    Permalink to quote #3
  3. Of all the trees that grow so fair, Old England to adorn, Greater are none beneath the Sun, Than Oak, and Ash, and Thorn.

    Permalink to quote #4

Related quotes

  1. I take a wolf's rib and whittle it sharp at both ends and coil it up and freeze it in blubber and place it out on the fairway of the bears.

    Galway KinnellGalway Kinnell quote #4
  2. When I write 'paradise' I mean not only apple trees and golden women but also scorpions and tarantulas and flies, rattlesnakes and Gila monsters, sandstorms, v…

    Edward AbbeyEdward Abbey quote #25
  3. We live in an old chaos of the sun, Or an old dependency of day and night, Or island solitude, unsponsored, free, Of that wide water, inescapable. Deer walk up…

    Wallace StevensWallace Stevens quote #47