“The sea, once it casts its spell,
holds one in its net of wonder forever.”
Jacques Yves Cousteau
“Full fathom five thy father lies
Of his bones are coral made
Those are pearls that were his eyes
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea nymphs hourly ring his knell: Ding-dong
Hark! now I hear them,—Ding-dong, bell.”
William Shakespeare, The Tempest
“For life and death are one,
even as the river and the sea are one.”
Khalil Gibran
“The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.”
Vincent Van Gogh
“And so castles made of sand slips into the sea, eventually”
Jimi Hendrix
“Jeder Augenblick ist die Ewigkeit,
in der Verwandlung ist die Seele der Welt”
Max Beckmann
Wenn man dies alles, den ganzen Krieg, oder auch das ganze Leben
nur als eine Szene im Theater der Unendlichkeit auffaßt,
ist vieles leichter zu ertragen.
Max Beckmann
today not today 
Jorge Manrique was a late medieval/ early renaissance Spanish poet (mid-XV century), who left, in the “Couplets to the death of his father”, a beautiful poem in which echoes of several of the above thoughts may be found.
Particularly poignant is his comparison of each life as a river that ends in the sea, thus dying, it mattering not at all whether the river was big or small, weak or powerful.
“Nuestras vidas son los ríos
que van a dar en la mar,
que es el morir;
allí van los señoríos
derechos a se acabar
y consumir;
allí los ríos caudales,
allí los otros medianos
y más chicos,
y llegados, son iguales
los que viven por sus manos
y los ricos.”
Although much much more powerful in the original, Longfellow’s translation is not bad:
http://www.bartleby.com/356/478.html
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Thanx Lorenzo,
For your very nice contribution.
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