No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.
Quoted in James Boswell's The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1791), perhaps the most famous biography ever written. I don't think that Johnson (who was born on this date in 1709) was commenting on sailing generally, but rather was referring to life in the 18th-century British navy -- or marriage.
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| Dr. Johnson |
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