One reader pulls up this WFB quote in response to my bleg:

WFB has some great stuff in his address to the American Society of Newspaper
Editors on April 19, 1968:
“The sea is the creature which, at the margin, can drown the sailor. But
however tempestuous, however arbitrary, however sullen the sea can be-
however much like an editor [or America-hating professor]- the sea maintains
its basic integrity; and if the sailor observes the rules, if he maintains
his guard, if he propitiates the elements, he is permitted to survive and
the experience is sublime.”