Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom on the mountains. Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The wind will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.
—John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American Naturalist
Autumn, in his leafless bowers, is waiting for the winter’s snow.
—John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–92) American Quaker Poet, Abolitionist
There is a harmony in autumn, and a luster in its sky, which through the summer is not heard or seen, as if it could not be, as if it had not been!
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Poet, Dramatist, Essayist, Novelist
The teeming Autumn big with rich increase, bearing the wanton burden of the prime like widowed wombs after their lords decease.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
The tints of autumn—a mighty flower garden, blossoming under the spell of the enchanter, frost.
—John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–92) American Quaker Poet, Abolitionist
If you don’t sow in the spring, you will not reap in the autumn.
—Irish Proverb
Autumn arrives in early morning, but spring at the close of a winter day.
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973) Irish Novelist, Short-story Writer
All those golden autumn days the sky was full of wings. Wings beating low over the blue water of Silver Lake, wings beating high in the blue air far above it . . . bearing them all away to the green fields in the South.
—Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867–1957) American Children’s Novelist
Do not stand at my grave and weep; I am not there. I do not sleep. I am a thousand winds that blow. I am the diamond glints on snow. I am the sunlight on ripened grain. I am the gentle autumn’s rain. When you awaken in the morning’s hush, I am the swift uplifting rush of quiet birds in circled flight. I am the soft stars that shine at night. Do not stand at my grave and cry; I am not there. I did not die.
—Anonymous
A moral character is attached to autumnal scenes.—The flowers fading like our hopes, the leaves falling like our years, the clouds fleeting like our illusions, the light diminishing like our intelligence, the sun growing colder like our affections, the rivers becoming frozen like our lives—all bear secret relations to our destinies.
—Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand (1768–1848) French Writer, Academician, Statesman
O suns and skies and clouds of June, and flowers of June together. Ye cannot rival for one hour October’s bright blue weather.
—Helen Hunt Jackson (1830–85) American Novelist, Civil Rights Activist
No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace as I have seen in one autumnal face.
—John Donne (1572–1631) English Poet, Cleric
We are reformers in the spring and summer, but in autumn we stand by the old. Reformers in the morning, and conservers at night.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Season of mist and mellow fruitfulness.
—John Keats (1795–1821) English Poet
It was, as I have said, a fine autumnal day; the sky was clear and serene, and nature wore that rich and golden livery which we always associate with the idea of abundance. The forests had put on their sober brown and yellow, while some trees of the tenderer kind had been nipped by the frosts into brilliant dyes of orange, purple, and scarlet.
—Washington Irving (1783–1859) American Essayist, Biographer, Historian
The leaves in autumn do not change color from the blighting touch of frost, but from the process of natural decay.—They fall when the fruit is ripened, and their work is done.—And their splendid coloring is but their graceful and beautiful surrender of life when they have finished their summer offering of service to God and man. And one of the great lessons the fall of the leaf teaches, is this: Do your work well, and then be ready to depart when God shall call.
—Tryon Edwards American Theologian
Autumn is a season followed immediately by looking forward to spring.
—Doug Larson (1926–2017) American Columnist
Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (1819–80) English Novelist
My sorrow, when she’s here with me, thinks these dark days of autumn rain are beautiful as days can be; she loves the bare, the withered tree; she walks the sodden pasture lane.
—Robert Frost (1874–1963) American Poet
Clouds of insects danced and buzzed in the golden autumn light, and the air was full of the piping of the song-birds. Long, glinting dragonflies shot across the path, or hung tremulous with gauzy wings and gleaming bodies.
—Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) Scottish Writer
Wild is the music of autumnal winds the faded woods.
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Poet
A wind has blown the rain away and blown the sky away and all the leaves away, and the trees stand. I think, I, too, have known autumn too long.
—e. e. cummings (1894–1962) American Poet, Writer, Painter
O, it sets my heart a clickin’ like the tickin’ of a clock, when the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock.
—James Whitcomb Riley (1849–1916) American Children’s Books Writer, Poet, Writer
Magnificent autumn! He comes not like a pilgrim, clad in russet weeds; not like a hermit, clad in gray; but like a warrior with the stain of blood on his brazen mail.—His crimson scarf is rent; his scarlet banner dripping with gore; his step like a flail on the threshing floor.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82) American Poet, Educator, Academic
Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.
—Albert Camus (1913–60) Algerian-born French Philosopher, Dramatist, Essayist, Novelist, Author
Autumn wins you best by this, its mute appeal to sympathy for its decay.
—Robert Browning (1812–89) English Poet
Summer makes me drowsy. Autumn makes me sing. Winter’s pretty lousy, but I hate Spring.
—Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American Humorist, Journalist