Summer, with its dog days, its vacations, its distractions, is over. We have had our holidays, our rest, our recreation. The fall season, with its new opportunities for effort, enterprise and achievement, is upon us. Let us rip off our coats and get down to business. We may have allowed pessimism to grip us during the summer months. We may even have allowed laziness to enter our bones. Now it is up to us to throw off both lassitude and pessimism. The time has come for action, for aggressiveness. … .
—B. C. Forbes (1880–1954) Scottish-born American Journalist, Publisher
We must always change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves; otherwise we harden.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
April comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.
—Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) American Poet, Playwright, Feminist
Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple tree.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English Poet, Literary Critic, Philosopher
When chill November’s surly blast make fields and forest bare.
—Robert Burns (1759–96) Scottish Poet, Songwriter
Spring is not the best of seasons. Cold and flu are two good reasons; wind and rain and other sorrow, warm today and cold tomorrow. Whoever said Spring was romantic? The word that best applies is frantic!
—Unknown
The spring comes slowly up this way.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English Poet, Literary Critic, Philosopher
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 first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of a world and wake up in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment then where is it to be found?
—J. B. Priestley (1894–1984) English Novelist, Playwright, Critic
Autumn wins you best by this, its mute appeal to sympathy for its decay.
—Robert Browning (1812–89) English Poet
In a way winter is the real spring, the time when the inner things happen, the resurge of nature.
—Edna O’Brien (b.1932) Irish Novelist, Short-Story Writer
Spring is when life’s alive in everything.
—Christina Rossetti (1830–94) English Poet, Hymn Writer
Many of the phenomena of Winter are suggestive of an inexpressible tenderness and fragile delicacy. We are accustomed to hear this king described as a rude and boisterous tyrant; but with the gentleness of a lover he adorns the tresses of Summer.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
The seasons are what a symphony ought to be: four perfect movements in harmony with each other.
—Arthur Rubinstein (1888–1982) Polish-born American Pianist
True silence is the rest of the mind, and is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment. It is a great virtue: it covers folly, keeps secrets, avoids disputes, and prevents sin.
—William Penn (1644–1718) American Entrepreneur, Political leader, Philosopher
At Christmas I no more desire a rose Than wish a snow in May’s new-fangled mirth; But like of each thing that in season grows.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
January gray is here, like a sexton by her grave; February bears the bier, march with grief doth howl and rave, and April weeps—but, O ye hours! Follow with May’s fairest flowers.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Poet, Dramatist, Essayist, Novelist
Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it.
—Russell Baker (1925–2019) American Journalist, Humorist, Television Host
Autumn arrives in early morning, but spring at the close of a winter day.
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973) Irish Novelist, Short-story Writer
No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace as I have seen in one autumnal face.
—John Donne (1572–1631) English Poet, Cleric
The tendinous part of the mind, so to speak, is more developed in winter; the fleshy, in summer. I should say winter has given the bone and sinew to literature, summer the tissues and blood.
—John Burroughs (1837–1921) American Naturalist, Writer
Indoors or out, no one relaxes
In March, that month of wind and taxes,
The wind will presently disappear,
The taxes last us all year.
—Ogden Nash (1902–71) American Writer of Sophisticated Light Verse
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
Youth is like spring, an over-praised season more remarkable for biting winds than genial breezes. Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits.
—Samuel Butler
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
Like spring, but it is too young. I like summer, but it is too proud. So I like best of all autumn, because its tone is mellower, its colors are richer, and it is tinged with a little sorrow. Its golden richness speaks not of the innocence of spring, nor the power of summer, but of the mellowness and kindly wisdom of approaching age. It knows the limitations of life and its content.
—Lin Yutang (1895–1976) Chinese Author, Philologist
Summer: The time of year that children slam the door they left open all winter.
—Anonymous
Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each. Let them be your only diet, drink, and botanical medicines.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
Only with winter-patience can we bring
The deep desired, long-awaited spring.
—Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906–2001) American Aviator, Author
It is a great thing to know the season for speech and the season for silence.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (c.4 BCE–65 CE) Roman Stoic Philosopher, Statesman, Tragedian