Quotes about spring
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“No matter that we could be beheaded for this,” said Esa. “Heads are overrated.”
“Yes, they are so unfashionable,” said Miri, imitating an Aslandian accent. “This spring, ladies of style are wearing their feathers in their necks.”

Shannon Hale (1974) American fantasy novelist

Source: Palace of Stone

“I stuck my head out the window this morning and spring kissed me bang in the face.”

Langston Hughes (1902–1967) American writer and social activist

Kiss

“One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of a March thaw, is the spring.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

“March: The Geese Return”, p. 18.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "January Thaw", "February: Good Oak" & "March: The Geese Return"

Summer

“But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person had died for no reason.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Moveable Feast

Source: A Moveable Feast

Personality

“Into the air, over the valleys, under the stars, above a river, a pond, a road, flew Cecy. Invisible as new spring winds, fresh as the breath of clover rising from twilight fields, she flew.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Star

“Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has
been, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed
there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Faith

“I can’t feel a thing; All mournful petal storms are dancing inside the very private spring of my head.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Milena

Source: Letters to Milena

Feeling, Dance

“The sun just touched the morning;
The morning, happy thing,
Supposed that he had come to dwell,
And life would be all spring.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Life, Happiness, Sun, Good Morning

“How mysterious it is, to be in love. For you can be in love with one who knows nothing of you. Perhpas our greatest happinesses spring from such longings-being in love with one who is oblivious of you.”

Joyce Carol Oates Little Bird of Heaven (1st edition)

Source: Little Bird of Heaven

Love, Happiness

“We eat the year away. We eat the spring and the summer and the fall. We wait for something to grow and then we eat it.”

Shirley Jackson book We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Source: We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Waiting, Summer

“Just like moons and suns,
With certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Hope, Sun

“Doesn't surprise me," Nana snorted. "I wouldn't put anything past your late husband."
"He's not dead, Nana."
Nana sighed. "Hope springs eternal.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Lucky One

Source: The Lucky One

Hope, Past, Dead

“And then, despite everything, I smiled and looked at the note and knew that spring would come —it always does. so I stared out that cold window, watching my breath collect on the glass, trying not to think about my life after the thaw.”

Ally Carter book Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover

Source: Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover

Life, Smile, Thinking

“To be interested in the changing seasons is… a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

Love, Change, Season

“Waitress: "And to drink?"
Artemis: "Spring water. Irish, if you have it. And no ice, please. As your ice is no doubt made from tap water, which rather defeats the purpose of spring water.”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Source: The Eternity Code

Drink, Water

“Nothing is ever finished and done with in this world. You may think a seed was finished and done with when it falls like a dead thing into the earth; but when it puts forth leaves and flowers next spring you see your mistake.”

Elizabeth Goudge book The Little White Horse

Source: The Little White Horse

World, Flowers, Thinking, Dead

“Spring work is going on with joyful enthusiasm.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

Source: The Wilderness World of John Muir

“Come with me into the woods where spring is
advancing, as it does, no matter what,
not being singular or particular, but one
of the forever gifts, and certainly visible.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Source: Dog Songs

“I never see that prettiest thing-
A cherry bough gone white with Spring-
But what I think, "How gay 'twould be
To hang me from a flowering tree.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Source: Not So Deep As A Well: Collected Poems

Flowers, Thinking, Tree

“I suppose the best kind of spring morning is the best weather God has to offer.”

Dodie Smith book I Capture the Castle

Source: I Capture the Castle

God, Weather

“It was a spring day, the sort that gives people hope: all soft winds and delicate smells of warm earth. Suicide weather.”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Girl, Interrupted (1994)

People, Hope, Suicide, Weather

“it's spring when the world is puddle-wonderful”

E.E. Cummings book Tulips and Chimneys

Tulips and Chimneys (1923) "in Just-"

World

“Nature is God's first missionary. Where there is no Bible there are sparkling stars. Where there are not preachers there are spring times…
If a person has nothing but nature, then nature is enough to reveal something about God.”

Max Lucado (1955) American clergyman and writer

God, Star, Nature, Time

“There are in this world blessed souls, whose sorrows all spring up into joys for others; whose earthly hopes, laid in the grave with many tears, are the seed from which spring healing flowers and balm for the desolate and the distressed.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe book Uncle Tom's Cabin

Source: Uncle Tom's Cabin

World, Hope, Soul, Flowers

“And the Spring arose on the garden fair,
Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere;
And each flower and herb on Earth's dark breast
Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

Source: The Complete Poems

Love, Dreams, Flowers

“In the spring of 1988, I returned to New Orleans, and as soon as I smelled the air, I knew I was home.
It was rich, almost sweet, like the scent of jasmine and roses around our old courtyard.
I walked the streets, savoring that long lost perfume.”

Anne Rice book Interview with the Vampire

Source: Interview with the Vampire

Home

“Beginnings are sudden, but also insidious. They creep up on you sideways, they keep to the shadows, they lurk unrecognized. Then, later, they spring.”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: The Blind Assassin

“Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people. There is no more mistaken path to happiness than worldliness.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Happiness, People

“(At the back of the cave, Phoebe placed her hand against one of the stones where a spring release opened an elevator door. Chris gave an over exaggerated gape.)
Holy Hand Grenade, Batman, it’s a bat cave. (Chris)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Kiss of the Night

“Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing.”

Kenneth Grahame book The Wind in the Willows

Opening lines, Ch. 1, "The River Bank"
Source: The Wind in the Willows (1908)
Context: The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home. First with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs, with a brush and a pail of whitewash; till he had dust in his throat and eyes, and splashes of whitewash all over his black fur, and an aching back and weary arms. Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing.

Housing

“Supreme resources spring from extreme resolutions.
Les Miserables, page 674”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

“But now it was spring again, and spring was almost unbearable for sensitive hearts. It drove creation to its utmost limits, it wafted its spice-laden breath even into the nostrils of the innocent.”

Knut Hamsun book Dreamers

Source: Dreamers

Heart

“Contentment and happiness didn't exist in my life for more than a few moments at a time, and they were really only illusionary. There was always something hidden. Lying in wait to spring up and ruin everything.”

Sylvia Day book Bared to You

Source: Bared to You

Life, Happiness, Lying, Time

“When you paint Spring, do not paint willows, plums, peaches, or apricots, but just paint Spring. To paint willows, plums, peaches, or apricots is to paint willows, plums, peaches, or apricots - it is not yet painting Spring.”

Dogen (1200–1253) Japanese Zen buddhist teacher

Painting

“Or maybe spring is the season of love and fall the season of mad lust. Spring for flirting but fall for the untamed delicious wild thing.”

Elizabeth Cohen American journalist

Source: The Hypothetical Girl

Love, Madness, Season

“Frey was the god of spring and summer! read the caption. He was the god of wealth, abundance, and fertility. His twin sister, Freya, the goddess of love, was very pretty! She had cats!”

Rick Riordan book The Sword of Summer

Source: The Sword of Summer

Love, God, Cats, Sister

“It was a nice day, and I don't mean that it was sunny either. It was humid and not too cool, like winter was getting annoyed with itself and wanted it to be spring just as much as everyone else.”

Gabrielle Zevin (1977) American writer

Winter

“Autumn is my spring!”

August Strindberg A Dream Play

Source: A Dream Play

Autumn

“Wishes cannot be summoned up or kept away at will. They come from deeper within us than good or bad intentions. And they spring up unannounced.”

Michael Ende book The Neverending Story

Source: The Neverending Story

“The ghostly winter silence had given way to the great spring murmur of awakening life.”

Jack London book Call of the Wild

Source: The Call of the Wild

Life, Way, Silence, Winter

“When I can feel you breathing into me i, like a stone gargoyle
atop some crumbling building,
spring to life
a resuscitated
angel.”

Saul Williams (1972) American singer, musician, poet, writer, and actor

Source: , said the shotgun to the head.

Life, Angels, Feeling

“On soft Spring nights I'll stand in the yard under the stars - Something good will come out of all things yet - And it will be golden and eternal just like that - There's no need to say another word.”

Jack Kerouac book Big Sur

Source: Big Sur

Star, Night

“When snow melts, what does it become?'
It becomes water, of course'
Wrong! It becomes spring!”

Natsuki Takaya (1973) Manga artist

Water

“There was nothing like having a dead husband return from the grave to ruin a fine spring morning.”

Jayne Ann Krentz (1948) American novelist

Source: Second Sight

Dead

“Revolutions spring not from accident, but from necessity. A revolution is a return from the factitious to the real. It takes place because it must.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

“Like so many substantial citizens of America, he had married young and kept on marrying, springing from blonde to blonde like the chamois of the Alps leaping from crag to crag.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Summer Moonshine

Source: Summer Moonshine (1938)

“People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Source: A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition

Happiness, People

“All our discontents about what we want appeared to me to spring from the want of thankfulness for what we have.”

Daniel Defoe La vie et les aventures de Robinson Crusoe

Source: Robinson Crusoe

Appearance

“[I]sn't it sad to go to your grave without ever wondering why you were born? Who, with such a thought, would not spring from bed, eager to resume discovering the world and rejoicing to be part of it?”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

Source: Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder

World, Sadness, Parting

“Don't go fighting against the Spring.”

E.M. Forster book A Room with a View

Source: A Room with a View

Fight

“The doctor says there are such boys springing up amongst us—boys of a sort unknown in the last generation—the outcome of new views of life. They seem to see all its terrors before they are old enough to have staying power to resist them. He says it is the beginning of the coming universal wish not to live.”

Thomas Hardy book Jude the Obscure

Jude the Obscure

Life, Boy, Universe

“When one flower blooms spring awakens everywhere”

John O'Donohue (1956–2008) Irish writer, priest and philosopher

Flowers

“You needn't worry about your appearance, my dear, because true beauty springs from the heart and dwells in the eyes.”

Judith McNaught (1944) American writer

Source: Something Wonderful

Beauty, Appearance, Heart

“It seemed to happen in springs, the revealing of things.”

Aimee Bender (1969) Novelist, short story writer

Source: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

“What dire offence from amorous causes springs,
What mighty contests rise from trivial things!”

Alexander Pope The Rape of the Lock

Canto I, line 1.
Source: The Rape of the Lock (1712, revised 1714 and 1717)

“If you think you can grasp me, think again:
my story flows in more than one direction
a delta springing from the riverbed
with its five fingers spread”

Adrienne Rich (1929–2012) American poet, essayist and feminist

Source: Time's Power

Thinking

“even after all these winters, I see you sitting there, perched at the edge of sunlight, feeling like the invitation of spring”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Feeling, Winter

“The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring.”

James Joyce Ulysses

Source: Ulysses

Life, Art, Question

“I believe that true identity is found… in creative activity springing from within. It is found, paradoxically, when one loses oneself. Woman can best refind herself in some kind of creative activity of her own.”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906–2001) American aviator and author

“wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

Four VII
is 5 (1926)

Wisdom, Fate, World, Fools

“That is beautiful which is produced by the inner need, which springs from the soul.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

Source: Concerning the Spiritual in Art

Beauty, Soul

“The rosy gleam of his lip, the fevered gleam of his eyes. There was not a line anywhere on his face, nothing creased or graying; all crisp. He was spring, golden and bright. Envious death would drink his blood, and grow young again.”

Madeline Miller book The Song of Achilles

Source: The Song of Achilles

Death, Drink

“Sunk in the grass of an empty lot on a spring Saturday, I split the stems of milkweed and thought about ants and peach pits and death and where the world went when I closed my eyes.”

Toni Morrison book The Bluest Eye

Source: The Bluest Eye

Death, World, Grass

“The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives. It is within this light that we form those ideas by which we pursue our magic and make it realized. This is poetry as illumination, for it is through poetry that we give name to those ideas which are, until the poem, nameless and formless-about to be birthed, but already felt. That distillation of experience from which true poetry springs births thought as dream births concept, as feeling births idea, as knowledge births (precedes) understanding.”

Audre Lorde (1934–1992) writer and activist

"Poetry is Not a Luxury"
Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)

Dreams, Hope, Feeling, Idea

“Fuckin' A… hope didn't so much spring eternal as it drowned out common sense and self-preservation.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Mine

Hope, Sense

“Because when spring comes, it melts the snow one flake at a time”

Khaled Hosseini book The Kite Runner

Source: The Kite Runner

Time

“How many Sundays – how many hundreds of Sundays like this – lay ahead of me? “Quiet, peaceful and lonely,” I said aloud to myself. On Sundays i didn't wind my spring.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

Peace

“I think you have a case of either 'testitis' or 'I Didn't Do My Homework Syndrome'. It's common in the Spring.”

Ellen Schreiber (1967) American writer

Source: Vampireville

Thinking

“In the spring of her twenty-second year, Sumire fell in love for the first time in her life.”

Haruki Murakami book Sputnik Sweetheart

Source: Sputnik Sweetheart

Love, Life, Time

“Look well into thyself; there is a source of strength which will always spring up if thou wilt always look.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

Faith

“Look it Gollum, if you spring me, I’ll help you find your Precious.--Regin”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Dreams of a Dark Warrior

Help

“The most delicious sensation of all is the re-birth of healthy human love. Spring coming back to Earth!”

Aleister Crowley book Diary of a Drug Fiend

Source: Diary of a Drug Fiend

Love, Birth

“At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice, and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow (1952)
Source: Complete Essays 1, 1920-25

Stupidity, Motivation

“When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.”

James Crumley book The Last Good Kiss

Source: The Last Good Kiss

Alcohol, Drink, Beer, Heart

“Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Winter, Heart, Beauty

“Nor does God whisper through the trees. His voice is not to be mistaken. When men hear it they fall to their knees and their souls are riven and they cry out to Him and there is no fear but only wildness of heart that springs from such longing…”

Cormac McCarthy book The Crossing

Source: The Crossing

Men, God, Fear, Soul

“I love people. I love my family, my children … but inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that's where you renew your springs that never dry up.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

As quoted in The New York Post (26 April 1959)

Love, Children, People, Family

“April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.”

T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land

Source: The Waste Land (1922), Line 1 et seq.

Memory, Dead

“Those people cannot enjoy comfortably what God has given them because they see and covet what He has not given them. All of our discontents for what we want appear to me to spring from want of thankfulness for what we have.”

Daniel Defoe La vie et les aventures de Robinson Crusoe

Source: Robinson Crusoe (1719), Ch. 9, A Boat.
Context: I learned to look more upon the bright side of my condition, and less upon the dark side, and to consider what I enjoyed rather than what I wanted; and this gave me sometimes such secret comforts, that I cannot express them; and which I take notice of here, to put those discontented people in mind of it, who cannot enjoy comfortably what God has given them, because they see and covet something that He has not given them. All our discontents about what we want appeared to me to spring from the want of thankfulness for what we have.

God, People, Appearance

“Is the spring coming?" he said. "What is it like?"…
"It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine…”

Frances Hodgson Burnett The Secret Garden

Source: The Secret Garden

Sun

“You know the law, Dresden."
"He who kills the cheer springs for beer," chanted the rest of the table.”

Jim Butcher book Backup

Source: Backup

Law, Beer

“O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”

Percy Bysshe Shelley book Ode to the West Wind

St. V
Source: Ode to the West Wind (1819)
Context: Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

Winter, Beauty

“Not forever does the bulbul sing
In balmy shades of bowers,
Not forever lasts the spring
Nor ever blossom the flowers.
Not forever reigneth joy,
Sets the sun on days of bliss,
Friendships not forever last,
They know not life, who know not this.”

Khushwant Singh Train to Pakistan

Source: Train to Pakistan

Life, Friendship, Flowers, Singing

“Some people fall head over heels. Other people begin to fall without even knowing it—love grows like a spring flower beneath last autumn’s leaves and catches them by surprise.”

Elizabeth Chandler (1954) writer

Source: Summer in the City

Love, People, Flowers, Autumn

“Except. What is normal at any given time? We change just as the seasons change, and each spring brings new growth. So nothing is ever quite the same.”

Sherwood Smith book Crown Duel

Source: Crown Duel

Change, Time, Season

“Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never Is, but always To be blest.
The soul, uneasy, and confin'd from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.”

Alexander Pope An Essay on Man

Source: An Essay on Man

Life, Hope, Home, Soul

“I loved and adored you, but I drained you like a thirsty man at a spring. I loved what you could give me - your admiration, your acceptance, your love, your forgiveness. I forgot to love you for yourself.”

Jennifer Ashley (1974) American author

Source: Lady Isabella's Scandalous Marriage

Love, Forgiveness

“Sadness is the matrix from which wit and irony spring; sadness is uncomfortable and creative, which is why consumer society cannot tolerate it.”

Germaine Greer (1939) Australian feminist author

Sadness

“What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good again.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Katniss and Peeta (p. 388; closing words of the main text)
Source: The Hunger Games trilogy, Mockingjay (2010)
Context: I know this would have happened anyway. That what I need to survive is not Gale's fire, kindled with rage and hatred. I have plenty of fire myself. What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good again. And only Peeta can give me that.
So after, when he whispers, "You love me. Real or not real?"
I tell him, "Real."

Life, Loss

“Always it’s Spring)and everyone’s in love and flowers pick themselves.”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

Source: 100 Selected Poems

Love, Flowers