Quotes about summer

A collection of quotes on the topic of spring, winter, season, autumn.

Best quotes about summer

Edgar Allan Poe photo

“Sound loves to revel in a summer night.”

Al Aaraaf (1829).

Peter Higgs photo

“This summer I have discovered something totally useless.”

Peter Higgs (1929) British physicist

Writing to a colleague about his proposal for a particle at the origin of mass (1964), as quoted in The Hunt for the Higgs Boson http://www.sciencescotland.org/feature.php?id=14, Science Scotland, issue no. 3.

William Shakespeare photo

“Summer's lease hath all too short a date.”

Source: Sonnets (1609), XVIII
Source: Shakespeare's Sonnets
Context: Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date

Sebastian Faulks photo

“The end-of-summer winds make people restless.”

Source: Engleby

William Shakespeare photo

“Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?”

Source: Shakespeare's Sonnets

Tom Robbins photo

“Summer had come to sit on New York's face.”

Source: Skinny Legs and All

“Why is summer mist romantic and autumn mist just sad?”

Source: I Capture the Castle

Ray Bradbury photo

“Summer quiet thoughts on summer quiet noons.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Now and Forever

Scott Westerfeld photo

“The early summer sky was the color of cat vomit.”

Source: Uglies

Quotes about summer

Osamu Dazai photo
John Donne photo

“No spring, nor summer beauty hath such grace,
As I have seen in one autumnal face.”

John Donne (1572–1631) English poet

No. 9, The Autumnal, line 1
Elegies
Source: The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose

Lemmy Kilmister photo
Tove Jansson photo
Xenophon photo
Khalil Gibran photo
Aristotle photo
Tove Jansson photo
Charles Lamb photo
Lin Yutang photo
Yoko Ono photo
H.P. Lovecraft photo
Emily Dickinson photo
Sergei Rachmaninoff photo
Rita Hayworth photo

“Dancing in Tijuana when I was 13 — that was my "summer camp." How else do you think I could keep up with Fred Astaire when I was 19?”

Rita Hayworth (1918–1987) American actress, dancer and director

As quoted in New York Times (25 October 1970)

Yi-Fu Tuan photo
Nâzım Hikmet photo
George Orwell photo
Albert Camus photo
Edna St. Vincent Millay photo

“I know I am but summer to your heart,
and not the full four seasons of the year.”

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) American poet

Source: I know I am but summer to your heart (Sonnet XXVII)

Margaret Wise Brown photo

“Nights and days came and passed
And summer and winter
and the rain.
And it was good to be a little Island.
A part of the world
and a world of its own
All surrounded by the bright blue sea.”

Variant: nights and days came and passed
and summer and winter
and the sun and the wind
and the rain.
and it was good to be a little island
a part of the world
and a world of its own
all surrounded by the bright blue sea.
Source: The Little Island

A.A. Milne photo
Yukio Mishima photo
William Shakespeare photo

“Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York.”

Richard, Act I, scene i.
Variant: Now is the winter of our discontent.
Source: Richard III (1592–3)

Madeline Miller photo
Nora Roberts photo
Virginia Woolf photo
Oscar Wilde photo
Lewis Carroll photo

“I wonder if the snowthe trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, "Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

Source: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

Sylvia Plath photo
Rabindranath Tagore photo
Mark Twain photo

“The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Often attributed to Twain, but of unknown origin. http://www.pbs.org/marktwain/scrapbook/04_trouble/ http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=009Ckt http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/08/19/MNGOBEA9JI1.DTL This entry from Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/11/30/coldest-winter/ discusses some possible early sources.
Twain did write, in Roughing It http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3177/3177.txt:
The climate of San Francisco is mild and singularly equable. The thermometer stands at about seventy degrees the year round. It hardly changes at all. You sleep under one or two light blankets Summer and Winter, and never use a mosquito bar. Nobody ever wears Summer clothing. You wear black broadcloth--if you have it--in August and January, just the same. It is no colder, and no warmer, in the one month than the other. You do not use overcoats and you do not use fans. It is as pleasant a climate as could well be contrived, take it all around, and is doubtless the most unvarying in the whole world. The wind blows there a good deal in the summer months, but then you can go over to Oakland, if you choose--three or four miles away--it does not blow there.
Misattributed

Lewis Carroll photo

“I'd give all the wealth that years have piled,
the slow result of life's decay,
To be once more a little child
for one bright summer day.”

Solitude (1853), conclusion
Three Sunsets and Other Poems (1898)
Context: p>Ye golden hours of Life's young spring,
Of innocence, of love and truth!
Bright, beyond all imagining,
Thou fairy-dream of youth!I'd give all wealth that years have piled,
The slow result of Life's decay,
To be once more a little child
For one bright summer-day.</p

John Keats photo

“I almost wish we were butterflies and liv'd but three summer days - three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Source: Bright Star: Love Letters and Poems of John Keats to Fanny Brawne

Oscar Wilde photo
Lewis Carroll photo
Lewis Carroll photo
Paul Klee photo

“The changeover was complete; in the summer of 1907 I devoted myself entirely to the appearance of nature and upon these studies built my black-and-white landscapes on glass, 1907/1908.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Quote (1908), # 831, in The Diaries of Paul Klee; University of California Press, 1964; as quoted by Francesco Mazzaferro, in 'The Diaries of Paul Klee - Part Three' : Klee as a Secessionist and a Neo-Impressionist Artist http://letteraturaartistica.blogspot.nl/2015/05/paul-klee-ev.html
1903 - 1910

Paul Simon photo
Emil M. Cioran photo
Herman Melville photo
Kurt Vonnegut photo
Taylor Swift photo
Frederick Brotherton Meyer photo
Tommy Lee photo
W.B. Yeats photo

“Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter, seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.”

St. 3
Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), Easter, 1916 http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1477/

Henri Barbusse photo
C.G. Jung photo
Claude Monet photo
Ronnie Coleman photo

“I want to help the up-and-coming kids. A lot of times, kids don't have much to do in the summer time. When I was a kid I didn't do nothing. I want to get body building out there and it will start with the younger generation.”

Ronnie Coleman (1964) American bodybuilder

Raymond Linex (June 12, 1998) "Strong arm of the law - Arlington policeman sets sights on Mr. Olympia title", The Dallas Morning News, p. 1B.

Reinhold Niebuhr photo
Kurt Vonnegut photo
Ozzy Osbourne photo
Bertrand Russell photo

“Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1920s, Sceptical Essays (1928), Ch. 2: Dreams and Facts

Leonardo Da Vinci photo
Robert Browning photo

“Wanting is—what?
Summer redundant,
Blueness abundant,
Where is the blot?”

Robert Browning (1812–1889) English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era

Wanting—is what?
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Mark Twain photo

“Warm summer sun, shine kindly here;
Warm southern wind, blow softly here;
Green sod above, lie light, lie light —
Good-night, dear heart, good-night, good-night.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Epitaph for his daughter, Olivia Susan Clemens (1896), this is actually a slight adaptation of the poem "Annette" by Robert Richardson; more details are available at "The Poem on Susy Clemens' Headstone" http://www.twainquotes.com/headstone.html
Misattributed

Mark Twain photo
Vladimir Nabokov photo
Mark Twain photo

“France has neither winter nor summer nor morals. Apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Mark Twain's Notebook (1935)

Edgar Allan Poe photo

“Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,
The Elfin from the green grass, and from me
The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?”

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) American author, poet, editor and literary critic

" Sonnet. To Science http://library.thinkquest.org/11840/Poe/science.html", l. 12-14 (1829).

Albert Camus photo

“O light! This is the cry of all the characters of ancient drama brought face to face with their fate. This last resort was ours, too, and I knew it now. In the middle of winter I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer.”

Albert Camus (1913–1960) French author and journalist

Return to Tipasa (1954)
Variant translation: In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
As translated in Lyrical and Critical Essays (1968), p. 169; also in The Unquiet Vision : Mirrors of Man in Existentialism (1969) by Nathan A. Scott, p. 116

Zhuangzi photo
Samuel Rutherford photo

“Let your children be as so many flowers, borrowed from God. If the flowers die or wither, thank God for a summer loan of them.”

Samuel Rutherford (1600–1661) Scottish Reformed theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 51.

Mike Shinoda photo
Victor Villaseñor photo
Rainer Maria Rilke photo

“Lord: it is time. The summer was immense.
Let thine shadows upon the sundials fall,
and unleash the winds upon the open fields.”

Herr: es ist Zeit. Der Sommer war sehr groß.
Leg deinen Schatten auf die Sonnenuhren,
und auf den Fluren laß die Winde los.
Herbsttag (Autumn Day) (as translated by Cliff Crego)
Das Buch der Bilder (The Book of Images) (1902)

Richard Henry Stoddard photo
Alice Cooper photo

“Well we can't salute ya
Can't find a flag
If that don't suit ya
That's a drag School's out for summer
School's out forever
School's been blown to pieces.”

Alice Cooper (1948) American rock singer, songwriter and musician

"School's Out" - Lyrics online http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=596.
School's Out (1972)

W.B. Yeats photo

“O she had not these ways
When all the wild summer was in her gaze.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

The Folly Of Being Comforted http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1623/
In The Seven Woods (1904)
Context: One that is ever kind said yesterday:
'Your well-belovéd's hair has threads of grey,
And little shadows come about her eyes;
Time can but make it easier to be wise
Though now it seems impossible, and so
All that you need is patience.'
Heart cries, 'No,
I have not a crumb of comfort, not a grain.
Time can but make her beauty over again:
Because of that great nobleness of hers
The fire that stirs about her, when she stirs,
Burns but more clearly. O she had not these ways
When all the wild summer was in her gaze.'
O heart! O heart! if she'd but turn her head,
You'd know the folly of being comforted.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley photo

“Some years ago, when the images which this world affords first opened upon me, when I felt the cheering warmth of summer and heard the rustling of the leaves and the warbling of the birds, and these were all to me, I should have wept to die; now it is my only consolation.”

The monster to Robert Walton
Frankenstein (1818)
Context: Some years ago, when the images which this world affords first opened upon me, when I felt the cheering warmth of summer and heard the rustling of the leaves and the warbling of the birds, and these were all to me, I should have wept to die; now it is my only consolation. Polluted by crimes and torn by the bitterest remorse, where can I find rest but in death?

Brian W. Aldiss photo

“LATER than usual one summer morning in 1984, Zoyd Wheeler drifted awake in sunlight through a creeping fig that hung in the window, with a squadron of blue jays stomping around on the roof. In his dream these had been carrier pigeons from someplace far across the ocean, landing and taking off again one by one, each bearing a message for him, but none of whom, light pulsing in their wings, he could ever quite get to in time.”

First lines
Vineland (1990)
Context: LATER than usual one summer morning in 1984, Zoyd Wheeler drifted awake in sunlight through a creeping fig that hung in the window, with a squadron of blue jays stomping around on the roof. In his dream these had been carrier pigeons from someplace far across the ocean, landing and taking off again one by one, each bearing a message for him, but none of whom, light pulsing in their wings, he could ever quite get to in time. He understood it to be another deep nudge from forces unseen, almost surely connected with the letter that had come along with his latest mental-disability check, reminding him that unless he did something publicly crazy before a date now less than a week away, he would no longer qualify for benefits. He groaned out of bed.

Aristotle photo

“For well-being and health, again, the homestead should be airy in summer, and sunny in winter. A homestead possessing these qualities would be longer than it is deep; and its main front would face the south.”

1345a.20 http://artflx.uchicago.edu/perseus-cgi/citequery3.pl?dbname=PerseusGreekTexts&getid=1&query=Arist.%20Oec.%201345a.20, Economics (Oeconomica), Greek Texts and Translations, Perseus under PhiloLogic.
Economics

Heraclitus photo

“God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, surfeit and hunger.”

Heraclitus (-535) pre-Socratic Greek philosopher

Fragment 67
Numbered fragments

Barack Obama photo
Mark Twain photo
Ronald Reagan photo
Ozzy Osbourne photo
Jenny Han photo
Rick Riordan photo
Rick Riordan photo

“In summer moonlight, she was dangerously, inebriatingly magnified.”

Source: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Ray Bradbury photo
Emily Dickinson photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Jenny Han photo
Edith Wharton photo
Jenny Han photo

“Being a child at home alone in the summer is a high-risk occupation. If you call your mother at work thirteen times an hour, she can hurt you.”

Erma Bombeck (1927–1996) When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent le…
Jenny Han photo
Anna Akhmatova photo
F. Scott Fitzgerald photo