Quotes about summer
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“When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.”

Jenny Joseph (1932–2018) Poet

Poem Warning http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/warning/ <br class="br">Source: Warning: When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple

Money

“Life has puffed and blown itself into a summer day, and clouds and spring billow over the heavens as if calendars were a listing of mathematical errors.”

Zelda Fitzgerald (1900–1948) Novelist, wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald

Source: Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald

Life, Error, Spring, Mathematics

“Dandelion wine. The words were summer on the tongue. The wine was summer caught and stoppered… sealed away for opening on a January day with snow falling fast and the sun unseen for weeks…”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Wine, Sun

“We should enjoy this summer, flower by flower, as if it were to be the last one we’ll see.”

André Gide (1869–1951) French novelist and essayist

Flowers

“O grant me a house by the beach of a bay,
Where the waves can be surly in winter, and play
With the sea-weed in summer, ye bountiful powers!
And I'd leave all the hurry, the noise, and the fray,
For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers.”

Andrew Lang (1844–1912) Scots poet, novelist and literary critic

Books, Flowers, Winter, Housing

“I love New York on summer afternoons when everyone's away. There's something very sensuous about it - overripe, as if all sorts of funny fruits were going to fall into your hands.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

Love

“These bitter sorrows of childhood! when sorrow is all new and strange, when hope has not yet got wings to fly beyond the days and weeks, and the space from summer to summer seems measureless.”

George Eliot book The Mill on the Floss

Source: The Mill on the Floss (1860)

Hope, Childhood, Flying

“In the pool, on that last night of the last summer, we said we’d always come back. It’s scary how easy promises were broken. Just like that.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: It's Not Summer Without You

Night

“We came in the wind of the carnival. A wind of change, or promises. The merry wind, the magical wind, making March hares of everyone, tumbling blossoms and coat-tails and hats; rushing towards summer in a frenzy of exuberance.”

Joanne Harris book The Lollipop Shoes

Source: The Lollipop Shoes

Change

“A man says a lot of things in summer he doesn't mean in winter.”

Patricia Briggs (1965) American writer

Source: Dragon Blood

Winter

“… like that star of the waning summer who beyond all stars rises bathed in the ocean stream to glitter in brilliance.”

Homér Iliad

Source: The Iliad

Star

“There is dew
on these poems in the morning,
and at night a cool breeze may rise from them.

In the winter they are blankets, in the summer a place to swim.

I like talking to you like this. Have you moved
a step closer?

Soon we may be
kissing.”

Kabir (1440–1518) Indian mystic poet

Kiss, Winter, Night

“My boyfriend is named Percocet," I say. "We're very close. I even went to Europe with him last summer.”

E. Lockhart book We Were Liars

Source: We Were Liars

“And if, in some distant place in the future, we see each other in our new lives, I will smile at you with joy, and remember how we spent a summer beneath the trees, learning from each other and growing in love.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Notebook

Source: The Notebook

Love, Smile, Tree, Learning

“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"

Spring

“Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the treehouse; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape; but most of all, summer was Dill.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Variant: summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screeneed porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the treehouse; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape.
Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

Color, Sleep, Season

“My sister, who never understood most of the things I wanted her to, might have been able to understand what had happened to me in this summer of weddings and beginnings. And she was right. The first boy was always the hardest. page 40000”

Sarah Dessen book That Summer

Source: That Summer (1996)

Boy, Understanding, Sister, Wedding

“Regular women carry pictures of their babies, their husbands, their summer houses. Fat ladies carry pictures of themselves at their skinniest.”

Jennifer Weiner book Good in Bed

Source: Good in Bed

Women, Baby, Housing

“The summer movies are coming out. My advice: just stay home and burn a good book.”

Stephen Colbert (1964) American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor

Books, Home

“I dwell in a lonely house I know
That vanished many a summer ago.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Housing

“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

Spring, Waiting

“The early summer sky was the color of cat vomit. Of course, Tally thought, you’d have to feed your cat only salmon-flavored cat food for a while, to get the pinks right.”

Scott Westerfeld book Uglies

Source: Uglies

Food, Color, Cats

“I'd much prefer my books to shoes… In the summer I sometimes take walks without shoes but never without a novel.”

Nathan Englander (1970) American short story writer and novelist

Books, Shoe

“"Love is a myth", Grandfather Trout said. "Like summer."
"What?"
"In winter," Grandfather Trout said, "summer is a myth. A report, a rumor. Not to be believed in. Get it? Love is a myth. So is summer."”

John Crowley book Little, Big

Bk. 5, Ch. 4
Source: Little, Big: or, The Fairies' Parliament (1981)

Love, Winter

“There was always a quest for more minutes, more hours, faster progress to accomplish more in each day. The simple joy of living between summers was gone.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Source: The Time Keeper

Joy

“Then I decided I would spend the summer writing a novel.

That would fix a lot of people.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

People

“I cry intermittently, like a summer rain. I don't feel racked by the crying; in fact, it hydrates me. Then rage wells up in me, and I want to take a crowbar to all the cars in the neighborhood.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year

Cars, Feeling, Rage, Cry

“That it would always be summer and autumn, and you always courting me, and always thinking as much of me as you have done through the past summertime!”

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) English novelist and poet

Source: Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Autumn, Thinking, Past

“Girls are caterpillars while they live in the world, to be finally butterflies when the summer comes; but in the meantime there are grubs and larvae, don't you see - each with their peculiar propensities, necessities and structure.”

J. Sheridan Le Fanu book Carmilla

Source: Carmilla

World, Girl

“It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar (1963), Ch. 1, Opening line

“Life and summer are fleeting,’ sang the bird. ‘Snow and dark, and the winter comes. Nothing remains the same.”

Elyne Mitchell (1913–2002) Australian writer

Source: Silver Brumby's Daughter

Life, Bird, Winter

“I play the radio and moon about… and dream of Utopias where its always July the 24th 1935, in the middle of summer forever.”

Zelda Fitzgerald (1900–1948) Novelist, wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald

Dreams

“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, Spring, Cats

“There was something horribly depressing, she felt, about watching the weather report. That life could be planned like the perfect summer picnic drained it of spontaneity.”

Galt Niederhoffer (1975) American writer

Source: The Romantics

Life, Perfection, Weather

“I guess I felt attached to my weakness. My pain and suffering too. Summer light, the smell of a breeze, the sound of cicadas - if I like these things, why should I apologize?”

Haruki Murakami book A Wild Sheep Chase

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982), Chapter 40, The Rat Who Wound the Clock

Pain, Light, Suffering

“I wonder if Socrates and Plato took a house on Crete during the summer.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

Source: Love and Death

Housing

“The moment I stopped spending so much time chasing the big pleasure of life. I began to enjoy the little ones, like watching the stars dancing in moonlit sky or soaking in the sunbeams of a glorious summer morning.”

Robin S. Sharma (1965) Canadian self help writer

Source: The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari: A Remarkable Story About Living Your Dreams

Life, Pleasure, Star, Time

“One benefit of Summer was that each day we had more light to read by.”

Jeannette Walls book The Glass Castle

Source: The Glass Castle

Light, Reading

“What child unable to sleep on a warm summer night hasn't thought he saw Peter Pan's sailing ship in the sky? I will teach you to see that ship.”

Roberto Cotroneo (1961) Italian journalist and writer

Sleep, Night

“The good die first, and they whose hearts are dry as summer dust, burn to the socket.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Heart

“Come with me."
"Come with you? To Pandemonium? To the Void? And here I thought that my invitation to summer in New Jersey was the worst I had ever received.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: The Rise of the Hotel Dumort

“The whole summer lay ahead of us-time to rest, time to wait. And when the future comes-no matter what comes with it-I'll be smarter. I'll be stronger. I'll be ready.”

Ally Carter Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy

Source: Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy

Time, Waiting, Future

“That was the summer when everything we would become was hovering just over our heads.”

Junot Díaz book This Is How You Lose Her

Source: This Is How You Lose Her

“She'd secretly had a crush on him since they were twelve years old. Last summer, she'd fallen for him hard.”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

“The leaves fall, the wind blows, and the farm country slowly changes from the summer cottons into its winter wools.”

Henry Beston (1888–1968) American writer

Winter, Change, Country

“Summer came.
For the books thief, everything was going nicely.
For me, the sky was the color of Jews.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Books, Color

“She enjoys rain for its wetness, winter for its cold, summer for its heat. She loves rainbows as much for fading as for their brilliance. It is easy for her, she opens her heart and accepts everything.”

Morgan Llywelyn book Bard: The Odyssey of the Irish

Source: Bard: The Odyssey of the Irish

Love, Winter, Heart

“The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night
Was like the conscious being of the book.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

"The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm"
Transport to Summer (1947)
Context: The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night
Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned above the page,
Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be
The scholar to whom the book is true, to whom
The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
The house was quiet because it had to be.
The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:
The access of perfection to the page.
And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,
In which there is no other meaning, itself
Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself
Is the reader leaning late and reading there.

Books, World, Housing, Night

“I am not breaking my rules,' I snapped, hating that I'd ended up on the advice-recieving end of things, jumping from Dear Remy to Confused in Cincinnati all in one summer.”

Sarah Dessen book This Lullaby

Source: This Lullaby

Hate

“You can't discuss the ocean with a well frog - he's limited by the space he lives in. You can't discuss ice with a summer insect - he's bound to a single season.”

Zhuangzi (-369–-286 BC) classic Chinese philosopher

Source: The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu

Season

“I meant what I said to you. I wasn't playing some kind of summer game. Everything I said was true, from the first day. EVERY GODDAMN WORD.”

Sarah Dessen book This Lullaby

Source: This Lullaby

Game

“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

Life, Tree

“Little Fly,
Thy summer’s play
My thoughtless hand
Has brushed away.

Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?

For I dance,
And drink, and sing,
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

The Fly, st. 1–3
1790s, Songs of Experience (1794)

Art, Drink, Singing, Dance

“And I remembered with a pang what had happened to me the previous summer - that even Gallagher Girls aren't always as strong as they need to be.”

Ally Carter (1974) American writer

Source: United We Spy

Girl, Strong

“If he was winter, I was summer. If I was sunshine, he was night. A dark and stormy one.”

Karen Marie Moning book Darkfever

Source: Darkfever

Winter, Night

“The summer demands and takes away too much. /But night, the reserved, the reticent, gives more than it takes”

John Ashbery book Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror

Source: Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror

Night

“No summer ever came back, and no two summers ever were alike. Times change, and people change; and if our hearts do not change as readily, so much the worse for us.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book The Blithedale Romance

Source: The Blithedale Romance

People, Change, Time, Heart

“In the morning light, I remembered how much I loved the sound of wind through the trees. I laid back and closed my eyes, and I was comforted by the sound of a million tiny leaves dancing on a summer morning.”

Patrick Carman book The Tenth City

Source: The Tenth City

Love, Tree, Light, Dance

“And for just a fleeting moment, a tiny wisp of time that hung in the air like fireflies
in summer skies, she wondered if she was in love with him again.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Love, Time

“Some say that we shall never know, and that to the gods we are like the flies that the boys kill on a summer's day, and some say, to the contrary, that the very sparrows do not lose a feather that has not been brushed away by the finger of God.”

Thornton Wilder book The Bridge of San Luis Rey

Source: The Bridge of San Luis Rey

God, Boy

“A thin grey fog hung over the city, and the streets were very cold; for summer was in England.”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

Source: The Light That Failed [Illustrated]

“Summer afternoon — summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”

Henry James (1843–1916) American novelist, short story author, and literary critic

Quoted by Edith Wharton, A Backward Glance (1934), ch. 10.

Beauty, Wise

“Are you her boyfriend?”
…
No, I’m her fiancé.” Nate said.
We’ve been promised to each other since birth,” Summer added.
Our wedding isn’t until March.”

Brandon Mull The Candy Shop War

Source: The Candy Shop War

Birth, Wedding

“It was one of the warm nights at the end of summer that makes promises that won't be kept.”

Cinda Williams Chima (1952) Novelist

Source: The Wizard Heir

Night

“Quite possibly there's nothing as fine as a big freight train starting across country in early summer, Hardesty thought. That's when you learn that the tragedy of plants is that they have roots.”

Mark Helprin book Winter's Tale

Source: Winter's Tale

Learning, Training, Country

“August rain: the best of the summer gone, and the new fall not yet born. The odd uneven time.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Time

“I walk without flinching through the burning cathedral of the summer. My bank of wild grass is majestic and full of music. It is a fire that solitude presses against my lips.”

Violette Leduc (1907–1972) French writer

Source: Mad in Pursuit

Music, Solitude, Grass

“Inebriate of Air — am I —
And Debauchee of Dew —
Reeling — thro endless summer days —
From Inns of Molten Blue”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Source: Selected Poems

“Sometimes, a family is like an ear of summer corn: It might look perfect on the outside, but when you peel the husk away. every kernel is rotten.”

Sara Shepard (1973) Author

Source: Ali's Pretty Little Lies

Family, Perfection

“Above us our palace waits, the only one I've ever needed. Its walls are space, its floor is sky, its center everywhere. We rise; the shapes cluster around us in welcome, dissolving and forming again like fireflies in a summer evening.”

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (1956) novelist, short story writer, poet, and essayist

Source: The Palace of Illusions

Waiting

“Through buried paths, where sleepy twilight dreams
The summer time away.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

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

Dreams, Time

“To see the Summer Sky
Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie—
True Poems flee”

Emily Dickinson book The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Source: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Lie, Books

“Sometimes you’re just the sweetest thing. Like Christmas, summer vacation, and a brand-new puppy rolled into one.”

Haruki Murakami book Sputnik Sweetheart

Source: Sputnik Sweetheart

Christmas

“Summer-induced stupidity.

That was the diagnosis…”

Aimee Friedman (1979) American writer

Source: Sea Change

Stupidity

“I think there are two different oceans - the one that plays with you in the summer, and the one that gets so mad in the winter.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Source: Handle with Care

Thinking, Winter, Madness

“Summer bachelors like summer breezes, are never as cool as they pretend to be.”

Nora Ephron (1941–2012) Film director, author screenwriter

“Summer grasses,
All that remains
Of soldiers' dreams”

Bashō Matsuo (1644–1694) Japanese poet

Dreams, Grass

“If it could only be like this always – always summer, always alone, the fruit always ripe and Aloysius in a good temper…”

Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) British writer

Source: Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

“We’ll meet again in Lvov, my love and I…” Tatiana hums, eating her ice cream, in our Leningrad, in jasmine June, near Fontanka, the Neva, the Summer Garden, where we are forever young.”

Paullina Simons book The Summer Garden

Source: The Summer Garden

Love

“Wander a whole summer if you can… time will not be taken from the sum of your life. Instead of shortening, it will definitely lengthen it and make you truly immortal.”

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

Source: 1900s, Our National Parks (1901), chapter 1: The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West 
Context: Wander here a whole summer, if you can. Thousands of God's wild blessings will search you and soak you as if you were a sponge, and the big days will go by uncounted. If you are business-tangled, and so burdened by duty that only weeks can be got out of the heavy-laden year … give a month at least to this precious reserve. The time will not be taken from the sum of your life. Instead of shortening, it will indefinitely lengthen it and make you truly immortal. Nevermore will time seem short or long, and cares will never again fall heavily on you, but gently and kindly as gifts from heaven.

Life, Time