My Top 7 Favorite Autumn-Themed Quotes
Finally: Autumn has arrived.
Although I've lived in Florida - first Oldsmar, then Clearwater - practically my entire life, I still cannot stand the humid, hot weather and the fact that we have virtually no seasons. So when I feel the first vestiges of cool air on my skin, I try to relish every single moment.
In honor of the autumnal equinox and Earth's demure tilt away from the sun, here are seven of my favorite quotes that relate to autumn. As an avid reader, these whimsical, thoughtful quotes are from favorite authors whose descriptions will perhaps foster further appreciation and bring to light qualities that you may have overlooked.
Taiso, Yoshitoshi, Sumiyoshi no meigetsu, 1839-1892, woodcut
1. “Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.”
― Albert Camus
2. “I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.”
― Henry David Thoreau
3. “But when fall comes, kicking summer out on its treacherous ass as it always does one day sometime after the midpoint of September, it stays awhile like an old friend that you have missed. It settles in the way an old friend will settle into your favorite chair and take out his pipe and light it and then fill the afternoon with stories of places he has been and things he has done since last he saw you.”
― Stephen King, 'Salem's Lot
4. “The autumn leaves blew over the moonlit pavement in such a way as to make the girl who was moving there seem fixed to a sliding walk, letting the motion of the wind and the leaves carry her forward. [...] The trees overhead made a great sound of letting down their dry rain.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
5. “At no other time (than autumn) does the earth let itself be inhaled in one smell, the ripe earth; in a smell that is in no way inferior to the smell of the sea, bitter where it borders on taste, and more honeysweet where you feel it touching the first sounds. Containing depth within itself, darkness, something of the grave almost.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters on Cézanne
6. “Autumn was her happiest season. There was an expectancy about its sounds and shapes: the distant thunk pomp of leather and young bodies on the practice field near her house made her think of bands and cold Coca-Colas, parched peanuts and the sight of people's breath in the air. There was even something to look forward to when school started - renewals of old feuds and friendships, weeks of learning again what one half forgot in the long summer. Fall was hot-supper time with everything to eat one missed in the morning when too sleepy to enjoy it.”
― Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman
7. “Is not this a true autumn day? Just the still melancholy that I love - that makes life and nature harmonise. The birds are consulting about their migrations, the trees are putting on the hectic or the pallid hues of decay, and begin to strew the ground, that one's very footsteps may not disturb the repose of earth and air, while they give us a scent that is a perfect anodyne to the restless spirit. 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."
[Letter to Miss Eliot, Oct. 1, 1841]”
― George Eliot
