Earth And Spring Quotes & Sayings

We cannot conceive how the Foetus is form'd in the Womb, nor as much as how a Plant springs from the Earth we tread on ... And if we are ignorant of the most obvious things about us, and the most considerable within our selves, 'tis then no wonder that we know not the constitution and powers of the creatures, to whom we are such strangers. — Joseph Glanvill

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

Water, thou hast no taste, no color, no odor; canst not be defined, art relished while ever mysterious. Not necessary to life, but rather life itself, thou fillest us with a gratification that exceeds the delight of the senses. By thy might, there return into us treasures that we had abandoned. By thy grace, there are released in us all the dried-up runnels of our heart. Of the riches that exist in the world, thou art the rarest and also the most delicate - thou so pure within the bowels of the earth! A man may die of thirst lying beside a magnesian spring. He may die within reach of a salt lake. He may die though he hold in his hand a jug of dew, if it be inhabited by evil salts. For thou, water, art a proud divinity, allowing no alteration, no foreignness in thy being. And the joy that thou spreadest is an infinitely simple joy. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

It's the old who need work. They've lost their spring and their zest for life, and need something to hold on to. It's all wrong, the way we arrange it - making the young work and the old sit idle. It should be the other way about. Girls and boys don't get bored with perpetual holidays; they live each moment of them hard; they would welcome the eternal Sabbath; and indeed I trust we shall all do that, as our youth is to be renewed like eagles. But old age on this earth is far too sad to do nothing in. — Rose Macaulay

Sphere Music - Some sounds seem to reverberate along the plain, and then settle to earth again like dust; such are Noise, Discord, Jargon. But such only as spring heavenward, and I may catch from steeples and hilltops in their upward course, which are the more refined parts of the former, are the true sphere music - pure, unmixed music - in which no wail mingles. — Henry David Thoreau

The raw fruits of the earth were made for human sustenance. Even the white tails of rabbits, according to some theologians, have a purpose, namely to make it easier for sportsmen to shoot them. There are, it is true, some inconveniences: lions and tigers are too fierce, the summer is too hot, and the winter too cold. But these things only began after Adam ate the apple; I before that, all animals were vegetarians, and the season was always spring. If only Adam had been content with peaches and nectarines, grapes and pears and pineapples, these blessings would still be ours. — Bertrand Russell

We are the local embodiment of a Cosmos grown to self-awareness. We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose. Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring. — Carl Sagan

Climate of Egypt in winter is the reign of spring upon earth, & summer in the air, and tranquility in the heat. — Herman Melville

And they were all agreed that it was Eros who held the world together, since Love made the world go round. And the universe was thus perceived as an enormous egg, held together by Love. And this primordial egg consisted of two hemispheres, the Sky[Uranus] & the Earth[Gaea] held together by Eros[Love]& if they were not thus held together, both halves would spring apart & hell would break loose.
And that was exactly what happened when it all began. Eros laxed his hold for a moment & the universe sprang apart with a Big Bang. — Nicholas Chong

Evil springs up, and flowers, and bears no seed, And feeds the green earth with its swift decay, Leaving it richer for the growth of truth. — James Russell Lowell

It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart. — Rainer Maria Rilke

At first we will only skim the surface of the earth like young starlings, but soon, emboldened by practice and experience, we will spring into the air with the impetuousness of the eagle, diverting ourselves by watching the childish behavior of the little men or awling miserably around on the earth below us. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

When age fell upon the world, and wonder went out of the minds of men; when grey cities reared to smoky skies tall towers grim and ugly, in whose shadow none might dream of the sun or of Spring's flowering meads; when learning stripped the Earth of her mantle of beauty, and poets sang no more save of twisted phantoms seen with bleared and inward looking eyes; when these things had come to pass, and childish hopes had gone forever, there was a man who travelled out of life on a quest into the spaces whither the world's dreams had fled. — H.P. Lovecraft

My joy is like Spring, so warm
it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth.
My pain is like a river of tears,
so vast it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughter at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Festivals and fasts are unhinged, traveling backward at a rate of ten days per year, attached to no season. Even Laylat ul Qadr, the holiest night in Ramadan, drifts
its precise date is unknown. The iconclasm laid down by Muhammed was absolute: you must resist attachment not only to painted images, but to natural ones. Ramadan, Muharram, the Eids; you associate no religious event with the tang of snow in the air, or spring thaw, or the advent of summer. God permeates these things
as the saying goes, Allah is beautiful, and He loves beauty
but they are transient. Forced to concentrate on the eternal, you begin to see, or think you see, the bones and sinews of the world beneath its seasonal flesh. The sun and moon become formidable clockwork. They are transient also, but hint at the dark planes that stretch beyond the earth in every direction, full of stars and dust, toward a retreating, incomprehensible edge — G. Willow Wilson

They were pleasant spring days, in which the winter of man's discontent was thawing as well as the earth, and the life that had lain torpid began to stretch itself. — Henry David Thoreau

The people are a story that never ends,
A river that winds and falls and gleams erect in many dawns;
Lost in deep gulleys, it turns to dust, rushes in the spring freshet,
Emerges to the sea. The people are a story that is a long incessant
Coming alive from the earth in better wheat, Percherons,
Babies, and engines, persistent and inevitable.
The people always know that some of the grain will be good,
Some of the crop will be saved, some will return and
Bear the strength of the kernel, that from the bloodiest year
Some survive to outfox the frost. — Meridel Le Sueur

It is not with a rush and a spring that we are to reach Christ's character, and attain to perfect saintship; but step by step, foot by foot, hand over hand, we are slowly and often painfully to mount the ladder that rests on earth, and rises to heaven. — Thomas Guthrie

All through the long winter, I dream of my garden. On the first day of spring, I dig my fingers deep into the soft earth. I can feel its energy, and my spirits soar. — Helen Hayes

She told us about the goddess called Persephone, who was forced to spend half a year in the darkness deep underground. Winter happened when she was trapped inside the earth. The days shrank, they became cold and short and dark. Living things hid themselves away. Spring came when she was released and made her slow way up to the world again. The world became brighter and bolder in order to welcome her back. It began to be filled with warmth and light. The animals dared to wake, they dared to have their young. Plants dared to send out buds and shoots. Life dared to come back. — David Almond

Bad, or good, as it happens to be, that is what it is to exist! ... It is as though I have been silent and fuddled with sleep all my life. In spite of all, I know now that at least it is better to go always towards the summer, towards those burning seas of light; to sit at night in the forecastle lost in an unfamiliar dream, when the spirit becomes filled with stars, instead of wounds, and good and compassionate and tender. To sail into an unknown spring, or receive one's baptism on storm's promontory, where the solitary albatross heels over in the gale, and at last come to land. To know the earth under one's foot and go, in wild delight, ways where there is water. — Malcolm Lowry

OLD MARX He can't think. London is damp, in every room someone coughs. He never did like winter. He rewrites past manuscripts time and again, without passion. The yellow paper is fragile as consumption. Why does life race stubbornly toward destruction? But spring returns in dreams, with snow that doesn't speak in any known tongue. And where does love fit within his system? Where you find blue flowers. He despises anarchists, idealists bore him. He receives reports from Russia, far too detailed. The French grow rich. Poland is common and quiet. America never stops growing. Blood is everywhere, perhaps the wallpaper needs changing. He begins to suspect that poor humankind will always trudge across the old earth like the local lunatic shaking her fists at an unseen God. — Adam Zagajewski

Mars is much closer to the characteristics of Earth. It has a fall, winter, summer and spring. North Pole, South Pole, mountains and lots of ice. No one is going to live on Venus; no one is going to live on Jupiter. — Buzz Aldrin

Sooner or later your fingers close on that one moist-cold spud that the spade has accidentally sliced clean through, shining wetly white and giving off the most unearthly of earthly aromas. It's the smell of fresh soil in the spring, but fresh soil somehow distilled or improved upon, as if that wild, primordial scene has been refined and bottled: eau de pomme de terre. You can smell the cold inhuman earth in it, but there's the cozy kitchen to, for the smell of potatoes is, at least by now, to us, the smell of comfort itself, a smell as blankly welcoming as spud flesh, a whiteness that takes up memories and sentiments as easily as flavors. To smell a raw potato is to stand on the very threshold of the domestic and the wild. (241) — Michael Pollan

And fairy month of waking mirth
From whom our joys ensue
Thou early gladder of the earth
Thrice welcome here anew
With thee the bud unfolds to leaves
The grass greens on the lea
And flowers their tender boon receives
To bloom and smile with thee. — John Clare

We are not to make the ideas of contentment and aspiration quarrel, for God made them fast friends. A man may aspire, and yet be quite content until it is time to raise; and both flying and resting are but parts of one contentment. The very fruit of the gospel is aspiration. It is to the heart what spring is to the earth, making every root, and bud, and bough desire to be more. — Henry Ward Beecher

When Spring unlocks the flowers To paint the laughing soil; When summer's balmy breezes Refresh the mower's toil; When winter holds in frosty chains The fallow and the flood; In God the earth rejoices still, And owns her Maker good. — Reginald Heber

When winter stern, his gloomy front uprears,
A sable void the barren earth appears;
The meads no more their former verdure boast,
Fast-bound their streams, and all their beauty lost;
The herds, the flocks, in icy garments mourn, and wildly murmur for the Spring's return;
From snow-topp'd hills the whirlwinds keenly blow,
Howl through the woods, and pierce the vales below,
Through the sharp air a flaky torrent flies,
Mocks the slow sight, and hides the gloomy skies. — George Crabbe

The heaven and earth afford me no shelter at all; I'm glad, unreal are body and soul. Welcome thy weapon, O warrior of Yuen! Thy trusty steel, That flashes lightning, cuts the wind of Spring, I feel. — Alan W. Watts

November comes
And November goes,
With the last red berries
And the first white snows.
With night coming early,
And dawn coming late,
And ice in the bucket
And frost by the gate.
The fires burn
And the kettles sing,
And earth sinks to rest
Until next spring. — Clyde Watson

Is there any sign of spring quite so welcome as the glint of the first bluebird unless it is his softly whistled song? No wonder the bird has become the symbol for happiness. Before the farmer begins to plough the wet earth, often while snow is still on the ground, this hardy little minstrel is making himself very much at home in our orchards and gardens while waiting for a mate to arrive from the South. — Neltje Blanchan

Thick February mists cling heavily To the dead earth and to each leafless tree, And closer down upon the hilltops draw, Dull forecasts there of bright, sure-coming spring; Yet the heart gathers hope and strange delight From this dear, unlovely, wished-for sight Of leaden-misted twilights lengthening. — Emma Lazarus

This body is like the earth. Our bones are like mountains. Our belly is like the sea. Our flesh is like the dust and mud. The hair that grows on us is like plants, and the skin from which this hair grows is like arable land, and the area of our body where hair does not grow is akin to saline soil. Our sadness is like darkness and our laughter like sunlight. Sleep is brother to death. Our childhood is like spring, our youth like summer. Our maturity is like the autumn, our old age like the winter of life. All of our movements are like the stars moving in the sky. — Shems Friedlander

An extraterrestrial visitor examining the differences among human societies would find those differences trivial compared to the similarities. Our lives, our past and our future are tied to the sun, the moon and the stars ... We humans have seen the atoms which constitute all of nature and the forces that sculpted this work ... and we, who embody the local eyes and ears and thoughts and feelings of the cosmos, have begun to wonder about our origins ... star stuff contemplating the stars, organized collections of ten billion billion billion atoms, contemplating the evolution of nature, tracing that long path by which it arrived at consciousness here on the planet earth ... Our loyalties are to the species and to the planet. Our obligation to survive and flourish is owed not just to ourselves but also to that cosmos ancient and vast from which we spring. We are one species. We are star stuff harvesting star light. — Carl Sagan

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

There's the sound of one of them twittering yellow birds do be coming in the spring-time from beyond the sea, and there'll be a fine warmth now in the sun, and a sweetness in the air, the way it'll be a grand thing to be sitting here quiet and easy smelling the things growing up, and budding from the earth. — J.M. Synge

Spring. Blooms break forth from the startled earth. The sky laughs. The trees, abashed, dress themselves in verdant green. And the heavens are lush with starts. Redeem the time, the stars sing down. Redeem the dream.
And the boy waking in the land of broken rocks, the dry land wet with spring rain, waking in the place where two dreams cross
the dream where seeds grow into trees of gold and the dream of the box that he cannot open. — Rick Yancey

All the shall stand about the God of glory, the fountain of love, as it were opening their bosoms to be filled with those effusions of love which are poured forth from thence, as the flowers on the earth in a pleasant spring day open their bosoms to the sun to be filled with his warmth and light, and to flourish in beauty and fragrancy by his rays. Every saint is as a flower in the garden of God, and holy love is the fragrancy and sweet odor which they all send forth, with which they fill that paradise. — Jonathan Edwards

The object of our sojourns on earth, as apart from the gaining of experience, is but one. The loosing of ourselves from the coil of reincarnation, which, over and over again, brings us back to earth as on a coiled spring, until, having learned the last lesson of matter, leaped the last barrier, we are freed for ever from earth. — Shaw Desmond

While they were speaking of - in their opinion - great things, around about them only little things - also in their opinion - were happening: everywhere the bushes were turning green, the brooding earth was germinating and beginning to play with her first little Spring creatures, as one might with jewels. — Adalbert Stifter

But suppose the endlessly dead were to
wake in us some emblem:
they might point to the catkins hanging
from the empty hazel trees, or direct
us to the rain
descending on black earth in early
spring.
And we, who always think of happiness
rising, would feel the emotion
that almost baffles us
when a happy thing falls. — Rainer Maria Rilke

The smell of moist earth and lilacs hung in the air like wisps of the past and hints of the future. — Margaret Millar

It is in this unearthly first hour of spring twilight that earth's almost agonized livingness is most felt. This hour is so dreadful to some people that they hurry indoors and turn on the lights. — Elizabeth Bowen

When the April wind wakes the call for the soil, I hold the plough as my only hold upon the earth, and, as I follow through the fresh and fragrant furrow, I am planted with every foot-step, growing, budding, blooming into a spirit of spring. — Dallas Lore Sharp

A babe in the house is a well-spring of pleasure, a messenger of peace and love, a resting place for innocence on earth, a link between angels and men. — Martin Farquhar Tupper

It was Rachel Carson's famous book 'Silent Spring' that got me involved with the environment. I read it in The New Yorker, in installments. Up to then, I'd thought the main job to do is help the meek inherit the Earth. And I still, that's a job that's got to be done. But I realized if we didn't do something soon, what the meek would inherit would be a pretty poisonous place to live. — Pete Seeger

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

To be rich be diligent; move on
Like heav'ns great movers that enrich the earth;
Whose moment's sloth would show the world undone;
And make the spring straight bury all her birth.
Rich are the diligent who can command
Time
nature's stock. — William Davenant

You cannot force things to happen before their time. The Spring Will come and the flowers will blossom, but you cannot force the Spring. The Rain will come, the clouds will cover the sky, the whole thirst of the earth will be gone- but you cannot force it. And this is the beauty ... that the more patient you are, the quicker is the coming of Spring. — Rajneesh

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers. — T. S. Eliot

The country ever has a lagging Spring,
Waiting for May to call its violets forth,
And June its roses-showers and sunshine bring,
Slowly, the deepening verdure o'er the earth;
To put their foliage out, the woods are slack,
And one by one the singing-birds come back.
Within the city's bounds the time of flowers
Comes earlier. Let a mild and sunny day,
Such as full often, for a few bright hours,
Breathes through the sky of March the airs of May,
Shine on our roofs and chase the wintry gloom-
And lo! our borders glow with sudden bloom. — William C. Bryant

Spring flew swiftly by, and summer came; and if the village had been beautiful at first, it was now in the full glow and luxuriance of its richness. The great trees, which had looked shrunken and bare in the earlier months, had now burst into strong life and health; and stretching forth their green arms over the thirsty ground, converted open and naked spots into choice nooks, where was a deep and pleasant shade from which to look upon the wide prospect, steeped in sunshine, which lay stretched out beyond. The earth had donned her mantle of brightest green; and shed her richest perfumes abroad. It was the prime and vigour of the year; all things were glad and flourishing. — Charles Dickens

Fine fruit is the flower of commodities. It is the most perfect union of the useful and the beautiful that the earth knows. Trees full of soft foliage; blossoms fresh with spring bounty; and, finally, fruit, rich, bloom-dusted, melting, and luscious. — Andrew Jackson Downing

To all earth's creatures God has given the broad earth, the springs, the rivers and the forests, giving the air to the birds, and the waters to those who live in water, giving abundantly to all the basic needs of life, not as a private possession, not restricted by law, not divided by boundaries, but as common to all, amply and in rich measure. — Gregory Of Nazianzus

Oh honey, there's nothing new on this earth when it comes to what men and women do in the dark. First love is when you learn. So you've learned that love can open you up like spring sun on a wee primrose. Good. Remember that. You know how to love. — Federico Garcia Lorca

The naked earth is warm with Spring,
And with green grass and bursting trees
Leans to the sun's kiss glorying,
And quivers in the sunny breeze. — Julian Grenfell

So stick up ivy and the bays, and then restore the heathen ways, green will remind you of the Spring, though this great day denies the thing, and mortifies the earth, and all, but your wild revels, and loose hall. — Henry Vaughan

The brown earth, the torn, blasted earth, with a greasy shine under the sun's rays; the earth is the background of this restless, gloomy world of automatons, our gasping is the scratching of a quill, our lips are dry, our heads are debauched with stupor - thus we stagger forward, and into our pierced and shattered souls bores the torturing image of the brown earth with the greasy sun and the convulsed and dead soldiers, who lie there - it can't be helped - who cry and clutch at our legs as we spring away over them. We have lost all feeling for one another. We can hardly control ourselves when our glance lights on the form of some other man. We are insensible, dead men, who through some trick, some dreadful magic, are still able to run and to kill. — Erich Maria Remarque

How much more interior can you get, after all, than the interior of bones? It's the center of the center of things. If marrow were a geological formation, it would be magma roiling under the earth's mantle. If it were a plant, it would be a delicate moss that grows only in the highest crags of Mount Everest, blooming with tiny white flowers for three days in the Nepalese spring. If it were a memory, it would be your first one, your most painful and repressed one, the one that has made you who you are. — Julie Powell

I heard the gunshots. I was worried. Guns don't always mean the one holding them won."
Steven hugged her close. "Do you remember what I said to you the day we were married?"
"You said, 'I will always come back to you.'"
"I always will."
Sleep took them then, and whisked them away to their happiest dreams. Heather dreamed of the spring, a Fresh Earth many years away, and she was surrounded by her grown children and grandchildren. Steven dreamed of summer, and beer kept cold in the deeps of Deadbuck Creek, and his wife dancing in the high grass with flowers in her hair. — Michael Kanuckel

Day after day we looked for rain, and day after day we saw nothing but the sun. Lavender that we had planted in the spring died. The patch of grass in front of the house abandoned its ambitions to become a lawn and turned into the dirty yellow of poor straw. The earth shrank, revealing its knuckles and bones, rocks and roots that had been invisible before. — Peter Mayle

O Spirit! fearlessly bear on. Though storms may break the primrose on its stalk, Though frosts may blight the freshness of its bloom, Yet spring's awakening breath will woo the earth To feed with kindliest dews its favorite flower, That blooms in mossy bank and darksome glens, Lighting the greenwood with its sunny smile. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

I kill the living to make way for the dead.
But we had hot chocolate, she and I. We tried to make our friendship last as long as we could.
Then I was forced to let her go. I held her when she returned to the earth. — R.A. Parry

God knows, when spring comes to Paris the humbles mortal alive must feel that he dwells in paradise ... it [is] the the intimacy with which his eye rests upon the scene. It [is] his Paris. A man does not need to be rich, nor even a citizen, to feel this way about Paris. Paris is filled with poor people - the proudest and filthiest lot of beggars that ever walked the earth ... And yet they give the illusion of being at home. It is that which distinguishes the Parisian from all other metropolitan souls.
When I think of New York I have a very different feeling. New York makes even a rich man feel his unimportance. New York is cold, glisttering, malign. The buildings dominate. There is a sort of atomic frenzy to the activity going on; the more furious the pace, the more diminished the spirit ... Nobody knows what it's all about. Nobody directs the energy. Stupendous. Bizarre. Baffling. A tremendous reactive urge, but absolutely uncoordinated. — Henry Miller

All things are recreated, and the flame Of consentaneous love inspires all life. The fertile bosom of the earth gives suck To myriads, who still grow beneath her care, Rewarding her with their pure perfectness; The balmy breathings of the wind inhale Her virtues and diffuse them all abroad; Health floats amid the gentle atmosphere, Glows in the fruits and mantles on the stream; No storms deform the beaming brow of heaven, Nor scatter in the freshness of its pride The foliage of the ever-verdant trees; But fruits are ever ripe, flowers ever fair, And autumn proudly bears her matron grace, Kindling a flush on the fair cheek of spring, Whose virgin bloom beneath the ruddy fruit Reflects its tint and blushes into love. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

From the east a spring breeze is touching us,
passing by,
And so in the goblet in the green wine
tiny ripples are formed.
The blossoms stolen by the whirl
are falling to the earth.
My fair girl will be drunken soon
with her blushed cheeks.
Beside the blue pavilion the peach tree -
Do you know, how long it will bloom?
It's a trembling shine, a dream:
it cheats us and steals away.
Rise and dance!
The sun is fading!
Who never was full of demanding live
and crazy in his young days
will vainly - when the hair
is white - sigh and wail. — Li Bai

The sky, drunk with spring and giddy with its fumes, thickened with clouds. Low clouds, drooping at the edges like felt sailed over the woods and rain leapt from them, warm, smelling of soil and sweat, and washing the last of the black armor-plating of ice from the earth. — Boris Pasternak

On the sea he wished to meet it, if meet it he must. He was not sure why this was, yet he had a terror of meeting the thing again on dry land. Out of the sea there rise storms and monsters, but no evil powers: evil is of earth. And there is no sea, no running of river or spring, in the dark land where once Ged had gone. Death is the dry place. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Every winter, When the great sun has turned his face away, The earth goes down into a vale of grief, And fasts, and weeps, and shrouds herself in sables, Leaving her wedding-garlands to decay- Then leaps in spring to his returning kisses. — Charles Kingsley

Then his singing paused, and he stood for a
moment to cry out softly in the vernacular of the region: 'Blest be Adonoi Elohim, King of All, who maketh bread to spring forth from the earth,' in a sort of nasal bleat. The bleat being finished, he sat again, and commenced eating.

The wanderer had come a long way indeed, thought
Brother Francis, who knew of no adjacent realm governed by a monarch with such an unfamiliar name and such strange pretensions. — Walter M. Miller Jr.

And now I know that you're the one
I've waited my whole life for
You're budding leaves turning green in spring
You're the fresh breath of air that summer brings
You're the autumn sky painted in rainbow hues
You're the wintry ocean dancing in shimmering blues
You're the air I breahte
You're the water I drink
You're the fire inside me
The earth under my feet
You're the one — Kendall Grey

The snow has not yet left the earth, but spring is already asking to enter your heart. If you have ever recovered from a serious illness, you will be familiar with the blessed state when you are in a delicious state of anticipation, and are liable to smile without any obvious reason. Evidently that is what nature is experiencing just now. The ground is cold, mud and snow squelches under foot, but how cheerful, gentle and inviting everything is! The air is so clear and transparent that if you were to climb to the top of the pigeon loft or the bell tower, you feel you might actually see the whole universe from end to end. The sun is shining brightly, and its playful, beaming rays are bathing in the puddles along with the sparrows. The river is swelling and darkening; it has already woken up and very soon will begin to roar. The trees are bare, but they are already living and breathing. — Anton Chekhov

Tis like the birthday of the world,
When earth was born in bloom;
The light is made of many dyes,
The air is all perfume:
There's crimson buds, and white and blue,
The very rainbow showers
Have turned to blossoms where they fell,
And sown the earth with flowers. — Thomas Hood

As soon as he had left the room and walked into the air, he knew that he would never return and for the first time his fears lifted. It was a spring morning, and when he walked into Severndale Park he felt the breeze bringing back memories of a much earlier life, and he was at peace. He sat beneath a tree and looked up at its leaves in amazement - where once he might have gazed at them and sensed there only the confusion of his own thoughts, now each leaf was so clear and distinct that he could see the lightly coloured veins which carried moisture and life. And he looked down at his own hand, which seemed translucent beside the bright grass. His head no longer ached, and as he lay upon the earth he could feel its warmth beneath him. — Peter Ackroyd

Now the world runs on swiftly to great tidings. And one of men, even of Beor's house, shall indeed come, and the Girdle of Melian shall not restrain him, for doom greater than my power shall send him; and the songs that shall spring from that coming shall endure when all Middle-earth is changed. — J.R.R. Tolkien

I will go," he said. "I will go to Troy."
The rosy gleam of his lip, the fevered green 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.
He was watching me, his eyes as deep as earth.
"Will you come with me?" he asked.
The never-ending ache of love and sorrow. Perhaps in some other life I could have refused, could have torn my hair and screamed, and made him face his choice alone. But not in this one. He would sail to Troy and I would follow, even into death. "Yes," I whipsered. "Yes."
Relief broke in his face, and he reached for me. I let him hold me, let him press us length to length so close that nothing might fit between us.
Tears came, and fell. Above us, the constellations spun and the moon paced her weary course. We lay stricken and sleepless as the hours passed. — Madeline Miller

Forget the suffering You caused others. Forget the suffering Others caused you. The waters run and run, Springs sparkle and are done, You walk the earth you are forgetting. Sometimes you hear a distant refrain. What does it mean, you ask, who is singing? A childlike sun grows warm. A grandson and a great-grandson are born. You are led by the hand once again. The names of the rivers remain with you. How endless those rivers seem! Your fields lie fallow, The city towers are not as they were. You stand at the threshold mute. — Czeslaw Milosz

It was a perfect spring afternoon, and the air was filled with vague, roving scents, as if the earth exhaled the sweetness of hidden flowers. — Ellen Glasgow

O sweet spontaneous earth how often have the doting fingers of prurient philosophers pinched and poked thee ,has the naughty thumb of science prodded thy beauty .how often have religions taken thee upon their scraggy knees squeezing and buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive gods (but true to the incomparable couch of death thy rhythmic lover thou answerest them only with spring) — E. E. Cummings

When the first fine spring days come, and the earth awakes and assumes its garment of verdure, when the perfumed warmth of the air blows on our faces and fills our lungs, and even appears to penetrate to our heart, we feel vague longings for undefined happiness, a wish to run, to walk at random, to inhale the spring. — Guy De Maupassant

As the generation of leaves, so too is the generation of men. And as for leaves, the winds scatter some on the earth, But the new wood puts forth others, and spring comes again. So it is with men: as one generation is born, another dies. — Adam Nicolson

Earth is dry to the center,
But spring, a new comer,
A spring rich and strange,
Shall make the winds blow
Round and round,
Thro' and thro' ,
Here and there,
Till the air
And the ground
Shall be fill'd with life anew. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

No one showed him how to live in his clothes, how and elbow needs to worry its way through a sweater like the nub of a spring bulb, poking finally, through the rank, wet earth. — Julie Bruck

You shall find books and sermons everywhere, in the land and in the sea, in the earth and in the skies, and you shall learn from every living beast, and bird, and fish, and insect, and from every useful or useless plant that springs from the ground. — Charles Spurgeon

There came a time near dawn on the eve of spring, and Luthien danced upon a green hill; and suddenly she began to sing. Keen, heart-piercing was her song as the song of the lark that rises from the gates of night and pours its voice among the dying stars, seeing the sun behind the walls of the world; and the song of Luthien released the bonds of winter, and the frozen waters spoke, and flowers sprang from the cold earth where he feet had passed. Then the spell of silence fell from Beren, and he called to her, crying Tinuviel; and the woods echoed the name. — J.R.R. Tolkien

In our part of the country, spring passes quickly. If you haven't been out for five days, you find the trees in bud. If you don't see the trees for another five days, you discover that they've put out leaves. In another five days, they're so green you wouldn't recognize them. It makes you wonder: Can these be the same trees I saw a few days before? And you answer yourself: Of course they are. That's how fast spring goes by. You can almost see it. From far away it comes racing toward you. And when it reaches you it whispers in your ear, 'I'm here,' and then runs swiftly on.
Spring - what a rush it's in. Every place seems to be urging it to come. If it delays its arrival a bit, the sunlight fades and the earth turns to stone. Trees especially can't endure any delay. Let spring dally even briefly on the way, and many lives are lost. ("Spring In A Small Town") — Xiao Hong

Water drunk more reverently still, from the hands or from the spring itself, diffuses within us the most secret salt of earth and the rain of heaven. — Marguerite Yourcenar

Spring slattern of seasons
you have soggy legs
and a muddy petticoat
drowsy
is your hair your
eyes are sticky with
dream and you have a sloppy body from
being brought to bed of crocuses
when you sing in your whisky voice
the grass rises on the head of the earth
and all the trees are put on edge
spring
of the excellent jostle of
thy hips
and the superior — E. E. Cummings

The air is like a butterfly
With frail blue wings.
The happy earth looks at the sky
And sings. — Joyce Kilmer

The weather was cheerful, the breath of spring animating. She watched the swelling of the buds - the peeping heads of the crocuses - the opening of the anemones and wild wind-flowers, and at last, the sweet odour of the new-born violets, with all the interest created by novelty; not that she had not observed and watched these things before, with transitory pleasure, but now the operations of nature filled all her world; the earth was no longer merely the dwelling place of her acquaintance, the stage on which the business of society was carried on, but the mother of life - the temple of God - the beautiful and varied store-house of bounteous nature. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

How many a time have I stood watching the toads mating, or a pair of hares having a boxing match in the young corn, and thought of all the important persons who would stop me enjoying this if they could. But luckily they can't. So long as you are not actually ill, hungry, frightened or immured in a prison or a holiday camp, spring is still spring. The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the sun, and neither the dictators nor the bureaucrats, deeply as they disapprove of the process, are able to prevent it. — George Orwell

It seemed to him that he had stepped through a high window that looked on a vanished world. A light was upon it for which his language had no name. All that he saw was shapely, but the shapes seemed at once clear cut, as if they had been first conceived and drawn at the uncovering of his eyes, and ancient as if they had endured for ever. He saw no colour but those he knew, gold and white and blue and green, but they were fresh and poignant, as if he had at that moment first perceived them and made names for them new and wonderful. In winter here no heart could mourn for summer or for spring. No blemish or sickness or deformity could be seen in anything that grew upon the earth. On the land of Lorien there was no stain. — J.R.R. Tolkien

We might say that the earth has a spirit of growth; that its flesh is the soil, its bones the arrangement and connection of the rocks of which the mountains are composed, its cartilage the tufa, and its blood the springs of water. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Puns are little plays on words that a certain breed of person loves to spring on you and then look at you in a certain self-satisfied way to indicate that he thinks that you must think that he is by far the cleverest person on Earth now that Benjamin Franklin is dead, when in fact what you are thinking is that if this person ever ends up in a lifeboat, the other passengers will hurl him overboard by the end of the first day even if they have plenty of food and water. — Dave Barry

This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green,
Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes,
Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between
Where the wood fumes up and the watery, flickering rushes.
I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration
Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze
Of growing, and sparks that puff in wild gyration,
Faces of people streaming across my gaze. — D.H. Lawrence

Summer is the worst time of all to be alone. The earth is warm and lovely, free to go about in; and always somewhere in the distance there is a place where two people might be happy if only they were together. It is in the spring that one dreams of such places; one thinks of the summer which is coming, and the heart dreams of its friend. — Robert Nathan

Kunlun Mountain Over the earth the greenblue monster Kunlun who has seen all spring color and passion of men. Three million dragons of white jade soar and freeze the whole sky with snow. When a summer sun heats the globe rivers flood and men turn into fish and turtles. Who can judge a thousand years of accomplishments or failures? — Mao Zedong

The spring rains woke the dormant tillers, and bright green shoots sprang from the moist earth and rose like sleepers stretching after a long nap. As spring gave way to summer, the bright green stalks darkened, became tan, turned golden brown. The days grew long and hot. Thick towers of swirling black clouds brought rain, and the brown stems glistened in the perpetual twilight that dwelled beneath the canopy. The wheat rose and the ripening heads bent in the prairie wind, a rippling curtain, an endless, undulating sea that stretched to the horizon. — Rick Yancey

We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it, if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass, the same hips and haws on the autumn hedgerows, the same redbreasts that we used to call 'God's birds' because they did no harm to the precious crops. What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known and loved because it is known? — George Eliot

Today, look at the blue sky, hear the grass growing beneath your feet, inhale the scent of spring, let the fruits of the earth linger on your tongue, reach out and embrace those you love. Ask Spirit to awaken your awareness to the sacredness of your sensory perceptions. — Sarah Ban Breathnach