Fall Autumn Quotes & Sayings

I thought of many an autumn I had known: Seemly autumns approaching deliberately, with amplitude. I thought of wild asters, Michaelmas daisies, mushrooms, leaves idling down the air, two or three at a time, warblers twittering and glittering in every bush ('Confusing fall warblers,' Peterson calls them, and how right he is): the lingering yellow jackets feeding on broken apples; crickets; amber-dappled light; great geese barking down from the north; the seesaw noise that blue jays seem to make more often in the fall. Hoarfrost in the morning, cold stars at night. But slow; the whole thing coming slowly. The way it should be. — Elizabeth Enright

I ate breakfast in the kitchen by candle-light, and then drove the five miles to the station through the most glorious October colouring. The sun came up on the way, and the swamp maples and dogwood glowed crimson and orange and the stone walls and cornfields sparkled with hoar frost; the air was keen and clear and full of promise. I knew something was going to happen. — Jean Webster

Autumn arrives in the early morning. — Elizabeth Bowen

Nay, could their numbers countervail the stars,
Or ever-drizzling drops of April showers,
Or wither'd leaves that autumn shaketh down,
Yet would the Soldan by his conquering power
So scatter and consume them in his rage,
That not a man should live to rue their fall. — Christopher Marlowe

The season for enjoying the fullness of life - partaking of the harvest, sharing the harvest with others, and reinvesting and saving portions of the harvest for yet another season of growth. — Denis Waitley

It was one of those perfect fall days when the air is cool enough to wake you up but the sun is also kissing your face. — Anita Diamant

I told some imprecisely imagined interlocutor that each year I hoped to have outgrown being moved by the autumn and each year I hadn't — Brigid Brophy

I am happy to experience beauty of each season; spring time, summer, autumn and winter. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Those who romanticize war often like to think of it, at least in areas of mortal peril, as nothing but "guts and glory." Those who are inclined to pacifism, by contrast, often think of it as an unbroken sequence of horrors. Actually, however, people in wartime still fall in love, do the laundry, worry about pimples, drink beer, and do most of the same things that they do in times of peace. The patterns of daily life may be mundane, but they are remarkably tenacious.
But, while people in wartime still go about their daily routines, the prospect of imminent death can give even quotidian chores a heightened intensity. When the first bombs were dropped on London in autumn of 1940, the population bore adversity better than almost anybody had expected. The danger was mixed with excitement, and the terror had a sort of apocalyptic magnificence. — Boria Sax

The perfect weather of Indian Summer lengthened and lingered, warm sunny days were followed by brisk nights with Halloween a presentiment in the air. — Wallace Stegner

The Oak

Live thy Life,
Young and old,
Like yon oak,
Bright in spring,
Living gold;

Summer-rich
Then; and then
Autumn-changed
Soberer-hued
Gold again.

All his leaves
Fall'n at length,
Look, he stands,
Trunk and bough
Naked strength. — Alfred Tennyson

Autumn is the best time of year. Maybe the worst for being a single girl of twenty-six, but in every other way, it's perfect. The best things come out of hiding this time of year: the rich colors of fall leaves, pumpkin flavored everything, dark lipstick, sweaters and boots, fires, and . . . Landon Farrar, apparently. — Holly Hall

We should wait six-seven months. Maybe, upon spring's arrival, our love would blossom. As of now, dry-lifeless-forlorn, it resembles the fall foliage. Beautiful, nonetheless!
#BeyondAutumn — Saru Singhal

The autumn breeze rises on the shore at Fukiage- and those white chrysanthemums are they flowers? or not? or only breakers on the beach? — Sugawara No Michizane

Autumn is the eternal corrective. It is ripeness and color and a time of maturity; but it is also breadth, and depth, and distance. What man can stand with autumn on a hilltop and fail to see the span of his world and the meaning of the rolling hills that reach to the far horizon? — Hal Borland

November is usually such a disagreeable month ... as if the year had suddenly found out that she was growing old and could do nothing but weep and fret over it. This year is growing old gracefully ... just like a stately old lady who knows she can be charming even with gray hair and wrinkles. We've had lovely days and delicious twilights. — L.M. Montgomery

Autumn brings the falling of leaves and cool days. — Lailah Gifty Akita

The heat of autumn is different from the heat of summer. One ripens apples, the other turns them to cider.
[Autumn] — Jane Hirshfield

Pale amber sunlight falls across The reddening October trees ... Are we not better and at home In dreamful Autumn, we who deem No harvest joy is worth a dream? A little while and night shall come, A little while, then, let us dream ... — Ernest Dowson

As the season changes, we learn to adapt. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;
Lengthen night and shorten day;
Every leaf speaks bliss to me
Fluttering from the autumn tree.
I shall smile when wreaths of snow
Blossom where the rose should grow;
I shall sing when night's decay
Ushers in a drearier day. — Emily Bronte

Truly, Autumn is my season," the scarlet beast chorted. "Spring and Summer and Winter all begin with such late letters! But Autumn and Fall, I have loved best, because they are best to love. — Catherynne M Valente

A cold front had rumbled through in the night, left its rain behind in wide, deep puddles that reflected the first autumn sky of the year, the kind of blue so startling children demand a reason. They reflected the trees that rose out of them, too, as if those trees had no roots but reached with their branches as deep into a sky at our feet as they did into the one above our heads, as if you could take one step and fall forever upwards. The world was a bright, strange place, I thought, where none of us belonged. — Matthew Griffin

Trees scream and drop bright leaves — Allen Ginsberg

Autumn felt like the whole world was browned and roasted until it was so tender it was about to fall away from the bone. — Sarah Addison Allen

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

Eat Meat and your a beast — Allen Ginsberg

Our judgment ripens; our imagination decays. We cannot at once enjoy the flowers of the Spring of life and the fruits of its Autumn. — Thomas B. Macaulay

The leaves drifted silently to the ground in the crisp autumn air. I inhaled deeply, the smell of burning bonfires far, far away enchanting my nostrils.
Autumn had come early this year and I was excited for the change in colors that had already begun to take over the trees of the forest that surrounded Grandmother's house. — Emma Rose Kraus

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

A moral character is attached to autumnal scenes; the leaves falling like our years, the flowers fading like our hours, the clouds fleeting like our illusions, the light diminishing like our intelligence, the sun growing colder like our affections, the rivers becoming frozen like our lives
all bear secret relations to our destinies. — Francois-Rene De Chateaubriand

Winter Grace It is autumn again and our anxiety blows With the wind, breaking the heart of the rose, Petals and leaves fall down and everything goes. All but the seed, all but the hard bright berry And the bulbs we kneel on the earth to bury And lay away with our anguish and our worry. It is time we learned again the winter grace To put the nerves to sleep in a dark place And smooth the lines in the self-tortured face. For we are at the end of our endurance nearly And we shall have to die this winter surely, For this is the end of more than a season clearly. Now we shall have to be poor, to yield up all, With the leaves wither, with the petals fall, Now we shall have to die, once and for all. Before the seed of faith so deep and still Pushes up gently through the frozen will And the joyless wake and learn to be joyful. Before this buried love leaps up from sorrow And doubt and violence and pity follow To greet the radiant morning and the swallow. — May Sarton

And there, next to me, as the east wind blows in early fall, a season open to great migrations, are those lives, threading the air and waters of the sea, that come out of an incomparable darkness, which is also my own. — John Hay

And every year there is a brief, startling moment
When we pause in the middle of a long walk home and
Suddenly feel something invisible and weightless
Touching our shoulders, sweeping down from the air:
It is the autumn wind pressing against our bodies;
It is the changing light of fall falling on us. — Edward Hirsch

Romance is the truth of imagination and boyhood. Homer's horses clear the world at a bound. The child's eye needs no horizon to its prospect. The oriental tale is not too vast. Pearls dropping from trees are only falling leaves in autumn. The palace that grew up in a night merely awakens a wish to live in it. The impossibilities of fifty years are the commonplaces of five. — Robert Aris Willmott

And then there is that day when all around,
all around you hear the dropping of the apples, one
by one, from the trees. At first it is one here and one there,
and then it is three and then it is four and then nine and
twenty, until the apples plummet like rain, fall like horse hoofs
in the soft, darkening grass, and you are the last apple on the
tree; and you wait for the wind to work you slowly free from
your hold upon the sky, and drop you down and down. Long
before you hit the grass you will have forgotten there ever
was a tree, or other apples, or a summer, or green grass below,
You will fall in darkness ... — Ray Bradbury

But you can't plead with autumn. No. The midnight wind stalked through the woods, hooted to frighten you, swept everything away for the approaching winter, whirled the leaves. ("The North") — Yevgeny Zamyatin

For man, autumn is a time of harvest, of gathering together. For nature, it is a time of sowing, of scattering abroad. — Edwin Way Teale

Change is coming, she whispered to the bugs bouncing off her window. You can't escape it. — A. Lynn

The summer ended. Day by day, and taking its time, the summer ended. The noises in the street began to change, diminish, voices became fewer, the music sparse. Daily, blocks and blocks of children were spirited away. Grownups retreated from the streets, into the houses. Adolescents moved from the sidewalk to the stoop to the hallway to the stairs, and rooftops were abandoned. Such trees as there were allowed their leaves to fall - they fell unnoticed - seeming to promise, not without bitterness, to endure another year. At night, from a distance, the parks and playgrounds seemed inhabited by fireflies, and the night came sooner, inched in closer, fell with a greater weight. The sound of the alarm clock conquered the sound of the tambourine, the houses put on their winter faces. The houses stared down a bitter landscape, seeming, not without bitterness, to have resolved to endure another year. — James Baldwin

Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn
that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness
that season which has drawn from every poet worthy of being read some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling. — Jane Austen

Every time I look at you autumn leaves come in between - does it matter they're the color of your hair - or they still fall in my memory? ... — John Geddes

Fall has always been my favorite season. The time when everything bursts with its last beauty, as if nature had been saving up all year for the grand finale. — Lauren DeStefano

A few days ago I walked along the edge of the lake and was treated to the crunch and rustle of leaves with each step I made. The acoustics of this season are different and all sounds, no matter how hushed, are as crisp as autumn air. — Eric Sloane

The windflower and the violet, they perished long ago,
And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow;
But on the hills the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood,
And the yellow sunflower by the brook, in autumn beauty stood,
Till fell the first from the clear cold heaven, as falls the plague on men,
And the brightness of their smile was gone, from upland glade and glen. — William C. Bryant

I was just telling Claire about a guy I met in bread class. I hate him, but he could be my soul mate. — Sarah Addison Allen

When everything that ticked has stopped, and space stares, all around, or grisly frosts, first autumn morns, repeal the beating ground. — Emily Dickinson

The damps of autumn sink into the leaves and prepare them for the necessity of their fall; and thus insensibly are we, as years close around us, detached from our tenacity of life by the gentle pressure of recorded sorrow. — Walter Savage Landor

Autumn arrived and life was in danger of becoming boring again. — Deborah Curtis

When the days become longer and there is more sunshine, the grass becomes fresh and, consequently, we feel very happy. On the other hand, in autumn, one leaf falls down and another leaf falls down. The beautiful plants become as if dead and we do not feel very happy. Why? I think it is because deep down our human nature likes construction, and does not like destruction. Naturally, every action which is destructive is against human nature. Constructiveness is the human way. Therefore, I think that in terms of basic human feeling, violence is not good. Non-violence is the only way. — Dalai Lama

All things are beautiful in the sacred time. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Deep inside, we're still the boys of autumn, that magic time of the year that once swept us onto America's fields. — Archie Manning

A red leaf danced from a branch like a dropping flame, down into the calm blue lake. A gust had broken it free. There was a cold bite in the wind.
It was now deep autumn in the mountains. — Aspen Matis

We pretended she'd only gotten lost in the colors of fall.
Piper — T. Greenwood

Change is a measure of time and, in the autumn, time seems speeded up. What was is not and never again will be; what is is change. — Edwin Way Teale

The heat of the incinerator wrapped around Inej like a living thing, a desert dragon in his den, hiding from the ice, waiting for her. She knew her body's limits, and she knew she had no more to give. She'd made a bad wager. It was as simple as that. The autumn leaf might cling to its branch, but it was already dead. The only question was when it would fall. — Leigh Bardugo

The falling leaves drift by the window The autumn leaves of red and gold ... I see your lips, the summer kisses The sunburned hands, I used to hold Since you went away, the days grow long And soon I'll hear ol' winter's song. But I miss you most of all my darling, When autumn leaves start to fall. — Johnny Mercer

One sort of optional thing you might do is to realize there are six seasons instead of four. The poetry of four seasons is all wrong for this part of the planet, and this may explain why we are so depressed so much of the time. I mean, Spring doesn't feel like Spring a lot of the time, and November is all wrong for Fall and so on. Here is the truth about the seasons: Spring is May and June! What could be springier than May and June? Summer is July and August. Really hot, right? Autumn is September and October. See the pumpkins? Smell those burning leaves. Next comes the season called "Locking." That is when Nature shuts everything down. November and December aren't Winter. They're Locking. Next comes Winter, January and February. Boy! Are they ever cold! What comes next? Not Spring. Unlocking comes next. What else could April be? — Kurt Vonnegut

Autumn is here
and I am in love.
My heart has taken residence in my mind.
I pick the crisp ochre leaves
and put them in my pocket.
I am in love. — Kamand Kojouri

Unnoticed, the passage has occurred; as I brood, autumn dusk dewdrops fall on my pillow. The voices of insects and the deer by the fence, as one, disturb me to tears this autumn dusk. — Princess Shikishi

And now, my poor old woman, why are you crying so bitterly? It is autumn. The leaves are falling from the trees like burning tears- the wind howls. Why must you mimic them? — Mervyn Peake

On the day the tree bloomed in the fall, when its white apple blossoms fell and covered the ground like snow, it was tradition for the Waverleys to gather in the garden like survivors of some great catastrophe, hugging one another, laughing as they touched faces and arms, making sure they were all okay, grateful to have gotten through it. — Sarah Addison Allen

October's Party
October gave a party;
The leaves by hundreds came -
The Chestnuts, Oaks, and Maples,
And leaves of every name.
The Sunshine spread a carpet,
And everything was grand,
Miss Weather led the dancing,
Professor Wind the band. — George Cooper

The last dying days of summer, fall coming on fast. A cold night, the first of the season, a change from the usual bland Maryland climate. Cold, thought the boy; his mind felt numb. The trees he could see through his bedroom window were tall charcoal sticks, shivering, afraid of the wind or only trying to stand against it. Every tree was alone out there. The animals were alone, each in its hole, in its thin fur, and anything that got hit on the road tonight would die alone. Before morning, he thought, its blood would freeze in the cracks of the asphalt. — Poppy Z. Brite

Autumn to winter, winter into spring, Spring into summer, summer into fall,
So rolls the changing year, and so we change; Motion so swift, we know not that we move. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

Now Autumn's fire burns slowly along the woods and day by day the dead leaves fall and melt. — William Allingham

Autumn is autumn. — Lailah Gifty Akita

The air has that bracing autumnal bite so that all you want to do is bob for apples or hang a witch or something. — Sarah Vowell

Wind warns November's done with. The blown leaves make bat-shapes, Web-winged and furious. — Sylvia Plath

Two sounds of autumn are unmistakable ... the hurrying rustle of crisp leaves blown along the street ... by a gusty wind, and the gabble of a flock of migrating geese. — Hal Borland

The leaves fall patiently
Nothing remembers or grieves
The river takes to the sea
The yellow drift of leaves. — Sara Teasdale

The torchlit garden was redolent with the colors and scents of autumn... gold and copper foliage, thick borders of roses and dahlias, flowering grasses and beds of fresh mulch that made the air pleasantly pungent. — Lisa Kleypas

Autumn is a season followed immediately by looking forward to spring. — Doug Larson

Fall makes me think that if I fail horribly at this art thing, and then fail horribly with this writing thing, I'll go run a pumpkin patch. — Tyler Hojberg

He'd watched a falcon fall down the long blue wall of the mountain and break with the keel of its breastbone the midmost from a flight of cranes and take it to the river below all gangly and wrecked and trailing its loose and blowsy plumage in the still autumn air. — Cormac McCarthy

Leaves covered pavement like soggy cereal. — Patricia Cornwell

Summer rushes in on the heels of spring, eager to take her turn; and then she dances with wild abandon. But the time soon comes when she gratefully falls, exhausted and sated, into the auburn arms of autumn. — Cristen Rodgers

There is no better time than the autumn to begin forgetting the things that trouble us, allowing them to fall away like dried leaves. There is no better time to dance again, to make the most of every crumb of sunlight and warm body and soul with its rays before it falls asleep and becomes only a dim light bulb in the skies. — Paulo Coelho

Autumn flings her fiery cloak over the sumac, beech and oak. — Susan Lendroth

A wet autumn morning, a garbage truck clattering down the street. The first snowfall of the season, blossom sized flakes falling languidly and melting on teh ground, a premature snow fall delicate as lace, rapidly melting. — Joyce Carol Oates

Autumn has come to northeast Montana. The vapor of one's breath, the clarity of the stars, the smell of wood smoke, the stones underfoot that even a full day of sunlight won't warm- these all say there will be no more days that can be mistaken for summer. — Larry Watson

Steam rising underneath a canopy of whispering, changing aspens; starlight in the clear, dark night, and wondrous beauty in every direction. If only all could feel this way, to be so captured and enthralled with autumn. — Donna Lynn Hope

Inside of us, there's a continual autumn. Our leaves fall and are blown out over the water. — Rumi

It was autumn and falling stars
Covered the shrivelled forms
Crouched in the moonlight. — Wallace Stevens

On the other side of that big-ass mirror, a video camera was watching us. In about ten seconds, it was going to start spitting static at itself, and everything it saw was going to break up into a fuzzy, gray-white wash, rolling up and down, that wouldn't be admissible as evidence on Judge Judy. Those missing frames would last a little less than a quarter of a minute, consolidate themselves back
into a semblance of reality, and then I would theoretically go walking right back out of here.
Between now and that moment, there stretched an infinite ocean of potential
time. Time enough to walk around the world. Time enough to fall in love, get
married on a white beach under purple stars, write a book of poems about
truest passion, have a few good and bloody screaming matches, get divorced in a court of autumn elves and gypsy moths, then set the ink-stained, tear-streaked pages of your text ablaze. — Clinton Boomer

Corn wind in the fall, come off the black lands, come off the whisper of the silk hangers, the lap of the flat spear leaves. — Carl Sandburg

It is Autumn, as you know, and things are beginning to die. It is so wonderful to be out in the crisp Fall air, with the leaves turning gold and the grass turning brown and the warmth going out of the sunlight and big hot fires in the fireplace while Buddy rakes the lawn. We see a lot of bombs on TV because we watch it a lot more, now that the days get shorter and shorter, and darkness comes so soon, and all the flowers die from freezing. — Hunter S. Thompson

Flowers, cold from the dew,
And autumn's approaching breath,
I pluck for the warm, luxuriant braids,
Which haven't faded yet.
In their nights, fragrantly resinous,
Entwined with delightful mystery,
They will breathe in her springlike
Extraordinary beauty.
But in a whirlwind of sound and fire,
From her shing head they will flutter
And fall-and before her
They will die, faintly fragrant still.
And, impelled by faithful longing,
My obedient gaze will feast upon them-
With a reverent hand,
Love will gather their rotting remains. — Anna Akhmatova

(Ravic speaking of a butterfly caught in the Louvre) In the morning it would search for flowers and life and the light honey of blossoms and would not find them and later it would fall asleep on millennial marble, weakened by then, until the grip of the delicate, tenacious feet loosened and it fell, a thin leaf of premature autumn. — Erich Maria Remarque

The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year, Of wailing winds, and naked woods and meadows brown and sear. — William C. Bryant

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

Days decrease, / And autumn grows, autumn in everything. — Robert Browning

There is something so special in the early leaves drifting from the trees - as if we are all to be allowed a chance to peel, to refresh, to start again. — Ruth Ahmed

I love the arrival of a new season - each one bringing with it its own emotion: spring is full of hope; summer is freedom; autumn is a colourful release, and winter brings an enchanting peace. It's hard to pick which one I enjoy the most - each time the new one arrives, I remember its beauty and forget the previous one whose qualities have started to dim. — Giovanna Fletcher

Give me juicy autumnal fruit, ripe and red from the orchard.
[Give me the splendid silent sun] — Walt Whitman

The approach of night The skies yet blushing with departing light, When falling dews with spangles deck'd the glade, And the low sun had lengthen'd ev'ry shade. — Alexander Pope

I cannot endure to waste anything as precious as autumn sunshine by staying in the house. So I spend almost all the daylight hours in the open air. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

It looked like the world was covered in a cobbler crust of brown sugar and cinnamon. — Sarah Addison Allen

Anger falling asleep at the heart — Allen Ginsberg

Spring and Autumn
Every season hath its pleasures;
Spring may boast her flowery prime,
Yet the vineyard's ruby treasures
Brighten Autumn's sob'rer time. — Thomas Moore