May And Spring Quotes & Sayings

Geology ... offers always some material for observation ... [When] spring and summer come round, how easily may the hammer be buckled round the waist, and the student emerge from the dust of town into the joyous air of the country, for a few delightful hours among the rocks. — Archibald Geikie

Blest be the gracious Power, who taught mankind
To stamp a lasting image of the mind!
Beasts may convey, and tuneful birds may sing,
Their mutual feelings, in the opening spring;
But Man alone has skill and power to send
The heart's warm dictates to the distant friend;
'Tis his alone to please, instruct, advise
Ages remote, and nations yet to rise. — George Crabbe

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

A king should first gain the confidence of the foe and when he has gained it should spring on him like a wolf. The foe should be struck down so effectively that he may never agin raise his head. The foe should be slain by the arts of conciliation, expenditure of money, creating disunion among his allies or by employment of force. Indeed every means in the king's power should be used to destroy the foe. The king should never strike in ignorance but having slain his foe should never indulge in sorrow. The king should speak with soft words before he smites and even as he is smiting. Grieve for the victim after he is down. — Meera Uberoi

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

In the winter you may want the summer; in the summer, you may want the autumn; in the autumn, you may want the winter; but only in the spring you dream and want no other season but the spring! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers: They call it 'easing the Spring.' — Henry Reed

It's a calculated risk, you see. You're either laughing all over your face or you're in deep, deep shit. Whether to take the risk or not. If you take the gamble, you may fall off the twig frozen stiff one night and not thaw out till spring. Bottle it and you might not have anywhere to nest when you return. These are, as it were, the eternal dilemmas you're confronted with. — Jo Nesbo

We may scatter the seeds of courtesy and kindness about us at little expense. Some of them will fall on good ground, and grow up into benevolence in the minds of others, and all of them will bear fruit of happiness in the bosom whence they spring. — Jeremy Bentham

Anyway, I think I made a bit of progress."
"How did you manage that?"
"Well, they liked that you served in the First Army, and that you saved their prince's life."
"After he risked his own life rescuing us?"
"I may have taken some liberties with the details."
"Oh, Nikolai will love that. Is there more?"
"I told them you hate herring."
"Why?"
"And that you love plum cake. And that Ana Kuya took a switch to you when you ruined your spring slippers in puddles."
I winced. "Why would you tell them all that?'
"I wanted to make you human," he said. "All they see when they look at you is the Sun Summoner. They see a threat, another powerful Grisha like the Darkling. I want them to see a daughter or a sister or a friend. I want them to see Alina."
I felt a lump rise in my throat. "Do you practice being wonderful?"
"Daily," he said with a grin. Then he winked. "But I prefer 'useful. — Leigh Bardugo

The phenomena of the year take place every day in a pond on a small scale. Every morning, generally speaking, the shallow water isbeing warmed more rapidly than the deep, though it may not be made so warm after all, and every evening it is being cooled more rapidly until the morning. The day is an epitome of the year. The night is the winter, the morning and evening are the spring and fall, and the noon is the summer. The cracking and booming of the ice indicate a change of temperature. — Henry David Thoreau

What avails it that indulgent Heaven
From mortal eyes has wrapt the woes to come,
If we, ingenious to torment ourselves,
Grow pale at hideous fictions of our own?
Enjoy the present; nor which needless cares
Of what may spring from blind misfortune's womb,
Appal the surest hour that life bestows.
Serence, and master of yourself, prepare
For what may come; and leave the rest to Heaven. — John Armstrong

I saw something moving round the foot of the bed, which at first I could not accurately distinguish. But I soon saw that it was a sooty-black animal that resembled a monstrous cat. It appeared to me about four or five feet long for it measured fully the length of the hearthrug as it passed over it; and it continued to-ing and fro-ing with the lithe, sinister restlessness of a beast in a cage. I could not cry out, although as you may suppose, I was terrified. Its pace was growing faster, and the room rapidly darker and darker, and at length so dark that I could no longer see anything of it but its eyes. I felt it spring lightly on the bed. The two broad eyes approached my face, and suddenly I felt a stinging pain as if two large needles darted, an inch or two apart, deep into my breast. I waked with a scream. — J. Sheridan Le Fanu

If believers decay in their first love, or in some other grace, yet another grace may grow and increase, such as humility, their brokenheartedness; they sometimes seem not to grow in the branches when they may grow at the root; upon a check grace breaks out more; as we say, after a hard winter there usually follows a glorious spring. — Richard Sibbes

The winter was not really winter at all, and therein may lie Key West's greatest charm. If one does not have to brood upon the coming of winter and the shortening of the days and the fading of the light, then perhaps one does not have to brood upon the coming of death. When the season is gentle and untreatening and seems to renew itself daily, we come to believe that spring and the long days of summer may be eternal after all. When we see the light trapped high in the sky on a summer evening, is it possible we are looking through an aperture at our future rather than at a seasonal phenomenon? Is it possible that the big party is just beginning? — James Lee Burke

Accounts of outrages committed by mobs form the every-day news of the times. They have pervaded the country from New England to Louisiana, they are neither peculiar to the eternal snows of the former nor the burning suns of the latter; they are not the creature of climate, neither are they confined to the slaveholding or the non-slaveholding States. Alike they spring up among the pleasure-hunting masters of Southern slaves, and the order-loving citizens of the land of steady habits. Whatever then their cause may be, it is common to the whole country. — Abraham Lincoln

I have walked this south stream when to believe in spring was an act of faith. It was spitting snow and
blowing, and within two days of being May ... But as if to assert the triumph of climate over weather,
one ancient willow managed a few gray pussy willows, soft and barely visible against the snow-blurred
gray background. — Ann Zwinger

The moods of a river change from hour to hour and day to day. It can be still and serene as a glassy mirror, reflecting the clouds that pass over it and the trees on its banks. Or, when a light breeze springs up, the surface of the river may be broken into little diamond lights reflecting the distant sun. — Ernie Lyons

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

The answer to our prayer may be coming, although we may not discern its approach. A seed that is underground during winter, although hidden and seemingly dead and lost, is nevertheless taking root for a later spring and harvest. — Mrs. Charles E. Cowman

Snowstorms may yet whiten fields and gardens, high winds may howl about the trees and chimneys, but the little blue heralds persistently proclaim from the orchard and the garden that the spring procession has begun to move. — Neltje Blanchan

The Unitarian Church has done more than any other church to substitute character for creed, and to say that a man should be judged by his spirit; by the climate of his heart; by the autumn of his generosity; by the spring of his hope; that he should be judged by what he does; by the influence that he exerts, rather than by the mythology he may believe. — Robert Green Ingersoll

And after winter folweth grene May. — Geoffrey Chaucer

Voluntary Quicksand
I read the Chronicle this morning
as if I were stepping into voluntary
quicksand
and watched the news go over my shoes
with forty-four more days of spring.
Kent State
America
May 7, 1970 — Richard Brautigan

All the spring may be hidden in the single bud, and the low ground nest of the lark may hold the joy that is to herald the feet of many rose-red dawns. — Oscar Wilde

I think Barry Bonds was in a unique situation given his injuries from a year ago, the fact that he played in just 14 games. Even though I spoke to Barry in December and he was enthusiastic and excited about the possibility, I think the closer he got to the reality of spring training, and as he got himself in shape for the regular season and the San Francisco Giants, he felt like it may be too much of a challenge to try to push his body at this point in his career. — Buck Martinez

It is a most fearful fact to think of, that in every heart there is some secret spring that would be weak at the touch of temptation, and that is liable to be assailed. Fearful, and yet salutary to think of; for the thought may serve to keep our moral nature braced. It warns us that we can never stand at ease, or lie down in this field of life, without sentinels of watchfulness and campfires of prayer. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Voluptuous bloom and fragrance rare The summer to its rose may bring; Far sweeter to the wooing air The hidden violet of spring. Still, still that lovely ghost appears, Too fair, too pure, to bid depart; No riper love of later years Can steal its beauty from the heart. — Bayard Taylor

Life is a Curious Thing. Winter turns to spring and Parvaneh passes her driving test. Of teaches Adrian how to change tires. The kid may have bought a Toyota, but that doesn't mean he's entirely beyond help, Ove explains to Sonja when he visits her one Sunday in April. The he shows her some photographs of Parvaneh's little boy. Four months old and as fat as a seal pup. Patrick has tried to force one of those cell phone camera things on Ove, but he doesn't trust them. So he walks around with a thick wad of paper copies inside his wallet instead, held together by a rubber band. Shows everyone he meets. Even the people who work at the florist's, — Fredrik Backman

You start in April and cross to the time of May
One has you as it leaves, one as it comes
Since the edges of these months are yours and defer
To you, either of them suits your praises.
The Circus continues and the theatre's lauded palm,
Let this song, too, join the Circus spectacle. — Ovid

A poor old Widow in her weeds
Sowed her garden with wild-flower seeds;
Not too shallow, and not too deep,
And down came April -- drip -- drip -- drip.
Up shone May, like gold, and soon
Green as an arbour grew leafy June.
And now all summer she sits and sews
Where willow herb, comfrey, bugloss blows,
Teasle and pansy, meadowsweet,
Campion, toadflax, and rough hawksbit;
Brown bee orchis, and Peals of Bells;
Clover, burnet, and thyme she smells;
Like Oberon's meadows her garden is
Drowsy from dawn to dusk with bees.
Weeps she never, but sometimes sighs,
And peeps at her garden with bright brown eyes;
And all she has is all she needs --
A poor Old Widow in her weeds. — Walter De La Mare

It was that period in the vernal quarter when we may suppose the Dryads to be waking for the season. The vegetable world begins to move and swell and the saps to rise, till in the completest silence of lone gardens and trackless plantations, where everything seems helpless and still after the bond and slavery of frost, there are bustlings, strainings, united thrusts, and pulls-all-together, in comparison with which the powerful tugs of cranes and pulleys in a noisy city are but pigmy efforts. — Thomas Hardy

The flowers of Spring may wither, the hope of Summer fade, The Autumn droop in Winter, the birds forsake the shade; The winds be lull'd - the Sun and Moon forget their old decree, But we in Nature's latest hour, O Lord! will cling to Thee. — Reginald Heber

On the whole, my respect for my fellow-men, except as one may outweigh a million, is not being increased these days ... Such do not know that like the seed is the fruit, and that, in the moral world, when good seed is planted, good fruit is inevitable, and does not depend on our watering and cultivating; that when you plant, or bury, a hero in his field, a crop of heroes is sure to spring up. This is a seed of such force and vitality, that it does not ask our leave to germinate. — Henry David Thoreau

Occasionally a matrimonial epidemic appears, especially toward spring, devastating society, thinning the ranks of bachelordom, and leaving mothers lamenting for their fairest daughters. — Louisa May Alcott

Wisconsin doesn't look kindly on the weeks that slip in between the death of cold and the birth of warmth; Persephone may have left her husband, but she isn't home yet, and this is one state that'll be damned before it lets anyone forget it. — Seanan McGuire

May the flowers of spring bring beauty and joy to your world everyday. — Debasish Mridha

If you can visualize the whole of spring and see Paradise with the eye of belief, you may understand the utter majesty of everlasting Beauty. If you respond to that Beauty with the beauty of belief and worship, you will be a most beautiful creature. — Said Nursi

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

Please bring strange things.
Please come bringing new things.
Let very old things come into your hands.
Let what you do not know come into your eyes.
Let desert sand harden your feet.
Let the arch of your feet be the mountains.
Let the paths of your fingertips be your maps
And the ways you go be the lines of your palms.
Let there be deep snow in your inbreathing
And your outbreath be the shining of ice.
May your mouth contain the shapes of strange words.
May you smell food cooking you have not eaten.
May the spring of a foreign river be your navel.
May your soul be at home where there are no houses.
Walk carefully, well-loved one,
Walk mindfully, well-loved one,
Walk fearlessly, well-loved one.
Return with us, return to us,
Be always coming home.
Ursula K. Leguin — Ursula K. Le Guin

Creative people often feel highs of joy and lows of sorrow that others may never experience, and perhaps could not even handle if they did. Little wonder many outside the creative world mistake (or dismiss) eccentric responses of the spirit as weakness or mental illness. But in the end, these dismissive souls will never know what it is to be moved by tears by the beauty of rose or brought to joy by sunlight filtering through the leaves of spring or autumn. The creative walk in glades invisible to those outside their realms. — Duncan Long

To find recreation in amusements is not happiness; for this joy springs from alien and extrinsic sources, and is therefore dependent upon and subject to interruption by a thousand accidents, which may minister inevitable affliction. — Blaise Pascal

The wind is tossing the lilacs,
The new leaves laugh in the sun,
And the petals fall on the orchard wall,
But for me the spring is done.
Beneath the apple blossoms
I go a wintry way,
For love that smiled in April
Is false to me in May. — Sara Teasdale

Being an artist means, not reckoning and counting, but ripening like the tree which does not force its sap and stands confidence in the storms of spring without fear that after them may come no summer — Rainer Maria Rilke

If I dismiss the ordinary - waiting for the special, the extreme, the extraordinary to happen - I may just miss my life ... To allow ourselves to spend afternoons watching dancers rehearse, or sit on a stone wall and watch the sunset, or spend the whole weekend rereading Chekhov stories - to know that we are doing what we're supposed to be doing - is the deepest form of permission in our creative lives. The British author and psychologist Adam Phillips has noted, 'When we are inspired, rather like when we are in love, we can feel both unintelligible to ourselves and most truly ourselves.' This is the feeling I think we all yearn for, a kind of hyperreal dream state. We read Emily Dickinson. We watch the dancers. We research a little known piece of history obsessively. We fall in love. We don't know why, and yet these moments form the source from which all our words will spring. — Dani Shapiro

We may be able to prove conclusively that all men are born with potentially brilliant intellects ... and that the source of cultural creativity is the consciousness that springs from social cooperation and loving interaction ... the majority of us live far below our potential, because of the oppressive nature of most societies. — John Blacking

Up and down! Up and down!
From the base of the wave to the billow's crown;
And amidst the flashing and feathery foam
The Stormy Petrel finds a home,
A home, if such a place may be,
For her who lives on the wide, wide sea,
On the craggy ice, in the frozen air,
And only seeketh her rocky lair
To warm her young and to teach them spring
At once o'er the waves on their stormy wing! — Bryan Procter

But there still prevails, even in nations well acquainted with commerce, a strong jealousy with regard to the balance of trade, and a fear, that all their gold and silver may be leaving them. This seems to me, almost in every case, a groundless apprehension; and I should as soon dread, that all our springs and rivers should be exhausted, as that money should abandon a kingdom where there are people and industry. — David Hume

May is a pious fraud of the almanac A ghastly parody of real Spring Shaped out of snow and breathed with eastern wind. — James Russell Lowell

Don't stop,' said Lymond pleasantly. 'You've my father, my brother, my late sister and a whole clecking of aunts to get through. Auntie May is a good one to start with. Fifteen stone, and every spring she goes broody; and we find her out in the hen run on a clutch of burst yolks; except the year mother got there first and hard-boiled them. — Dorothy Dunnett

Who are you, reader, reading my poems a hundred years hence?
I cannot send you one single flower from this wealth of the spring, one single streak of gold from yonder clouds.
Open your doors and look abroad.
From your blossoming garden gather fragrant memories of the vanished flowers of an hundred years before.
In the joy of your heart may you feel the living joy that sang one spring morning, sending its glad voice across an hundred years. — Rabindranath Tagore

Persecution of powerless or power-losing groups may not be a very pleasant spectacle, but it does not spring from human meanness alone. What makes men obey or tolerate real power and, on the other hand, hate people who have wealth without power, is the rational instinct that power has a certain function and is of some general use. Even — Hannah Arendt

[Books] may sleep for a while and be neglected; but whenever the desire of information springs up in the human breast, there they are with mild wisdom ready to instruct and please us. — Ann Plato

As the spring comes on, and the densening outlines of the elm give daily a new design for a Grecian urn, - its hue, first brown with blossoms, then emerald with leaves, - we appreciate the vanishing beauty of the bare boughs. In our favored temperate zone, the trees denude themselves each year, like the goddesses before Paris, that we may see which unadorned loveliness is the fairest. — Thomas Wentworth Higginson

As far as he could discover, there were no signs of spring. The decay that covered the surface of the mottled ground was not the kind in which life generates. Last year, he remembered, May had failed to quicken these soiled fields. It had taken all the brutality of July to torture a few green spikes through the exhausted dirt.
What the little park needed, even more than he did, was a drink. Neither alcohol nor rain would do. Tomorrow, in his column, he would ask Broken-hearted, Sick-of-it-all, Desperate, Disillusioned-with-tubercular-husband and the rest of his correspondents to come here and water the soil with their tears. Flowers would then spring up, flowers that smelled of feet.
"Ah, humanity ... " But he was heavy with shadow and the joke went into a dying fall. He trist to break its fall by laughing at himself. — Nathanael West

Think of the sound you make when you let go after holding your breath for a very, very long time. Think of the gladdest sound you know: the sound of dawn on the first day of spring break, the sound of a bottle of Coke opening, the sound of a crowd cheering in your ears because you're coming down to the last part of a race
and you're ahead. Think of the sound of water over stones in a cold stream, and the sound of wind through green trees on a late May afternoon in Central Park. Think of the sound of a bus coming into the station carrying someone you love.
Then put all those together. — Gary D. Schmidt

A large part of the art of instruction lies in making the difficulty of new problems large enough to challenge thought, and small enough so that, in addition to the confusion naturally attending the novel elements, there shall be luminous familiar spots from which helpful suggestions may spring. — John Dewey

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

Also known as May Eve, May Day, and Walpurgis Night, happens at the beginning of May. It celebrates the height of Spring and the flowering of life. The Goddess manifests as the May Queen and Flora. The God emerges as the May King and Jack in the Green. The danced Maypole represents Their unity, with the pole itself being the God and the ribbons that encompass it, the Goddess. Colors are the Rainbow spectrum. Beltane is a festival of flowers, fertility, sensuality, and delight. — Selena Fox

But, careful! Jesus does not say, Go off and do things on your own. No! That is not what he is saying. Jesus says, Go, for I am with you! This is what is so beautiful for us; it is what guides us. If we go out to bring his Gospel with love, with a true apostolic spirit, with parrhesia, he walks with us, he goes ahead of us, and he gets there first. As we say in Spanish, nos primerea. By now you know what I mean by this. It is the same thing that the Bible tells us. In the Bible, the Lord says: I am like the flower of the almond. Why? Because that is the first flower to blossom in the spring. He is always the first! This is fundamental for us: God is always ahead of us! When we think about going far away, to an extreme outskirt, we may be a bit afraid, but in fact God is already there. Jesus is waiting for us in the hearts of our brothers and sisters, in their wounded bodies, in their hardships, in their lack of faith. — Pope Francis

Sopping, and with no sign of stopping, either- then a breather. Warm again, storm again- what is the norm, again? It's fine, it's not, it's suddenly hot: Boom, crash, lightning flash! — Old Farmer's Almanac

A life of mere pleasure! A little while, in the spring-time of the senses, in the sunshine of prosperity, in the jubilee of health, it may seem well enough. But how insufficient, how mean, how terrible when age comes, and sorrow, and death! A life of pleasure! What does it look like when these great changes beat against it
when the realities of eternity stream in? It looks like the fragments of a feast, when the sun shines upon the withered garlands, and the tinsel, and the overturned tables, and the dead lees of wine. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Spring had come once more to Green Gables-the beautiful, capricious Canadian spring, lingering along through April and may in a succession of sweet, fresh, chilly days, with pink sunsets and miracles of resurrection and growth. The maples in Lover's Lane were red-budded and little curly ferns pushed up around the Dryad's Bubble. Away in the barrens, behind Mr. Silas Sloane's place, the mayflowers blossomed out, pink and white stars of sweetness under their brown leaves. All the school girls and boys had one golden afternoon gathering them, coming home in the clear, echoing twilight with arms and baskets full of flowery spoil. — L.M. Montgomery

Mrs. Jo did not mean the measles, but that more serious malady called love, which is apt to ravage communities, spring and autumn, when winter gayety and summer idleness produce whole bouquets of engagements, and set young people to pairing off like the birds. — Louisa May Alcott

If anyone went on for a thousand years asking of life: 'Why are you living?' life, if it could answer, would only say, 'I live so that I may live.' That is because life lives out of its own ground and springs from its own source, and so it lives without asking why it is itself living. — Meister Eckhart

Every spring in the wet meadows and ditches I hear a little shrilling chorus which sounds for all the world like an endlessly reiterated "We're here, we're here, we're here." And so they are, as frogs, of course. Confident little fellows. I suspect that to some greater ear than ours, man's optimistic pronouncements about his role and destiny may make a similar little ringing sound that travels a small way out into the night. It is only its nearness that is offensive. From the heights of a mountain, or a marsh at evening, it blends, not too badly, with all the other sleepy voices that, in croaks or chirrups, are saying the same thing. — Loren Eiseley

Gardeners celebrate the influence of time. If we have had a late cold spring followed by a desiccating drought, autumn may be the most soft and golden for years; one poor season will sooner or later be compensated for by another. — Susan Hill

The longer I have lived with this new hope, the clearer it has become to me: our true hope in life doesn't spring from the feelings of our youth, lovely and fair though they are. Nor does it emerge from the objective possibilities of history, unlimited though they may be. Our true hope in life is wakened and sustained and finally fulfilled by the great divine mystery which is above us and in us and round about us, nearer to us than we can be to ourselves. It encounters us as the great promise of our life and this world: nothing will be in vain. It will succeed. In the end all will be well! It meets us too in the call to life: 'I live and you shall live also.' We are called to this hope, and the call often sounds like a command - a command to resist death and the powers of death, and a command to love life and cherish it: every life, the life we share, the whole of life. — Jurgen Moltmann

And the man clad in black and silver with a silver rose upon him? He would like to think that he has learned something of trust, that he has washed his eyes in some clear spring, that he has polished an ideal or two. Never Mind. He may still be only a smart-mouthed meddler, skilled mainly in the minor art of survival, blind as ever the dungeons knew him to the finer shades of irony. Never mind, let it go, let it be. I may never be pleased with him. — Roger Zelazny

All ills spring from some vice, either in ourselves or others; and even many of our diseases proceed from the same origin. Remove the vices; and the ills follow. You must only take care to remove all the vices. If you remove part, you may render the matter worse. By banishing vicious luxury, without curing sloth and an indifference to others, you only diminish industry in the state, and add nothing to men's charity or their generosity. — David Hume

Dirty days hath September
April June and November
From January up to May
The rain it raineth every day
All the rest have thirty-one
Without a blessed gleam of sun
And if any of them had two-and-thirty
They'd be just as wet and twice as dirty."
"April hath put a spirit of youth in everything. — William Shakespeare

For people who have something in the present it is easier to forget the past, although you never wholly do so. When winter comes, spring is a vague memory, something looked back at with nostalgia, but winter is the here and now and requires all your energies. If spring were to vanish and there were nothing, an abyss, if that were even possible to imagine, then you would live with memories of spring for ever and ever or else become a part of the abyss itself. The same can sometimes be said for love, but not always. There are some loves that live on for years, inexplicably, although the lovers are parted and there is no hope that they may ever reunite except as polite and distant friends. — Rona Jaffe

Honest Winter, snow-clad, and with the frosted beard, I can welcome not uncordially; But that long deferment of the calendar's promise, that weeping gloom of March and April, that bitter blast outraging the honour of May how often has it robbed me of heart and hope? — George Gissing

From powerful causes spring the empiric's gains, Man's love of life, his weakness, and his pains; These first induce him the vile trash to try, Then lend his name, that other men may buy. — George Crabbe

It was seven o'clock of a very warm evening in the Seeonee hills when Father Wolf woke up from his day's rest, scratched himself, yawned, and spread out his paws one after the other to get rid of the sleepy feeling in their tips. Mother Wolf lay with her big gray nose dropped across her four tumbling, squealing cubs, and the moon shone into the mouth of the cave where they all lived. "Augrh!" said Father Wolf. "It is time to hunt again." He was going to spring down hill when a little shadow with a bushy tail crossed the threshold and whined: "Good luck go with you, O Chief of the Wolves. And good luck and strong white teeth go with noble children that they may never forget the hungry in this world. — Rudyard Kipling

Desperately Lonely Swing Set Needs Loving Home
"One swing set, well worn but structually sound, seeks new home. Make memories with your kid or kids so that someday he or she or they will look into the backyard and feel the ache of sentimentality as desperately as I did this afternoon. It's all fragile and fleeting, dear reader, but with this swing set, your child(ren) will be introduced to the ups and downs of human life gently and safely, and may alos learn the most important lesson of all: No matter how hard how you kick, no matter how high you get, you can't go all the way around."
Swing set currently resides near 83rd and Spring Mill. — John Green

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

Rose sat all alone in the big best parlor, with her little handkerchief laid ready to catch the first tear, for she was thinking of her troubles, and a shower was expected. She had retired to this room as a good place in which to be miserable; for it was dark and still, full of ancient furniture, somber curtains, and hung all around with portraits of solemn old gentlemen in wigs, severe-nosed ladies in top-heavy caps, and staring children in little bobtailed coats or short-waisted frocks. It was an excellent place for woe; amd the fitful spring rain that pattered on the windowpane seemed to sob,Cry away; I'm with you. — Louisa May Alcott

Stories weren't just make believe, all Dr. Seuss and Mother Goose. I saw a circle: first life, then death. Spring, summer, fall, winter. Blue sky and storms and quilts of cold clouds occupy the same space but at different times. Memories and stories help you rebuild. Things most precious to you may be gone, lost to the wicked wind, but you remember what had been, and you move on. — Rachael Hanel

May, and after a rainy spring
We walk streets gallant with rhododendrons. — Alicia Suskin Ostriker

There is much I do not understand about the way humans think of punishment and forgiveness, and what happens to sinners when they die. I wish Jessamine was here to explain it to me, for the plants do not speak of heaven and hell. They speak only of the turning of the seasons and of starting anew each spring. Never despair, they counsel, for the orchard that is barren one season may bear fruit in plenty in the next. — Maryrose Wood

Sometimes the desire to be lost again, as long ago, comes over me like a vapor. With growth into adulthood, responsibilities claimed me, so many heavy coats. I didn't choose them, I don't fault them, but it took time to reject them. Now in the spring I kneel, I put my face into the packets of violets, the dampness, the freshness, the sense of ever-ness. Something is wrong, I know it, if I don't keep my attention on eternity. May I be the tiniest nail in the house of the universe, tiny but useful. May I stay forever in the stream. May I look down upon the windflower and the bull thistle and the coreopsis with the greatest respect. — Mary Oliver

The year's fruit must fall that the next year's may come, and the winter is the only way to the spring. — George MacDonald

was seven o'clock of a very warm evening in the Seeonee hills when Father Wolf woke up from his day's rest, scratched himself, yawned, and spread out his paws one after the other to get rid of the sleepy feeling in their tips. Mother Wolf lay with her big gray nose dropped across her four tumbling, squealing cubs, and the moon shone into the mouth of the cave where they all lived. "Augrh!" said Father Wolf. "It is time to hunt again." He was going to spring down hill when a little shadow with a bushy tail crossed the threshold and whined: "Good luck go with you, O Chief of the Wolves. And good luck and strong white teeth go with noble children that they may never forget the hungry in this world." It was the jackal - Tabaqui, the Dish-licker - and the wolves of India — Rudyard Kipling

These self-styled reformers in the present-day Muslim countries may be recognized by their pride in what they should rather be ashamed of, and their shame in what they should be proud of. These are usually "daddy's sons", schooled in Europe, from which they return with a deep sense of their own inferiority towards the wealthy West and a personal superiority over the poverty-stricken and backward surroundings from which they spring.
They cannot see that the power of the Western world does not lie in how it lives, but in how it works: that its strength is not in fashion, godlessness, night clubs, a younger generation out of control, but in the extraordinary diligence, persistence, knowledge and responsibility of its people. — Alija Izetbegovic

Ideas are easy to come by, they spring effortlessly out of the vacuity of the mind and cost nothing. When they are held and projected onto one's self or others they become a project. When the project is enacted it becomes the work, and when the work is completed it appears to be self-existent. Creation is the process of form manifesting from emptiness, where that which arises from the mind comes into existence. Yet the distance between conception and realisation may be enormous, as vast as the distance between the stars. — Robert Beer

But he wanted to leap up, to say to her, I have been sick and I found out then, only then, how lonely I am. Is it too late? My heart puts up a struggle inside me, and you may have heard it, protesting against emptiness ... It should be full, he would rush on to tell her, thinking of his heart now as a deep lake, it should be holding love like other hearts. It should be flooded with love. There would be a warm spring day ... Come and stand in my heart, whoever you are, and a whole river would cover your feet and rise higher and take your knees in whirlpools, and draw you down to itself, your whole body, your heart too. — Eudora Welty

Let equal fire our souls inflame,
And equal zeal employ,
That we the glorious spring may know,
Whose streams appear'd so bright below. — Georg Friedrich Handel

Cass Mastern lived for a few years and in that time he learned that the world is all of one piece. He learned that the world is like an enormous spider web and if you touch it, however lightly, at any point, the vibration ripples to the remotest perimeter and the drowsy spider feels the tingle and is drowsy no more but spring out to fling the gossamer coils about you who have touched the web and then inject the black, numbing poison under your hide. It does not matter whether or not you meant to brush the web of things. You happy foot or you gay wing may have brushed it ever so lightly, but what happens always happens and there is the spider, bearded black and with his great faceted eyes glittering like mirrors in the sun, or like God's eye, and the fangs dripping. — Robert Penn Warren

"I like you," I whisper and immediately stare at my shoes. Of all the things I could have said, that shouldn't have been it. I. Am. An. Idiot.
A gentle tug on my hair sends goose bumps raining down my arms. I close my eyes and relish the sweet brush of his knuckles against my neck as he flips my hair over my shoulder. "Rachel?"
"Yes?" I say so softly he may not have heard me.
His hand caresses the sensitive spot right below my chin, and with a gentle pressure, Isaiah raises my head until I look into those warm silver eyes. "I like you, too."
The right side of my mouth quirks and a spring of hope bubbles up inside me. He likes me. A really hot, really awesome guy likes me. — Katie McGarry

It was May before my
attention came
to spring and
my word I said
to the southern slopes
I've
missed it, it
came and went before
I got right to see:
don't worry, said the mountain,
try the later northern slopes
or if
you can climb, climb
into spring: but
said the mountain
it's not that way
with all things, some
that go are gone — A.R. Ammons

May I consent to and delight in thy law after the inner man, never complain over the strictness of thy demands, but mourn over my want of conformity to them; never question thy commandments, but esteem them to be right. By thy spirit within me, may my practice spring from principle, and my dispositions be conformable with duty. — Arthur Bennett

Justice has its anger, my lord Bishop, and the wrath of justice is an element of progress. Whatever else may be said of it, the French Revolution was the greatest step forward by mankind since the coming of Christ. It was unfinished, I agree, but still it was sublime. It released the untapped springs of society; it softened hearts, appeased, tranquilized, enlightened, and set flowing through the world the tides of civilization. It was good. The French Revolution was the anointing of humanity. — Victor Hugo

I have a longing for life, and I go on living in spite of logic. Though I may not believe in the order of the universe, yet I love the sticky little leaves in spring. I love the blue sky. I love some people, whom one loves you know sometimes without knowing why. I love some great deeds done by men, though I've long ceased perhaps to have faith in them. Yet from habit one's heart prizes them. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Eternity is with us, inviting our contemplation perpetually, but we are too frightened, lazy, and suspicious to respond; too arrogant to still our thought, and let divine sensation have its way. It needs industry and goodwill if we would make that transition; for the process involves a veritable spring-cleaning of the soul, a turning-out and rearrangement of our mental furniture, a wide opening of closed windows, that the notes of the wild birds beyond our garden may come to us fully charged with wonder and freshness, and drown with their music the noise of the gramaphone within. Those who do this, discover that they have lived in a stuffy world, whilst their inheritance was a world of morning-glory:where every tit-mouse is a celestial messenger, and every thrusting bud is charged with the full significance of life. — Evelyn Underhill

Ah! you are come, are you, Edgar Linton?' she said, with angry animation. 'You are one of those things that are ever found when least wanted, and when you are wanted, never! I suppose we shall have plenty of lamentations now - I see we shall - but they can't keep me from my narrow home out yonder: my resting-place, where I'm bound before spring is over! There it is: not among the Lintons, mind, under the chapel-roof, but in the open air, with a head-stone; and you may please yourself whether you go to them or come to me! — Emily Bronte

In the spring of 2009, I was the 217th person ever to be diagnosed with anti-NMDA-receptor autoimmune encephalitis. Just a year later, that figure had doubled. Now the number is in the thousands. Yet Dr. Bailey, considered one of the best neurologists in the country, had never heard of it. When we live in a time when the rate of misdiagnoses has shown no improvement since the 1930s, the lesson here is that it's important to always get a second opinion.
While he may be an excellent doctor in many respects, Dr. Bailey is also, in some ways, a perfect example of what is wrong with medicine. I was just a number to him (and if he saw thirty-five patients a day, as he told me, that means I was one of a very large number). He is a by-product of a defective system that forces neurologists to spend five minutes with X number of patients a day to maintain their bottom line. It's a bad system. Dr. Bailey is not the exception to the rule. He is the rule. — Susannah Cahalan

The young May moon is beaming, love.
The glow-worm's lamp is gleaming, love.
How sweet to rove,
Through Morna's grove,
When the drowsy world is dreaming, love!
Then awake! - the heavens look bright, my dear,
'Tis never too late for delight, my dear,
And the best of all ways
To lengthen our days
Is to steal a few hours from the night, my dear! — Thomas Moore

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

The greatest gift that Oxford gives her sons is, I truly believe, a genial irreverence toward learning, and from that irreverence love may spring. — Robertson Davies