Spring Time Quotes & Sayings

In the checkered area of human experience the seasons are all mingled as in the golden age: fruit and blossom hang together; in the same moment the sickle is reaping and the seed is sprinkled; one tends the green cluster and another treads the winepress. Nay, in each of our lives harvest and spring-time are continually one, until himself gathers us and sows us anew in his invisible fields. — George Eliot

Still deep I burrow, waiting for tomorrow. Closed off, I bear. The open elements don't care. Laid here in this nest, dormant now I rest. Aching to live and roam, though still burrowed in my tomb. When time brings my spring, maybe I'll rise like a king.
-Anonymous — Linda Kage

When the last autumn of Dickens's life was over, he continued to work through his final winter and into spring. This is how all of us writers give away the days and years and decades of our lives in exchange for stacks of paper with scratches and squiggles on them. And when Death calls, how many of us would trade all those pages, all that squandered lifetime-worth of painfully achieved scratches and squiggles, for just one more day, one more fully lived and experienced day? And what price would we writers pay for that one extra day spent with those we ignored while we were locked away scratching and squiggling in our arrogant years of solipsistic isolation?
Would we trade all those pages for a single hour? Or all of our books for one real minute? — Dan Simmons

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

So once upon a time Ed met a girl who was the most optimistic person he had even know. A girl who wore flip-flops in the hope of spring. She seemed to bounce through life like Tigger; the things that would have felled most people didn't seem to touch her. Or if she did fall, she bounced right back. She fell again, plastered on a smile, dusted herself off, and kept going. He never could work out whether it was the single most heroic thing or the most idiotic thing he'd ever seen. — Jojo Moyes

My heart is in a world of water and crystal, My clothes are damp in this time of spring rains. — Du Fu

... the matter was new to me, and I had no material for its treatment. But I got books, read up the facts, laboriously constructed a skeleton out of the dry bones of the real, and then clothed them, and tried to breathe into them life, and in this last aim I had pleasure. With me it was a difficult and anxious time till my facts were found, selected, and properly pointed; nor could I rest from research and effort till I was satisfied of correct anatomy; the strength of my inward repugnance to the idea of flaw or falsity sometimes enabled me to shun egregious blunders; but the knowledge was not there in my head, ready and mellow; it had not been down in Spring, grown in Summer, harvested in Autumn, and garnered through Winter; whatever I wanted I must go out and gather fresh; glean of wild herbs my lap full, and shred them green into the pot. — Charlotte Bronte

Nature's purpose in relation to the visual arts is to provide stimulus not imitation ... From its ceaseless urge to create springs all Life all movement and rhythm time and light, color and mood in short, all reality in Form and Thought. — Hans Hofmann

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

A little way down the road I turned, and saw how his wife and daughter took him up. And I thought to myself: no, 'tis not all roses when one goes a-wandering. At the next place I came to I learned that he had been with the army, as quartermaster-sergeant; then he went mad over a lawsuit he lost, and was shut up in an asylum for some time. Now in the spring his trouble broke out again; perhaps it was my coming that had given the final touch. But the lightning insight in his eyes at the moment when the madness came upon him! I think of him now and again; he was a lesson to me. 'Tis none so easy to judge of men, who are wise or mad. And God preserve us all from being known for what we are! — Knut Hamsun

And all my endeavours are unlucky explorers come back, abandoning the expedition; the specimens, the lilies of ambition still spring in their climate, still unpicked; but time, time is all I lacked to find them, as the great collectors before me. — Gavin Douglas

Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content. No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of the spring: no man can, at the same time, fill his cup from the source and from the mouth of the Nile. — Samuel Johnson

I know it's hard to see," he said, "but God shows me his work in you every time we meet. I see your faith growing inside you like a beautiful spring bud, just ready to blossom. Whatever you think you're facing, the obstacles you's struggling to overcome, they's like rain feeding that bud inside you. Don't fear the storm. He's in the storm, just like he's in the gentle breeze. He gots you right where he wants you." I hugged — Jennifer H. Westall

Man is not an aquatic animal, but from the time we stand in youthful wonder beside a Spring brook till we sit in old age and watch the endless roll of the sea, we feel a strong kinship with the waters of this world. — Hal Borland

Will looked back at me, startled, and I kept my heart muscle strong, feeling something inside me shiver like a pale green flower shoot just waking up for spring. But whatever that thing was, it was still too new to feel ready to bloom; it wanted time to set down roots. Someday soon I was going to bloom like crazy and then I'd have what I needed to keep me standing tall. — Ingrid Law

She had something Adam didn't. Curiosity. First step to growth
and if it wasn't for Eve's Adam would still be sitting by the side of the pool picking his nose and scratching his scalp, bamboozled by his own reflection. Off in her part of Eden, Eve hadn't bothered naming the animals. On the other hand she'd discovered how to milk some of them and how best to eat the eggs of others. She'd decided she wasn't overly keen on torrential rain and had built a shelter from bamboo and banana leaves, into which she'd retire when the heavens opened, having set out coconut shells to catch the rainwater with a view to saving herself the schlep down to the spring every time she wanted a drink. The only thing you won't be surprised to hear about is that she'd already domesticated a cat and called it Misty. — Glen Duncan

Nelson, do you remember the spring day when we climbed the barn gable so we could see the seagulls that mysteriously blew into our clay hills
swept from an ocean neither of us had ever seen though it was scarcely a hundred miles away, each bird a genuine miracle high above the green barley? The time we saw that panther in the sycamore tree and Maw said it was the sign of war? Nelson, I am sixty-three years old, the same age that both Maw and Daddy were when they died. I have written this in testimony. With this book, I presume to be done now with such remembrance. But somehow I suspect it will go on, this peering down old wells, this excavation of memory and its shades. — Joe Bageant

There are a thousand flowers blossoming in spring, The magical light of the full moon in autumn; There is a breeze in summer, And snow in winter; And if vanities don't hang in my mind, I shall rejoice at any time and place. — Wumen Huikai

but a man of pleasure like yourself ought to know that all who are in the flower of youth do somehow or other raise a pang or emotion in a lover's breast, and are thought by him to be worthy of his affectionate regards. Is not this a way which you have with the fair: one has a snub nose, and you praise his charming face; the hook-nose of another has, you say, a royal look; while he who is neither snub nor hooked has the grace of regularity: the dark visage is manly, the fair are children of the gods; and as to the sweet 'honey pale,' as they are called, what is the very name but the invention of a lover who talks in diminutives, and is not averse to paleness if appearing on the cheek of youth? In a word, there is no excuse which you will not make, and nothing which you will not say, in order not to lose a single flower that blooms in the spring-time of youth. If — Plato

It seemed to me that winter was the time for love, not spring. In winter the habitable world was so much contracted; out of that little shut-in space we lived in, fantastic hopes might bloom. But spring revealed the ordinary geography of the place; the long, brown roads, the old cracked sidewalks underfoot, all the tree branches broken off in winter storms, that had to be cleared out of the yards. Spring revealed distances, exactly as they were. — Alice Munro

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

It was a day in early spring; and as that sweet, genial time of year and atmosphere calls out tender greenness from the ground,
beautiful flowers, or leaves that look beautiful because so long unseen under the snow and decay,
so the pleasant air and warmth had called out three young people, who sat on a sunny hill-side enjoying the warm day and one another. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

My eyes shifted to the trickling river. Come spring, it would be ten times as wide and just as deep. On and on it went, rushing toward the distant horizon. Like time. Like life. Sometimes gently falling from one pool into the other, other times fast and cascading, and still other times narrowing into a funnel, a torrent of knots and waves. — Lisa Tawn Bergren

It was easy being healthy when I was young. I was full of energy, so sports and physical challenges were fun. But as I got older and the spring left my step, exercise became harder, and eating, drinking and watching TV became easier. By the time I was 50, I'd put on 50 pounds. — Robert Kiyosaki

Deity of the ruined temple! The broken strings of Vina sing no more your praise. The bells in the evening proclaim not your time of worship. The air is still and silent about you.
In your desolate dwelling comes the vagrant spring breeze. It brings the tidings of flowers
the flowers that for your worship are offered no more.
Your worshipper of old wanders ever longing for favour still refused. In the eventide, when fires and shadows mingle with the gloom of dust, he wearily comes back to the ruined temple with hunger in his heart.
Many a festival day comes to you in silence, deity of the ruined temple. Many a night of worship goes away with lamp unlit.
Many new images are built by masters of cunning art and carried to the holy stream of oblivion when their time is come.
Only the deity of the ruined temple remains unworshipped in deathless neglect. — Rabindranath Tagore

The spring is here, young and beautiful as ever, and absolutely shocking in its display of reckless maternity; but the Judas treewill bloom for you on the Bosphorus if you get there in time. No one ever loved the dog-wood and Judas tree as I have done, and it is my one crown of life to be sure that I am going to take them with me to heaven to enjoy real happiness with the Virgin and them. — Henry Adams

Some people thought spring was the time of renewal, but Sadie had always equated that feeling with autumn. It felt like a shedding of mistakes - falling leaves, crisp breezes. As if you could cast off an old skin to work on a new one. — Cerella Sechrist

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

crossed borders like the wind. Yet it had happened, and Khristo finally understood how it had happened. Moving across the countryside made one prey, over time, to a series of small mishaps, none of them serious in and of itself, but cumulative over time. A few hours of sleep when one could manage it, a meal now and then, the insidious chill of the early spring, the constant forcing of the mind into a state of vigilance when all one craved was numbness, when not to think about anything seemed the most exquisite luxury the world had to offer. — Alan Furst

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

Is it time to go?" she asked, propping herself onto her elbow. He tugged up the collar of his coat and slipped his feet into his boots. Then he looked at her with a seriousness that sent a jolt of fear through her. "We can't leave." "Sure we can." She pushed herself up but was immediately overcome by a wave of dizziness. "Even if you were up to leaving, which you're not" - he nodded at her weak attempt at sitting up - "I let the horse go last night. It was her only chance of surviving. Hopefully she made her way back to the stable." "We could walk - " "Not without snowshoes. The snow's too deep and the wind too harsh." She leaned back again, suddenly weary and cold. "Then we're stuck here?" "Until a rescue party comes for us." He pulled on his gloves. "Or until spring. Whichever comes first." He gave a halfhearted grin at his attempt at a joke. — Jody Hedlund

Social media allows people to connect. So instead of reading about the Arab Spring, I can have students following along, in real-time, with what is happening. — Steven Anderson

In a drawl so low, it seemed to suspend time, the old man said, "When the last leaf falls from the Widow's Tree this year, she'll be done for good. No coming back. No bothering anyone no more. Nobody will find her bones, and before next spring, nobody'll even remember her. She'll just be a wisp of a thing."
Peggy looked toward the tree, now hidden behind a low patch of morning cloud. She breathed out hard through her nose. "That's a terrible thing to do. Even for you, even to her."
"Set in motion a long time ago," he said blithely. "Just took this long to finish up. — Alex Bledsoe

Wasn't it wonderful of Angus and Emma to spring for first class tickets?"
"Yes."
"It's an incredibly long flight, you know."
"Yes."
"They'll show us a movie or two."
"Yes."
She leaned close to him, smiling. "I love traveling with you. You're so agreeable."
He gave her an annoyed look. "Are you going to talk the whole time?"
She smiled sweetly. "Yes. — Kerrelyn Sparks

When it's time for the flowers to bloom, they'll bloom.When it's time for spring to come, it'll come. — Atsushi

For winter's rains and ruins are over, And all the season of snows and sins; The days dividing lover and lover, The light that loses, the night that wins; And time remembered is grief forgotten, And frosts are slain and flowers begotten, And in green underwood and cover Blossom by blossom the spring begins. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

The air's warm with hopeful hints of spring in it. Spring would be a good time for an uprising, I think. Everyone feels less vulnerable once winter passes. — Suzanne Collins

There is no time like Spring
When life's alive in everything,
Before new nestlings sing,
Before cleft swallows speed their journey back
Along the trackless track. — Christina Rossetti

Great artists are products of their own time: they do not spring forth fully equipped from the head of Jove, but are formed by the circumstances acting upon them since birth. These circumstances include the ambiance created by the other, lesser artists of their own time, who have all done their part in creating the pressure that forces up an exceptional talent. Unjustly, but unavoidably, the very closeness of a great artist to his colleagues and contemporaries leads to their eclipse. — Germaine Greer

The seasons split at the seams: spring, summer, fall and winter. I've always pictured them as giant sacks filled with air and color and smell. When it's time for one season to be over, the next seasons splits open and pours over the world, drowning its tired and waning predecessor with its strength. — Tarryn Fisher

Spring is the time of year when it is summer in the sun and winter in the shade. — Charles Dickens

We, when we sow the seeds of doubt deeper than the most up-to-date and modish free-thought has ever dreamed of doing, we well know what we are about. Only out of radical skepsis, out of moral chaos, can the Absolute spring, the anointed Terror of which the time has need. — Thomas Mann

What delights us in the spring is more a sensation than an appearance, more a hope than any visible reality. There is something in the softness of the air, in the lengthening of the days, in the very sounds and odors of the sweet time, that caresses us and consoles us after the rigorous weeks of winter. — Philip Gilbert Hamerton

Sweet April-time-O cruel April-time! Year after year returning, with a brow Of promise, and red lips with longing paled, And backward-hidden hands that clutch the joys Of vanished springs, like flowers. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

What he did instead was clean his shelter. He had been sleeping on the foam pad that had come with the survival pack and he straightened everything up and hung his bag out in the sun to air-dry and then used the hatchet to cut the ends of new evergreen boughs and laid them like a carpet in the shelter. As soon as he brought the boughs inside and the heat from the fire warmed them they gave off the most wonderful smell, filled the whole shelter with the odor of spring, and he brought the bag back inside and spread the pad and bag and felt as if he were in a new home. The berries boiled first and he added snow water to them and kept them boiling until he had a kind of mush in the pan. By that time the meat had cooked and he set it off to the side and tasted the berry — Gary Paulsen

We'd known each other over a very short period of time. He left France in June of 1964, and I'm writing this in April 1992. I never received word from him and I don't know if he's dead or alive. The memory of him had remained dormant, but now it has suddenly come flooding back this early spring of 1992. Is it because I came across the picture of my girlfriend and me, on the back of which a blue stamp says Photo by Jansen. All rights reserved? Or for the simple reason that every spring looks the same? Today the air was light, the buds had burst on the trees in the gardens of the Observatoire, and the month of April 1992 merged by an effect of superimposition with the month of April 1964. — Patrick Modiano

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

She acts like summer and walks like rain
Reminds me that there's a time to change
Since the return from her stay on the moon
She listens like spring and she talks like June. — Train

The aster has not wasted spring and summer because it has not blossomed. It has been all the time preparing for what is to follow, and in autumn it is the glory of the field, and only the frost lays it low. So there are many people who must live forty or fifty years, and have the crude sap of their natural dispositions changed and sweetened before the blossoming time can come; but their lives have not been wasted. — Henry Ward Beecher

I loved her and I loved no one else and we had a lovely magic time while we were alone. I worked well and we made great trips, and I thought we were invulnerable again, and it wasn't until we were out of the mountains in late spring, and back in Paris, that the other thing started again. — Ernest Hemingway,

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

Wonderful art can spring from misery,I'm the last person to deny that.I'd go even further:the best works of art of all time are probably stemmed from the deep human sorrow or hellish frustration,the death of a loved one or a divorce and yes:jealousy.Heartache and impotence as the man-spring for making the unverifiable verifiable and for giving it face.How romantic,beautiful and especially useful pain and misery can be. — Esther Verhoef

He only stopped once, to pick her some great blue violets. She thanked him with real pleasure. In the company of this common man the world was beautiful and direct. For the first time she felt the influence of spring. His arm swept the horizon gracefully; violets, like other things, existed in great profusion there; would she like to see them?
'Ma buoni uomini.'
He bowed. Certainly. Good men first, violets afterwards. — E. M. Forster

When spring knocks at your door, regardless of the time of year or season of our lives, run, do not walk to that door, throw it open with wild abandon, and say, Yes! Yes, come in! Do me, and do me big! — Jeffrey R. Anderson

He followed another voice. "This isn't real, man. Maybe we're having some kind of mass hallucination." "Well, you stay and check it out then," someone called back. "I'm getting the hell out of here." The wolf loped closer, scenting the human. The man was slowing down, certain none of this could be reality. The wolf leapt, covering a considerable distance in a single spring and catching the human by the seat of his pants. He got a mouthful of denim, and the man gave a high-pitched scream. Without looking back, he bolted to join his friends, his boots loud on the street as he escaped. Aidan laughed out loud this time, the sound echoing eerily, carried on the thick bed of fog. He couldn't remember the last time he had had so much fun. — Christine Feehan

I trust in nature for the stable laws of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant and autumn garner to the end of time. — Robert Browning

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

I have a sequence to my creative life. In spring and fall, I am above ground and commit to community. In the summer, I'm outside. It is a time for family. And in the winter, I am underground. Home. This is when I do my work as a writer - in hibernation. I write with the bears. — Terry Tempest Williams

After her came jolly June, arrayed
All in green leaves, as he a player were;
Yet in his time he wrought as well as played,
That by his plough-irons mote right well appear.
Upon a crab he rode, that did him bear,
With crooked crawling steps, an uncouth pace,
And backward rode, as bargemen wont to fare,
Bending their force contrary to their face;
Like that ungracious crew which feigns demurest grace. — Edmund Spenser

It is the property of things seen for the first time, or for the first time after long, like the flowers in spring, to reawaken in us the sharp edge of sense and that impression of mystic strangeness which otherwise passes out of life with the coming of years; but the sight of a loved face is what renews a man's character from the fountain upwards. — Robert Louis Stevenson

The spring is wound up tight. It will uncoil of itself. That is what is so convenient in tragedy. The least little turn of the wrist will do the job . . . The rest is automatic. You don't need to lift a finger. The machine is in perfect order; it has been oiled ever since time began, and it runs without friction . . . Tragedy is clean, it is restful, it is flawless . . . In a tragedy, nothing is in doubt and everyone's destiny is known. That makes for tranquility . . . Tragedy is restful; and the reason is that hope, that foul, deceitful thing, has no part in it. There isn't any hope. You're trapped. — Jean Anouilh

He sometimes felt that life was something that had already risen, and all of this, the Jackson Pollack of spring, summer, and fall, the vague refrigeration and tinfoiled sky of wintertime, was just a falling, really, originward, in a kind of correction, as if by spritual gravity, towards the wiser consciousness
or consciousnessless, maybe; could gravity trick itself like that?
of death. It was a kind of movement both very slow and very fast; there was both too much and not enough time to think. — Tao Lin

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

Did I live the spring I'd sought?
It's true in joy, I walked along,
took part in dance,
and sang the song.
and never tried to bind an hour
to my borrowed garden bower;
nor did I once entreat
a day to slumber at my feet.
Yet days aren't lulled by lyric song,
like morning birds they pass along,
o'er crests of trees, to none belong;
o'er crests of trees of drying dew,
their larking flight, my hands, eschew
Thus I'll say it once and true ...
From all that I saw,
and everywhere I wandered,
I learned that time cannot be spent,
It only can be squandered. — Roman Payne

[David] Wallerstein discovered that people would spring for more popcorn and soda- a lot more- as long as it came in a single gigantic serving. Thus was born the two-quart bucket of popcorn, the sixty-four-ounce Big Gulp, and, in time, the Big Mac and the jumbo fries. — Michael Pollan

Poetry springs directly from our primal need and capacity for communication[Poetry] mobilizes such a concentration of devices, such an intensification of language via rhythm, syntax, image and metaphor. Reading it-the best of it-can create another, very different kind of perpetual present, an awareness that can be as ongoing in the soul as the stop-time of trauma. — Sven Birkerts

The process of schooling does not give birth to human beings - as education should but never will so long as it springs from the collective consciousness of our culture - but instead it teaches us to value abstract rewards at the expense of our autonomy, curiosity, interior lives, and time. — Derrick Jensen

Right now the day length is exactly the same as in spring when birds key into it and begin singing. The birds are a little confused by it all and the singing isn't very intense. It only lasts a week or so each fall, but it's still cool to hear spring bird songs at this time of the year. — Craig Thompson

Fantastic! Right in the middle of that long stretch between Christmas and Spring Break, your coats are getting dirty, everything's dark, dingy - what a great time for a movie! — John Hughes

In a way winter is the real spring, the time when the inner things happen, the resurge of nature. — Edna O'Brien

Spring Training is a fun time for me. — Joe Torre

At the end of the season of sorrows comes the time of rejoicing. Spring, like a well-oiled clock, noiselessly indicates this time. — Roger Zelazny

SLEEP IS NOT, DEATH IS NOT; WHO SEEM TO DIE LIVE. HOUSE YOU WERE BORN IN, FRIENDS OF YOUR SPRING-TIME, OLD MAN AND YOUNG MAID, DAY'S TOIL AND ITS GUERDON, THEY ARE ALL VANISHING, FLEEING TO FABLES, CANNOT BE MOORED. - Ralph Waldo Emerson — Ransom Riggs

They growled a response and went on digging. For some time there was no noise but the grating sound of the spades discharging their freight of mould and gravel. It was very monotonous. Finally a spade struck upon the coffin with a dull woody accent, and within another minute or two the men had hoisted it out on the ground. They pried off the lid with their shovels, got out the body and dumped it rudely on the ground. The moon drifted from behind the clouds and exposed the pallid face. The barrow was got ready and the corpse placed on it, covered with a blanket, and bound to its place with the rope. Potter took out a large spring-knife and cut off the dangling end of the rope and then said: "Now the cussed thing's ready, Sawbones, and you'll just out with another five, or here she stays. — Mark Twain

Thee will find out in time that I have a great love of professing vile sentiments, I don't know why, unless it springs from long efforts to avoid priggery. — Bertrand Russell

Faster than spring-time showers comes thought on thought. — William Shakespeare

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

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

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

IN THE LIGHT OF eternity, time casts no shadow. Your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions. But what is it that the old women see? We see necessity, and we do the things that must be done. Young women don't see - they are, and the spring of life runs through them. Ours is the guarding of the spring, ours the shielding of the light we have lit, the flame that we are. What have I seen? You are the vision of my youth, the constant dream of all my ages. — Diana Gabaldon

One time, when we'd been discussing martial arts, Murphy told me that eventually, no-one can teach you anything more about them. Once you reach that state of knowledge, the only way to keep learning and increasing your own skill is to teach what you know to others. That's why she teaches a children's class and a rape-defence course every spring and fall at one of her neighbourhood's community centres.
It sounded kind of flaky-Zen to me at the time, but Hell's bells, she'd been right. Once upon a time, it would have taken me an hour, if not more, to attain the proper frame of mind. In the course of teaching Molly to meditate, though, I had found myself going over the basics again for the first time in years, and understanding them with a deeper and richer perspective than I'd had when I was her age. I'd been getting almost as much insight and new understanding of my knowledge from teaching Molly as she'd been learning from me. — Jim Butcher

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

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

It seemed to him that every time he made one choice in his life, he said no to another. All of those things he could not do or be were huddled inside of him; they might spring up at any moment, and he would be hobbled with regret. — Ayana Mathis

You could practically see the neurons firing in the kid's skull. His body was all spring and torque, a bundle of fast-twitch muscles that exuded faint floral whiffs of ripe pear. So much perfection in such a compact little person - Billy had to tackle him from time to time, wrestle him squealing to the ground just to get that little rascal in his hands, just your basic adorable thirty-month old with big blue eyes clear as chlorine pools and Huggies poking out of his stretchy-waist jeans. So is this what they meant by the sanctity of life? — Ben Fountain

I don't know anything for certain. You and I could both explode in the next two seconds. Or the swimming pool over there could have a clone of the Loch Ness monster swimmin' about on the bottom, ready to spring out and have us for a midnight snack."
He's trying to make me laugh, but I'm tired enough and jumpy enough that I cast a wary glance at the pool before looking back at him. — Rysa Walker

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

For you, a thousand times over, I heard myself say.Then I turned and ran.It was only a smile, nothing more. It didn't make everything all right. It didn't make anything all right. Only a smile. A tiny thing. A leaf in the woods, shaking in the wake of a startled bird's flight.But I'll take it. With open arms. Because when spring comes, it melts the snow one flake at a time, and maybe I just witnessed the first flake melting.I — Anonymous

But these conversations require time and space, and we say we're too busy. Distracted at our dinner tables and living rooms, at our business meetings, and on our streets, we find traces of a new "silent spring" - a term Rachel Carson coined when we were ready to see that with technological change had come an assault on our environment. Now, we have arrived at another moment of recognition. This time, technology is implicated in an assault on empathy. We have learned that even a silent phone inhibits conversations that matter. — Sherry Turkle

The tender spring upon thy tempting lip
Shows thee unripe; yet mayst thou well be tasted:
Make use of time, let not advantage slip;
Beauty within itself should not be wasted:
Fair flowers that are not gather'd in their prime
Rot and consume themselves in little time. — William Shakespeare

One spring morning timing the lean near-liquid progress of a horse on a track, the dust exploding, the rapid hasping of his hocks, coming up the straight foreshortened and awobble and passing elongate and birdlike wish harsh breaths and slatted brisket heaving and the muscles sliding and brunching in clocklike flexion under the wet black hide and a gout of foam hung from the long jaw and then gone in a muted hoofclatter, the aging magistrate snapped his thumb from the keep of the stopwatch he held and palmed it into his waistcoat pocket and looking at nothing, nor child nor horse, said anent that simple comparison of rotary motions and in the oratory to which he was prone that they had witnessed a thing against which time would not prevail. — Cormac McCarthy

This book could not have been written without the people of Mongolia, who allowed me to live among them for a time and who taught me their history over salted tea and vodka while the winter eased into spring. — Conn Iggulden

Spring, if it lingers more than a week beyond its span, starts to hunger for summer to end the days of perpetual promise. Summer in its turn soon begins to sweat for something to quench its heat, and the mellowest of autumns will tire of gentility at last, and ache for a quick sharp frost to kill its fruitfulness. Even winter - the hardest season, the most implacable - dreams, as February creeps on, of the flame that will presently melt it away. Everything tires with time, and starts to seek some opposition, to save it from itself. — Clive Barker

You talk about crying! The spring of 1988, I spent a fair length of time trying to come to grips with who I was and the habits I had and what they did to people that I truly loved. I really spent a period of time where, I suspect, I cried three or four times a week. — Newt Gingrich

The Wheel
Through winter-time we call on spring,
And through the spring on summer call,
And when abounding hedges ring
Declare that winter's best of all;
And after that there's nothing good
Because the spring-time has not come
Nor know what disturbs our blood
Is but its longing for the tomb. — W.B.Yeats

Love is like flowers blossoming in spring. When you think it ends, it'll grow again in time. — Primadonna Angela

Every flower begins to flourish in spring. — Lailah Gifty Akita

If I knew I was going to die tomorrow,
And Spring came the day after tomorrow,
I would die peacefully, because it came the day after tomorrow.
If that's its time, when else should it come?
I like it that everything is real and everything is right;
And I like that it would be like this even if I didn't like it.
And so, if I die now, I die peacefully
Because everything is real and everything is right. — Alberto Caeiro

Spring is about to spring. Persephone is coming back and the ice is groaning, about to break with the exquisite and deafening roar. It's a time for madness; a time for our fangs to come down and our eyes to glaze over so that the beast in us can sing with unmitigated joy. Oh yes, ecstasy, I welcome thee! — J. Christopher Stevens

The sharp scents made my throat ache. I had been up such hillsides before, and smelled these same spring scents. But then the pine and grass scent had been diluted with the smell of petrol fumes from the road below and the voices of day trippers replaced those of the jays. Last time I walked such a path, the ground was littered with sandwich wrappers and cigarette butts instead of mallow blossoms and violets. Sandwich wrappers seemed a reasonable enough price to pay, I supposed, for such blessings of civilization as antibiotics and telephones, but just for the moment, I was willing to settle for the violets. I badly needed a little peace, and I felt it here. — Diana Gabaldon