Life

15 Quotes To Celebrate The First Day Of Fall

by Chelsey Grasso

You guys — it's officially the first day of fall on Sept. 23. That feels a little weird to type out, but despite the bitterness of summer being over, I can't help but be a little excited about a new season ushering us out of the heat, and into the world of crunchy leaves, warm apple ciders, and baby white pumpkins being sold at every farmer's market in town. That's why I've collected 15 fall quotes worth reading as we experience this first, lovely day of autumn in all its seasonal glory.

I don't really want to even think about it, but if we truly face the facts, winter is waiting just around the corner. That being said, make sure you are embracing the autumn season for everything wonderful that it has to offer. Perfect weather, magical foliage, cozy knits, pumpkin spice anything — need I say more? Seriously, this season is the best.

Sure, you might have to spend some time raking up leaves and staying indoors as the rain comes pouring down, but I promise you, it is so, so, so worth it. Summer is chill (not literally), the winter is cool (literally), but fall really is the best of them all.

1. "Autumn seemed to arrive suddenly that year. The morning of the first September was crisp and golden as an apple." — J.K. Rowling

2. "I was drinking in the surroundings: air so crisp you could snap it with your fingers and greens in every lush shade imaginable offset by autumnal flashes of red and yellow." — Wendy Delsol

3. "I know the lands are lit, with all the autumn blaze of Goldenrod." — Helen Hunt Jackson

4. "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

5. "I saw old Autumn in the misty morn stand shadowless like silence, listening to silence." — Thomas Hood

6. "When autumn darkness falls, what we will remember are the small acts of kindness: a cake, a hug, an invitation to talk, and every single rose. These are all expressions of a nation coming together and caring about its people." — Jens Stoltenberg

7. "Days decrease, and autumn grows, autumn in everything." — Robert Browning

8. "October, baptize me with leaves! Swaddle me in corduroy and nurse me with split pea soup. October, tuck tiny candy bars in my pockets and carve my smile into a thousand pumpkins. O autumn! O teakettle! O grace!" — Rainbow Rowell

9. "Autumn carries more gold in its pocket than all the other seasons." — Jim Bishop

10. "Such days of autumnal decline hold a strange mystery which adds to the gravity of all our moods." — Charles Nodier

11. "Is not this a true autumn day? Just the still melancholy that i love — that makes life and nature harmonise. The birds are consulting about their migrations, the trees are putting on the hectic or the pallid hues of decay, and begin to strew the ground, that one's very footsteps may not disturb the repose of earth and air, while they give us a scent that is a perfect anodyne to the restless spirit. Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns." — George Eliot

12. "Or maybe spring is the season of love and fall the season of mad lust. Spring for flirting but fall for the untamed delicious wild thing." — Elizabeth Cohen

13. "Shuddering under the autumn stars, each year, the head sinks lower and lower." — Georg Trakl

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

15. "Autumn... the year's last, loveliest smile." — William Cullen Bryant

Images: halfrain/Flickr; Giphy (5)