Life

Inspirational Quotes About Changing Seasons

by Kaitlyn Wylde
Smolyan lakes, Rhodope mountain, Bulgaria
Maya Karkalicheva/Moment/Getty Images

It's in our nature to be resistant of change. Though we might enjoy each season for its individuality, and though we might appreciate a change once it's taken place, there's an anxiety that comes with that build up to the actual change. Knowing change is coming tends to spark a bit of nervous energy within us, making us feel like we need to prepare ourselves or brace for impact — even when it's as simple as allowing the seasons to turn. And though we've let go of the summer in a lot of ways by now, we know that the fall is just a gateway to the winter. So while we might be excited about things like sweater weather and Halloween parties, we can't help but hesitate to embrace the new season.

And perhaps for many of us, it was easier to embrace the beginnings of fall while it was still summer, because by changing our wardrobe and adding some pumpkin spice to our early September lives, we could safely enjoy fall without having to say goodbye to summer. But now the time has come to let go of the summer for good. With the official autumnal equinox here, it's completely fall.

If you're having trouble kissing the beach days goodbye, you're not alone. Poets and writers have been trying to express the melancholy associated with the change of seasons since the beginning of time. Here are some of my favorite quotes about seasonal transitions that will help to inspire you to look forward to the change, and feel less alone in your reservations.:

“Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.” — Henry David Thoreau

"Nature gives to every time and season unique beauty; from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it’s just a succession of changes so soft and comfortable that we hardly notice the progress." — Charles Dickens

"There is a harmony in autumn, and a lustre in its sky, which through the summer is not heard or seen, as if it could not be, as if it had not been!" — Percy Bysshe Shelley

"The fires burn and the kettles sing, and earth sinks to rest until next spring." — Cylde Watson

"Spring passes and one remembers one's innocence. Summer passes and one remembers one's exuberance. Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence. Winter passes and one remembers one's perseverance." — Yoko Ono

“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

"You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen." — Ernest Hemingway

"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

"October is the fallen leaf, but it is also a wider horizon more clearly seen. It is the distant hills once more in sight, and the enduring constellations above them once again." — Hal Bourland

"Autumn arrives in early morning, but spring at the close of a winter day." — Elizabeth Bowen

"I prefer winter an fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape. The loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it. The whole story doesn't show." — Andrew Wyeth

"But when fall comes, kicking summer out on its treacherous ass as it always does one day sometime after the midpoint of September, it stays awhile like an old friend that you have missed. It settles in the way an old friend will settle into your favorite chair and take out his pipe and light it and then fill the afternoon with stories of places he has been and things he has done since last he saw you.” — Stephen King

"In the fall, I believe again in poetry, if nothing else it is a movement of the mind." — Jaakko A, Ahokas

"Falling leaves hide the path so quietly." — John Bailey

Images: Maya Karkalicheva/Moment/Getty Images; Giphy