Autumn Quotes - Page 8

• The sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Summer, Equality, Human Rights

  I Have a Dream, delivered 28 August 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C.

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• Once upon a time there was a boy who lived in a house across the field from a girl who no longer exists. They made up a thousand games. She was Queen and he was King. In the autumn light, her hair shone like a crown. They collected the world in small handfuls. When the sky grew dark they parted with leaves in their hair.

  Nicole Krauss

  Girl, Kings, Queens

  "The History of Love". Book by Nicole Krauss (p.9), 2005.

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• In the season of white wild roses We two went hand in hand: But now in the ruddy autumn Together already we stand.

  Francis Turner Palgrave

  Wild Roses, Hands, Two

  Francis Turner Palgrave (1871). “Lyrical Poems”, p.75

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• I love the start of autumn when the trees in my garden change the colour of their leaves in one last dazzling display.

  Michael Caine

  Garden, Tree, Lasts

  Michael Caine (2010). “The Elephant to Hollywood”, p.364, Hachette UK

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• The year's in wane; There is nothing adorning; The night has no eve, And the day has no morning; Cold winter gives warning!

  Thomas Hood

  Morning, Fall, Winter

  Thomas Hood (1864). “Poetical Works. --”, p.159

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• A strangely reflective, even melancholy day. Is that because, unlike our cousins in the northern hemisphere, Easter is not associated with the energy and vitality of spring but with the more subdued spirit of autumn.

  Hugh Mackay

  Easter, Cousin, Spring

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• As early as the autumn of 1862, I was made very happy by being sent to school.

  John Sergeant Wise

  School, Made, Very Happy

  John Sergeant Wise, Paul Dennis Sporer (2005). “End of an Era: The Last Days of Traditional Southern Culture as Seen Through the Eyes of a Young Confederate Soldier”, p.33, Anza Publishing

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• I saw old Autumn in the misty morn Stand shadowless like silence, listening To silence, for no lonely bird would sing Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn, Nor lowly hedge nor solitary thorn;- Shaking his languid locks all dewy bright With tangled gossamer that fell by night, Pearling his coronet of golden corn.

  Thomas Hood

  Lonely, Night, Tangled

  Thomas Hood (2016). “Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Thomas Hood (Illustrated)”, p.296, Delphi Classics

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• Now Autumn's fire burns slowly along the woods, And day by day the dead leaves fall and melt, And night by night the monitory blast Wails in the key-hole, telling how it pass'd O'er empty fields, or upland solitudes, Or grim wide wave; and now the power is felt Of melancholy, tenderer in its moods Than any joy indulgent Summer dealt.

  William Allingham

  Summer, Fall, Night

  William Allingham (1854). “Day and Night Songs”

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• Earth's crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God: But only he who sees takes off his shoes.

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Faith, Shoes, Heaven

  'Aurora Leigh' (1857) bk. 7, l. 821

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• In California in the early Spring,
  There are pale yellow mornings, when the mist burns slowly into day,
  The air stings like Autumn, clarifies like pain -
  Well, I have dreamed this coast myself.

  Robert Hass

  Morning, Pain, Spring

  Robert Hass (1979). “Five American poets: Robert Hass, John Matthias, James McMichael, John Peck, Robert Pinsky”, Persea Books

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• Ye flowers that drop, forsaken by the spring,
  Ye birds that, left by summer, cease to sing,
  Ye trees that fade, when Autumn heats remove,
  Say, is not absence death to those who love?

  Alexander Pope

  Missing You, Summer, Goodbye

  Alexander Pope (1807). “The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope”, p.172

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• The autumn comes, a maiden fair In slenderness and grace, With nodding rice-stems in her hair And lilies in her face. In flowers of grasses she is clad; And as she moves along, Birds greet her with their cooing glad Like bracelets' tinkling song.

  Kalidasa

  Song, Flower, Moving

  Kālidāsa (1928). “Kalidasa translations of Shakuntala, and other works”

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• Love is a flower that grows in any soil, works its sweet miracles undaunted by autumn frost or winter snow, blooming fair and fragrant all the year, and blessing those who give and those who receive.

  Louisa May Alcott

  Sweet, Flower, Winter

  Louisa May Alcott (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Louisa May Alcott (Illustrated)”, p.1110, Delphi Classics

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• Cold autumn, wan with wrath of wind and rain,
  Saw pass a soul sweet as the sovereign tune
  That death smote silent when he smote again.

  Algernon Charles Swinburne

  Sweet, Rain, Wrath

  Algernon Charles Swinburne (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated)”, p.1311, Delphi Classics

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• To her bier Comes the year Not with weeping and distress, as mortals do, But, to guide her way to it, All the trees have torches lit; Blazing red the maples shine the woodlands through.

  Lucy Larcom

  Years, Shining, Tree

  Lucy Larcom (1869). “Poems”, p.115

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• Autumn that year painted the countryside in vivid shades of scarlet, saffron and russet, and the days were clear and crisp under harvest skies.

  Sharon Kay Penman

  Fall, Years, Sky

  Sharon Kay Penman (2002). “Time and Chance”, p.291, Penguin

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• The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry
  Of bugles going by.
  And my lonely spirit thrills
  To see the frosty asters like a smoke upon the hills.

  Bliss Carman

  Lonely, Asters, Spirit

  Bliss Carman (1931). “Bliss Carman's Poems”, McClelland & Stewart

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• Why I so much prefer autumn to spring is that in the autumn one looks at heaven--in the spring at the earth.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Spring, Heaven, Looks

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• The smile that flickers on a baby’s lips when he sleeps- does anyone know where it was born? Yes, there is a rumor that a young pale beam of a crescent moon touched the edge of a vanishing autumn cloud, and there the smile was first born in the dream of a dew-washed morning.

  Rabindranath Tagore

  Smile, Dream, Baby

  Rabindranath Tagore (2013). “Gitanjali”, p.79, Simon and Schuster

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• Union of the weakest develops strength not wisdom. Can all men, together, avenge one of the leaves that have fallen in autumn? But the wise man avenges by building his city in snow.

  Wallace Stevens

  Wise, Fall, Men

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.158, Vintage

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• What visionary tints the year puts on, When falling leaves falter through motionless air Or numbly cling and shiver to be gone! How shimmer the low flats and pastures bare, As with her nectar Hebe Autumn fills The bowl between me and those distant hills, And smiles and shakes abroad her misty, tremulous hair!

  James Russell Lowell

  Fall, Hair, Years

  James Russell Lowell (2012). “The Vision of Sir Launfal And Other Poems by James Russell Lowell, With a Biographical Sketch and Notes, a Portrait and Other Illustrations”, p.67, tredition

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• Nature is, above all, profligate. Don't believe them when they tell you how economical and thrifty nature is, whose leaves return to the soil. Wouldn't it be cheaper to leave them on the tree in the first place? This deciduous business alone is a radical scheme, the brainchild of a deranged manic-depressive with limitless capital. Extravagance! Nature will try anything once.

  Annie Dillard

  Nature, Believe, Tree

  Annie Dillard (2011). “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”, p.66, Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd

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• Autumn is the harvest of greedy death.

  Juvenal

  Greedy, Harvest

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• Time remorselessly rambles down the corridors and streets of our lives. but it is not until autumn that most of us become aware that our tickets are stamped with a terminal destination.

  Joe L. Wheeler

  Tickets, Destination, Streets

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