quotes about Autumn
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Autumn can be glorious but menacing too - the long shadows, brisk winds, scurrying leaves, impending frost.
-- A.S.A. HarrisonSource : A. S. A. Harrison (2013). “The Silent Wife: A Novel”, p.96, Penguin
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The World Series is played in my doubtless too-nostalgic imagination in some kind of autumn afternoon light, and seeing it exclusively in the bitter chill of midnight breaks the spell of even the best of games.
-- Adam Gopnik -
Uneasily the leaves fall at this season, forgetting what to do or where to go; the red amnesiacs of autumn drifting thru the graveyard forest. What they have forgotten they have forgotten: what they meant to do instead of fall is not in earth or time recoverable the fossils of intention, the shapes of rot.
-- Al PurdySource : 1962 Poems forAll theAnnettes,'Pause' (revised1968).
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A life is a moment in season. A life is one snowfall. A life is one autumn day. A life is the delicate, rapid edge of a closing door's shadow. A life is a brief movement of arms and of legs.
-- Alan Lightman -
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In the entire circle of the year there are no days so delightful as those of a fine October, when the trees are bare to the mild heavens, and the red leaves bestrew the road, and you can feel the breath of winter, morning and evening - no days so calm, so tenderly solemn, and with such a reverent meekness in the air.
-- Alexander SmithSource : Alexander Smith (1914). “Dreamthorp”
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Through the dripping weeks that follow One another slow, and soak Summer's extinguished fire and autumn's drifting smoke.
-- Alfred Austin -
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 -
Outside the leaves on the trees constricted slightly; they were the deep done green of the beginning of autumn. It was a Sunday in September. There would only be four. The clouds were high and the swallows would be here for another month or so before they left for the south before they returned again next summer.
-- Ali Smith -
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Shut up the door: who loves me must not look / Upon the withered world, but haste to bring / His lighted candle, and his story-book, / And live with me the poetry of spring.
-- Alice CarySource : Alice Cary (1876). “The Last Poems: Of Alice and Phoebe Cary”, p.136
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Spring and autumn are inconsiderable events in a landscape compared with the shadows of a cloud.
-- Alice MeynellSource : Alice Meynell (2013). “The Essential Alice Meynell Collection”, p.122, eBookIt.com
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my mother was taught the ch'an concept of happiness, which was to find satisfaction in small things. i was taught to appreciate the fresh air in the morning, the colour of leaves turning red in autumn and the water's smoothness when i soaked my hands in the basin.
-- Anchee MinSource : Anchee Min (2005). “Empress Orchid”, p.4, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
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Autumn is the hardest season. The leaves are all falling, and they're falling like they're falling in love with the ground.
-- Andrea Gibson -
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Flowers, cold from the dew, And autumn's approaching breath, I pluck for the warm, luxuriant braids, Which haven't faded yet. In their nights, fragrantly resinous, Entwined with delightful mystery, They will breathe in her springlike Extraordinary beauty. But in a whirlwind of sound and fire, From her shing head they will flutter And fall—and before her They will die, faintly fragrant still. And, impelled by faithful longing, My obedient gaze will feast upon them— With a reverent hand, Love will gather their rotting remains.
-- Anna Akhmatova -
Let whoever wants to, relax in the south, And bask in the garden of paradise. Here is the essence of north—and it's autumn I've chosen as this year's friend.
-- Anna Akhmatova -
When autumn returns with its long anticipated holidays, and preparations are made for a scamper in some distant locality, hammer and notebook will not occupy much room in the portmanteau, and will certainly be found most entertaining company.
-- Archibald GeikieSource : Sir Archibald Geikie (1858). “The Story of a Boulder: Or, Gleanings from the Note-book of a Field Geologist”, p.9
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Deep inside, we're still the boys of autumn, that magic time of the year that once swept us onto America's fields.
-- Archie Manning -
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The gray-green stretch of sandy grass,Indefinitely desolate;A sea of lead, a sky of slate;Already autumn in the air, alas!One stark monotony of stone,The long hotel, acutely white,Against the after-sunset lightWithers gray-green, and takes the grass's tone.
-- Arthur Symons -
It is only the farmer who faithfully plants seeds in the Spring, who reaps a harvest in the Autumn.
-- B. C. Forbes -
Love the trees until their leaves fall off, then encourage them to try again next year.
-- Backseat Goodbye -
A strip of water's spread in the setting sun, Half the river's emerald, half is red. I love the third night of the ninth month, The dew is like a pearl; the moon like a bow.
-- Bai JuyiSource : Bai Juyi, “Song Of Sunset On The River”
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Two monks sit facing, playing chess on the mountain, The bamboo shadow on the board is dark and clear. Not a person sees the bamboo's shadow, One sometimes hears the pieces being moved.
-- Bai JuyiSource : Bai Juyi, “On The Lake (1)”
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Melancholy is kind of sweet sometimes, I think. It's not a negative thing. It's not a mean thing. It's just something that happens in life, like autumn.
-- Bill Murray -
There is something in the autumn that is native to my blood- Touch of manner, hint of mood; And my heart is like a rhyme, With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time.
-- Bliss CarmanSource : Bliss Carman (1931). “Bliss Carman's Poems”, McClelland & Stewart
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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 CarmanSource : Bliss Carman (1931). “Bliss Carman's Poems”, McClelland & Stewart
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Squeeze your eyes closed, as tight as you can, and think of all your favorite autumns, crisp and perfect, all bound up together like a stack of cards. That is what it is like, the awful, wonderful brightness of Fairy colors. Try to smell the hard, pale wood sending up sharp, green smoke into the afternoon. To feel the mellow, golden sun on your skin, more gentle and cozier and more golden than even the light of your favorite reading nook at the close of the day.
-- Catherynne M. ValenteSource : Catherynne M. Valente (2011). “The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making”, p.130, Macmillan
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Early in April, as I was vigorously hoeing in a corner, I unearthed a huge toad, to my perfect delight and satisfaction; he had lived all winter, he had doubtless fed on slugs all the autumn. I could have kissed him on the spot.
-- Celia ThaxterSource : Celia Thaxter (2008). “An Island Garden”, p.56, Applewood Books
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I watch the springs, the summers, the autumns; And when comes the winter snow monotonous, I shut all the doors and shutters To build in the night my fairy palace.
-- Charles Baudelaire -
On the motionless branches of some trees, autumn berries hung like clusters of coral beads, as in those fabled orchards where the fruits were jewels . . .
-- Charles Dickens -
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All who have travelled through the delicious scenery of North Devon must needs know the little white town of Bideford, which slopes upwards from its broad tide-river paved with yellow sands, and many-arched old bridge, where salmon wait for Autumn floods, toward the pleasant upland on the west.
-- Charles Kingsley -
...for those whose favorite season is autumn with its days of cloudless sky, of spacious and clear, far-flung panoramas - those who view nature with detachment, for whom nature's appeal is primarily pictorial, classicists as opposed to romanticists, perhaps. On such a day, one is usually excited, physically exhilarated, mentally stimulated. Only not much is left for the imagination.
-- Charlton Ogburn -
I enjoyed the whole process of learning and was always happy when autumn came and school or college started up again.
-- Claire Tomalin -
Variations: II Green light, from the moon, Pours over the dark blue trees, Green light from the autumn moon Pours on the grass ... Green light falls on the goblin fountain Where hesitant lovers meet and pass. They laugh in the moonlight, touching hands, They move like leaves on the wind ... I remember an autumn night like this, And not so long ago, When other lovers were blown like leaves, Before the coming of snow.
-- Conrad Aiken -
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Even a man who's pure in heart And says his prayers by night, May become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms And the autumn moon is bright.
-- Curt SiodmakSource : Curt Siodmak (1997). “Wolf Man's Maker: Memoir of a Hollywood Writer”
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Fallen leaves lying on the grass in the November sun bring more happiness than the daffodils.
-- Cyril Connolly -
The acrid scents of autumn, Reminiscent of slinking beasts, make me fear
-- D. H. Lawrence -
This sunlight shames November where he grieves In dead red leaves, and will not let him shun The day, though bough with bough be overrun. But with a blessing every glade receives High salutation.
-- Dante Gabriel Rossetti -
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...as the slow sea sucked at the shore and then withdrew, leaving the strip of seaweed bare and the shingle churned, the sea birds raced and ran upon the beaches. Then that same impulse to flight seized upon them too. Crying, whistling, calling, they skimmed the placid sea and left the shore. Make haste, make speed, hurry and begone; yet where, and to what purpose? The restless urge of autumn, unsatisfying, sad, had put a spell upon them and they must flock, and wheel, and cry; they must spill themselves of motion before winter came.
-- Daphne du Maurier -
Autumn is leaving its mellowness behind for its spiky, rotted stage. Don't remember summer even saying goodbye.
-- David Mitchell -
Autumn in my garden is when trees give their tickertape welcome to winter.
-- Densey Clyne -
His markings, month by month, became more beautiful, lines of autumn bracken colours with shapes which reminded me of currents on a quiet sea. True that at times his head, because of his youth, looked scraggy, even his body sometimes looked scraggy, but suddenly for some reason like the change of light, or of mood, he looked his potential. This was going to be a champion cat.
-- Derek Tangye -
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It was a beautiful bright autumn day, with air like cider and a sky so blue you could drown in it.
-- Diana Gabaldon -
I hated him for as long as I could. But then I realized that loving him...that was a part of me, and one of the best parts. It didn't matter that he couldn't love me, that had nothing to do with it. But if I couldn't forgive him, then I could not love him, and that part of me was gone. And I found eventually that I wanted it back." ({Lord John, Drums of Autumn}
-- Diana Gabaldon -
Why is summer mist romantic and autumn mist just sad?
-- Dodie Smith -
In the autumn of 1970 I had a job singing in the school system, playing my guitar in classrooms.
-- Don McLean -
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Autumn is a season followed immediately by looking forward to spring.
-- Doug Larson -
I retire with a smile on my face, in good health, and ready to spend autumns at my kids' games instead of my own. I'm excited to start the next chapter of my life.
-- Drew Bledsoe -
Seventy-five years. That's how much time you get if you're lucky. Seventy-five years. Seventy-five winters, seventy-five springtimes, seventy-five summers, and seventy-five autumns. When you look at it like that, it's not a lot of time, is it? Don't waste them. Get your head out of the rat race and forget about the superficial things that pre-occupy your existence and get back to what's important now.
-- Eddie MurphySource : "Fictional character: 'G'". "Holy Man", www.imdb.com. 1998.
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The spirit of the year, like bacchant crowned, With lighted torch goes careless on his way; And soon bursts into flame the maple's spray, And vines are running fire along the ground.
-- Edith M. Thomas -
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Fade, flowers, fade! Nature will have it so; 'tis but what we in our autumn do.
-- Edmund WallerSource : Edmund Waller (1854). “Poetical Works”, p.228
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And every year there is a brief, startling moment When we pause in the middle of a long walk home and Suddenly feel something invisible and weightless Touching our shoulders, sweeping down from the air: It is the autumn wind pressing against our bodies; It is the changing light of fall falling on us.
-- Edward HirschSource : Edward Hirsch, “Fall”
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To-day I think Only with scents, - scents dead leaves yield, And bracken, and wild carrot's seed, And the square mustard field; Odours that rise When the spade wounds the root of tree, Rose, currant, raspberry, or goutweed, Rhubarb or celery; The smoke's smell, too, Flowing from where a bonfire burns The dead, the waste, the dangerous, And all to sweetness turns. It is enough To smell, to crumble the dark earth, While the robin sings over again Sad songs of Autumn mirth." - A poem called DIGGING.
-- Edward ThomasSource : Edward Thomas (2011). “Selected Poems of Edward Thomas”, p.85, Faber & Faber
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The stillness of October gold Went out like beauty from a face.
-- Edwin Arlington Robinson -
For man, autumn is a time of harvest, of gathering together. For nature, it is a time of sowing, of scattering abroad.
-- Edwin Way TealeSource : "Autumn Across America". Book by Edwin Way Teale, 1956.
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Change is a measure of time and, in the autumn, time seems speeded up. What was is not and never again will be; what is is change.
-- Edwin Way TealeSource : Edwin Way Teale (1987). “Circle of the seasons: the journal of a naturalist's year”, Olympic Marketing Corp
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I see, when I bend close, how each leaflet of a climbing rose is bordered with frost, the autumn counterpart of the dewdrops of summer dawns. The feathery leaves of yarrow are thick with silver rime and dry thistle heads rise like goblets plated with silver catching the sun.
-- Edwin Way Teale -
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September is the time to begin again. In the country, when I could smell the wood-smoke in the forest, and the curtains could be drawn when the tea came in, on the first autumn evening, I always felt that my season of good luck had come.
-- Eleanor PerenyiSource : Eleanor Perenyi (2016). “More Was Lost: A Memoir”, p.29, New York Review of Books
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South Carolina is in the spring a paradise, in the summer a hell, and in the autumn a hospital.
-- Eliza Lucas -
autumn days have a holiness that spring lacks ... They are like old serene saints for whom death has lost its terror.
-- Elizabeth GoudgeSource : Elizabeth Goudge (1948). “Pilgrim's Inn”
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The birds laugh loud and long together When Fashion's followers speed away At the first cool breath of autumn weather. Why, this is the time, cry the birds, to stay! When the deep calm sea and the deep sky over Both look their passion through sun-kissed space, As a blue-eyed maid and her blue-eyed lover Might each gaze into the other's face.
-- Ella Wheeler Wilcox -
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All perfect things are saddening in effect. The autumn wood robed in its scarlet clothes, The matchless tinting on the royal rose Whose velvet leaf by no least flaw is flecked. Love's supreme moment, when the soul unchecked Soars high as heaven, and its best rapture knows, These hold a deeper pathos than our woes, Since they leave nothing better to expect.
-- Ella Wheeler Wilcox -
Every leaf speaks bliss to me, fluttering from the autumn tree.
-- Emily BronteSource : Emily Bronte, “Fall, Leaves, Fall”
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When everything that ticked has stopped, and space stares, all around, or grisly frosts, first autumn morns, repeal the beating ground.
-- Emily Dickinson -
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As Summer into Autumn slips And yet we sooner say "The Summer" than "the Autumn," lest We turn the sun away, And almost count it an Affront The presence to concede Of one however lovely, not The one that we have loved - So we evade the charge of Years On one attempting shy The Circumvention of the Shaft Of Life's Declivity.
-- Emily Dickinson -
Besides the Autumn poets sing, A few prosaic days, A little this side of the snow, And that side of the Haze..., Grant me, Oh Lord, a sunny mind- Thy windy will to bear!
-- Emily Dickinson -
The spring, summer, is quite a hectic time for people in their lives, but then it comes to autumn, and to winter, and you can't but help think back to the year that was, and then hopefully looking forward to the year that is approaching.
-- EnyaSource : "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.
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A few days ago I walked along the edge of the lake and was treated to the crunch and rustle of leaves with each step I made. The acoustics of this season are different and all sounds, no matter how hushed, are as crisp as autumn air.
-- Eric SloaneSource : Eric Sloane (2013). “Weather Almanac”, p.151, Courier Corporation
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It's said that All Hallows' Eve is one of the nights when the veil between the worlds is thin - and whether you believe in such things or not, those roaming spirits probably believe in you, or at least acknowledge your existence, considering that it used to be their own. Even the air feels different on Halloween, autumn-crisp and bright.
-- Erin Morgenstern -
The photographic enthusiast likes to lure us into a darkened room in order to display his slides on a silver screen. Aided by the adaptability of the eye and by the borrowed light from the intense projector bulb, he can achieve those relationships in brightness that will make us dutifully admire the wonderful autumn tints he photographed on his latest trip. As soon as we look at a print of these photographs by day, the light seems to go out of them. It is one of the miracles of art that the same does not happen there.
-- Ernst Gombrich -
My Department has already recognised this and has been working specifically on the technical support issue since January and will offer advice to schools during the Autumn term.
-- Estelle Morris, Baroness Morris of Yardley -
Please, God,' Ruth would pray, 'don't let me be competitive. Let me realize what a privilege it is to study. Let me remember that knowledge must be pursued for its own sake and please, please stop me wanting to beat Verena Plackett in the exams.' She prayed hard and she meant what she said. But God was busy that autumn as the International Brigade came back, defeated, from Spain, Hitler's bestialities increased, and sparrows everywhere continued to fall.
-- Eva IbbotsonSource : Eva Ibbotson (2008). “The Morning Gift”, p.126, Pan Macmillan
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Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald -
Autumn burned brightly, a running flame through the mountains, a torch flung to the trees.
-- Faith BaldwinSource : Faith Baldwin (1935). “American Family”
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It was a morning of ground mist, yellow sunshine, and high rifts of blue, white-cloud-dappled sky. The leaves were still thick on the trees, but de-spangled gossamer threads hung on the bushes and the shrill little cries of unrest of the swallows skimming the green open park spaces of the park told of autumn and change.
-- Flora Thompson -
An autumn garden has a sadness when the sun is not shining...
-- Francis Brett Young -
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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 PalgraveSource : Francis Turner Palgrave (1871). “Lyrical Poems”, p.75
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a single leaf falling autumn is everywhere...
-- Frederick Franck -
I notice that Autumn is more the season of the soul than of nature.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
Looking about I see no cherry blossoms And no crimson leaves A straw-thatched hut by a bay In the autumn dusk.
-- Fujiwara no Teika -
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And so I ask myself: 'Where are your dreams?' And I shake my head and mutter: 'How the years go by!' And I ask myself again: 'What have you done with those years? Where have you buried your best moments? Have you really lived? Look,' I say to myself, 'how cold it is becoming all over the world!' And more years will pass and behind them will creep grim isolation. Tottering senility will come hobbling, leaning on a crutch, and behind these will come unrelieved boredom and despair. The world of fancies will fade, dreams will wilt and die and fall like autumn leaves from the trees. . . .
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky -
Over the weekend the vultures got into the presidential palace by pecking through the screens on the balcony windows and the flapping of their wings stirred up the stagnant time inside, and at dawn on Monday the city awoke out of its lethargy of centuries with the warm, soft breeze of a great man dead and rotting grandeur.
-- Gabriel Garcia Marquez -
This existence of ours is as transient as autumn clouds To watch the birth and death of beings is like looking at the movements of a dance. A lifetime is like a flash of lightning in the sky, Rushing by, like a torrent down a steep mountain.
-- Gautama Buddha -
Shuddering under the autumn stars, each year, the head sinks lower and lower.
-- Georg Trakl -
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O'er hill and field October's glories fade; O'er hill and field the blackbirds southward fly; The brown leaves rustle down the forest glade, Where naked branches make a fitful shade, And the lost blooms of Autumn withered lie.
-- George ArnoldSource : George Arnold, “October”
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The perfection of life with a gun dog, like the perfection of an Autumn, is disturbing because you know, even as it begins, that it must end. Time bestows the gift and steals it in the process
-- George Bird Evans -
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 -
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 -
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What was it Catelyn Stark had called them, that night at Bitterbridge? The knights of summer. And now it was autumn and they were falling like leaves...
-- George R. R. Martin -
In the journey of the year, the autumn is Venice, spring is Naples, certainly, and the majestic maturity of summer is Rome.
-- George William Curtis -
But I do feel a little teeny right now that I'm just about ready to start, and winter is entering. Half past autumn has arrived.
-- Gordon Parks -
Cirrus sky hawk drift, blue haze in the autumn air, and my mouth is dry.
-- Gregg Boddy -
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Autumn truly is what summer pretends to be: the best of all seasons. It is as glorious as summer is tedious; as subtle as summer is obvious; as refreshing as summer is wearying. Autumn seems like paradise.
-- Gregg Easterbrook -
All through autumn we hear a double voice: one says everything is ripe; the other says everything is dying. The paradox is exquisite. We feel what the Japanese call "aware"--an almost untranslatable word meaning something like "beauty tinged with sadness.
-- Gretel EhrlichSource : Gretel Ehrlich (1985). “The solace of open spaces”, Viking Pr
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Autumn teaches us that fruition is also death; that ripeness is a form of decay. The willows, having stood for so long near water, begin to rust. Leaves are verbs that conjugate the seasons.
-- Gretel EhrlichSource : Gretel Ehrlich (1986). “The Solace of Open Spaces”, Penguin Group USA
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Summer ends, and Autumn comes, and he who would have it otherwise would have high tide always and a full moon every night.
-- Hal Borland -
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Catch a vista of maples in that long light and you see Autumn glowing through the leaves.... The promise of gold and crimson is there among the branches, though as yet it is achieved on only a stray branch, an impatient limb or an occasional small tree which has not yet learned to time its changes.
-- Hal Borland -
Of all the seasons, autumn offers the most to man and requires the least of him.
-- Hal BorlandSource : Hal Borland (1969). “Homeland: A Report from the Country”
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A woodland in full color is awesome as a forest fire, in magnitude at least, but a single tree is like a dancing tongue of flame to warm the heart.
-- Hal Borland -
The earth's distances invite the eye. And as the eye reaches, so must the mind stretch to meet these new horizons. I challenge anyone to stand with autumn on a hilltop and fail to see a new expanse not only around him, but in him, too.
-- Hal Borland -