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Autumn is the season of contradictions. It’s often associated with the melancholiness of endings; yet it’s the season of harvest and thanksgiving, when we pause to count the blessings that have ripened from the seeds we sowed the rest of the year. Here are quotations and reflections to help celebrate this season (even though our friends in the southern hemisphere are in the midst of spring)...
Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall. —F. Scott Fitzgerald
By summer’s end, I’m as wilted as the plants around me. The first fall morning when I need to put on a wrap before going outside feels like a new beginning. The air is so fresh and crisp. It’s one of my favorite moments of the entire year.
There is a harmony in autumn, and a luster 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
With the extreme temperatures of summer having coming to an end, harmony is restored—the gentle wind, the cooler nights, the brisk but refreshing mornings.
No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of spring. —Samuel Johnson
To truly appreciate the present, we have to let go of the past. This means delighting in spring flowers while they last, but not expecting their scent to linger forever. When our minds are lost in thoughts about the past, we miss what this moment has to offer. Even if this moment isn’t as delightful as the scent of spring flowers, tasting whatever fruits it does have to offer brings with it a sense of peace and well-being with our life as it is.
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
Like the Samuel Johnson quotation, this is also about being present for our life as it is. We can try to fashion every aspect of our experience to be to our liking and seek to have it stay that way—a tide that’s high and a moon that’s full—but it would be a futile mission and a recipe for disappointment and unhappiness because the universal law of impermanence will always have its way.
My sorrow, when she's here with me, thinks these dark days of autumn rain are beautiful as days can be; she loves the bare, the withered tree; she walks the sodden pasture lane. —Robert Frost
These words remind me of a quotation I’ve shared before from Ann Packer’s novel, The Dive from Clausen’s Pier: “Lonely is a funny thing. It’s almost like another person. After a while it will keep you company if you let it.” As they walk the sodden pasture lane together, Frost’s sorrow keeps him company and helps him see the beauty in autumn rain and in the bare, withered tree.
Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower. —Albert Camus
Try stepping outside and looking upon every leaf as a flower—even though a scentless flower!
No spring nor summer hath such grace,
As I have seen in one autumnal face.
—John Donne
Autumn poplars are flaming torches lighting the way to winter. —Nova Bair
It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life. —P.D. James
As a fan of P.D. James’ mysteries, I was thrilled to find a quotation from her that I could include. Her protagonist, Commander Adam Dalgliesh of New Scotland Yard, writes poetry. Perhaps it was from his lips that she had these words flow. And perhaps our British friends can explain why perfect autumnal days occur more frequently in memory than in life!
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 (Mary Anne Evans)
Eliot doesn’t tell us why her soul is wedded to autumn. Is yours? If so, why?
Falling leaves hide the path so quietly. —John Bailey
Reading this, I thought of the different ways I might try to hide a path, but none of them would be as quiet as leaves falling.
The one red leaf, the last of its clan,
That dances as often as dance it can,
Hanging so light, and hanging so high,
On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Every leaf speaks bliss to me
Fluttering from the autumn tree.
—Emily Bronte
And lastly…
Autumn is a season followed immediately by looking forward to spring. —Doug Larson
I saved this for last so I could take it as a challenge to find winter quotations that will leave us thinking otherwise. I’ve got a few months to find them!
© 2013 Toni Bernhard. Thank you for reading my work. I'm the author of three books:
How to Live Well with Chronic Pain and Illness: A Mindful Guide (2015)
How to Wake Up: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide to Navigating Joy and Sorrow (2013)
All of my books are available in audio format from Amazon, audible.com, and iTunes.
Visit www.tonibernhard.com for more information and buying options.
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