100 Quotes to Celebrate the Beauty and Wonder of Autumn/Fall

Jared Jeric dela Cruz

Where I come from (the Philippines), we only have two seasons: there’s the hot season, and then the very hot season (actually we have the dry season and the wet season; and strictly speaking, I live in the Cordilleras of the Philippines, in the highland city of Baguio, where the climate is mild and the air cool and pine-scented, but enough about that). Of course, it’s a most ideal climate if all you want is plenty of sunshine year-round. But I must admit, it does get rather dull and monotonous sometimes, and one cannot help but yearn to experience the four seasons that define the climate of temperate countries both North and South of the Equator – in particular winter and autumn.

I only know something of autumn, or fall, from reading books and from watching films, and from those, I was able to glean some notion – however faint – of the beauty and spectacle of the season of turning leaves.

But no amount of books or films could ever prepare me for the true wonder of autumn. My first real experience (and my only one thus far) with fall was during a two-week long family excursion to Japan in November 2018, and it was an experience I will not – I cannot – ever forget.

In Nara, where deer aplenty roam and range freely, trees of various kinds held aloft their leafy foliage in vibrant and vivid autumn splendor – ruby and gold, yellow and orange, brown and tawny – a stark contrast to the austere grandeur of the ancient temples and pagodas that stood there.

On a bullet train ride to Hiroshima, I beheld autumn working its magic over the Japanese countryside, and among well-built and well-kept houses and green rice paddy fields the groves, woods, and forests were painted with bright and beautiful hues. And in Hiroshima itself, the air was crisp and bracing, and the ground was mantled with a colorful carpet of fallen leaves.

In Kyoto, sacred Mount Inari, with its many thousands of torii gates, was clad in breathtaking scarlet, vermillion, and amber; while immemorial Kiyomizu-dera and all its shrines and statues, and all its pagodas and pathways, lay nestled in a rolling landscape awash with spectacular yellow, orange, and red.

In Osaka, the cherry trees that were arrayed around an ancient castle and fortress had shed their bright spring pink for the bronze and brown, and the saffron and russet of fall; and in Tokyo, the rows and ranks of ginkgo trees bore their magnificently golden autumn canopies proudly, akin to large black candles lit with huge, dazzling flames.

Ah. Autumn. It came to me in a breathless instant, in a wild and ecstatic rush of brilliant colors, a dizzying and delightful moment. But it left me too soon, too fast, and it left me with only a memory touched with faint scarlet and gold. I’ve tasted it once, but now it’s all I want, and it’s all I could think about, and now I know I will spend my lifetime chasing autumns wherever they pass, wherever they linger, wherever they leave behind their fleeting wonder.

I know autumn is a magical moment for all of us, whether you call it autumn or fall, and whether you know of it solely through books and films, or you experience it, breathe it, live it year by year.

To celebrate the beauty and wonder of the season of turning leaves, I’ve compiled one hundred of the most inspiring, imaginative, and insightful quotes about autumn/fall, uttered or written by famed authors, poets, and other remarkable people.

For those of you who live in countries graced annually by autumn, may these quotes help you learn to love and appreciate – even more – the season of scarlet and gold.

And for those of you who have never experienced fall, may these quotes impart to you an image of the splendor and spectacle of the season, and continue to inspire you until the moment you experience – for real – the magic of red trees and falling leaves.

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“A wind has blown the rain away and blown the sky away and all the leaves away, and the trees stand. I think, I too, have known autumn too long.” – E. E. Cummings

“An autumn garden has a sadness when the sun is not shining…” – Francis Brett Young

“And all at once, summer collapsed into fall.” – Oscar Wilde

“And all the lives we ever lived and all the lives to be are full of trees and changing leaves…” – Virginia Woolf

“And I rose
In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days…” – Dylan Thomas

“And the sun took a step back, the leaves lulled themselves to sleep and autumn was awakened.” – Raquel Franco

“And the sunsets of Autumn – are they not gorgeous beyond description? More so than the brightest dreams of poetry?” – Charles Lanman

“Another fall, another turned page…” – Wallace Stegner

“Anyone who thinks fallen leaves are dead has never watched them dancing on a windy day.” – Shira Tamir

“Aprils have never meant much to me, autumns seem that season of beginning, spring.” – Truman Capote

“As long as autumn lasts, I shall not have hands, canvas, and colors enough to paint the beautiful things I see.” – Vincent Van Gogh

“Autumn burned brightly, a running flame through the mountains, a torch flung to the trees.” – Faith Baldwin

“Autumn carries more gold in its pocket than all the other seasons.” – Jim Bishop

“Autumn doesn’t always promise that winter will come, but she works hard until every colored leaf has reached its destination.” – Terri Guillemets

“Autumn glows upon us like a splendid evening; it is the very sunset of the year.” – Mary Russell Mitford

“Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.” – Albert Camus

“Autumn is as joyful and sweet as an untimely end.” – Rémy de Gourmon

“Autumn is springtime in reverse.” – Terri Guillemets

“Autumn is the antidote to stifling summer.” – Terri Guillemets

“Autumn is the best season in which to sniff, and to sniff for pleasure, for this is the season of universal pungency.” – Bertha Damon

“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

“Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits.” – Samuel Butler

“Autumn leaves are falling, filling up the streets; golden colors on the lawn, nature’s trick or treat!” – Rusty Fischer

“Autumn leaves don’t fall, they fly. They take their time and wander on this their only chance to soar.” – Delia Owens

“Autumn leaves shower like gold, like rainbows, as the winds of change begin to blow, signaling the later days of autumn.” – Dan Millman

“Autumn mornings: sunshine and crisp air, birds and calmness, year’s end and day’s beginnings.” – Terri Guillemets

“Autumn passes and one remembers one’s reverence.” – Yoko Ono

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

“Autumn, that wild season when rural men rack orchard trees with sticks and weep with the desire to kiss faraway Demeter’s supple breasts – to set lips to her travel-swollen eyes.” – Roman Payne

“Autumn that year painted the countryside in vivid shades of scarlet, saffron, and russet, and the days were clear and crisp under the harvest skies.” – Sharon Kay Penman

“Autumn…the year’s last, loveliest smile.” – William Cullen Bryant

“Autumn’s earliest frost had given
To the woods below
Hues of beauty, such as heaven
Lendeth to its bow;
And the soft breeze from the west
Scarcely broke their dreamy rest.” – John Greenleaf Whittier

“Dancing of the autumn leaves on a surface of a lake is a dream we see when we are awake.” – Mehmet Murat ildan

“Days decrease,
And autumn grows, autumn in everything.” – Robert Browning

“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

“Designers want me to dress like spring, in billowing things. I don’t feel like spring. I feel like a warm red autumn.” – Marilyn Monroe

“Even if something is left undone, everyone must take time to sit and watch the leaves turn.” – Elizabeth Lawrence

“Every leaf speaks bliss to me,
Fluttering from the autumn tree.” – Emily Brontë

“Fall colors are funny. They’re so bright and intense and beautiful. It’s like nature is trying to fill you up with color, to saturate you so you can stockpile it before winter turns everything muted and dreary.” – Siobhan Vivian

“Fall has always been my favorite season. The time when everything bursts with its last beauty, as if nature had been saving up all year for the grand finale.” – Lauren DeStefano

“For anyone who lives in the oak-and-maple area of New England, there is a perennial temptation to plunge into a purple sea of adjectives about October.” – Hal Borland

“Give me juicy autumnal fruit, ripe and red from the orchard.” – Walt Whitman

“Go, sit upon the lofty hill,
And turn your eyes around,
Where waving woods and waters wild
Do hymn an autumn sound.
The summer sun is faint on them –
The summer flowers depart –
Sit still – as all transform’d to stone,
Except your musing heart.” – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

“How beautiful the leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days.” – John Burroughs

“I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.” – L. M. Montgomery

“I am struck by the simplicity of light in the atmosphere in the autumn, as if the earth absorbed none, and out of this profusion of dazzling light came the autumnal tints.” – Henry David Thoreau

“I can smell autumn dancing in the breeze. The sweet chill of pumpkin, and crisp sunburnt leaves.” – Ann Drake

“…I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house. So I have spent almost all the daylight hours in the open air.” – Nathaniel Hawthorne

“I enjoy the spring more than the autumn now. One does, I think, as one gets older.” – Virginia Woolf

“I hope I can be the autumn leaf, who looked at the sky and lived. And when it was time to leave, gracefully it knew life was a gift.” – Dodinsky

“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

“I love thee, Autumn, for thy scenery, ere
The blasts of winter chase the varied dyes
That gayly deck the slow-declining year;
I love the splendour of thy sunset skies,
The gorgeous hues that tinge each falling leaf,
Lovely as Beauty’s cheek, as woman’s love too brief;” – William Cullen Bryant

“I loved autumn, the season of the year that God seemed to have put there just for the beauty of it.” – Lee Maynard

“I see the turning of a leaf dancing in an autumn sun, and brilliant shades of crimson glowing when the day is done.” – Hazelmarie Mattie Elliot

“I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.” – Henry David Thoreau

“If a year was tucked inside of a clock, then autumn would be the magic hour.” – Victoria Erickson

“Is not this a true autumn day? Just the still melancholy that I love—that makes life and nature harmonize.” – George Eliot

“It’s the first day of autumn! A time of hot chocolatey mornings, and toasty marshmallow evenings, and, best of all, leaping into leaves!” – Winnie the Pooh

“It looked like the world was covered in a cobbler crust of brown sugar and cinnamon.” – Sarah Addison Allen

“It was a beautiful, bright autumn day, with air like cider and a sky so blue you could drown in it.” – Diana Gabaldon

“It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life.” – P. D. James

“Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Listen! The wind is rising,
and the air is wild with leaves,
We have had our summer evenings,
Now for October eves.” – Humbert Wolfe

“Love the trees until their leaves fall off, then encourage them to try again next year.” – Chad Sugg

“No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace as I have seen in one autumnal face.” – John Donne

“Notice that autumn is more the season of the soul than of nature.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

“Now Autumn’s fire burns slowly along the woods and day by day the dead leaves fall and melt.” – William Allingham

“October gave a party;
The leaves by hundreds came –
The Chestnuts, Oaks, and Maples,
And leaves of every name.
The Sunshine spread a carpet,
And everything was grand,
Miss Weather led the dancing,
Professor Wind the band.” – George Cooper

“October, here’s to you. Here’s to the heady aroma of the frost-kissed apples, the winey smell of ripened grapes, the wild-as-the-wind smell of hickory nuts and the nostalgic whiff of that first wood smoke.” – Ken Weber

“October proved a riot a riot to the senses and climaxed those giddy last weeks before Halloween.” – Keith Donohue

“October, the extravagant sister, has ordered an immense amount of the most gorgeous forest tapestry for her grand reception.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

“October’s poplars are flaming torches lighting the way to winter.” – Nova S. Blair

“Of all the seasons, autumn offers the most to man and requires the least of him.” – Hal Borland

“On a bare branch a crow is perched – autumn evening.” – Bashō

“Once in a while I am struck
all over again… by just how blue
the sky appears … on wind-played
autumn mornings, blue enough
to bruise a heart.” – Sanober Khan

“Only lovers
see the fall
a signal end to endings
a gruffish gesture alerting
those who will not be alarmed
that we begin to stop
in order simply
to begin
” – Maya Angelou

“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

“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;” – John Keats

“See it, smell it, taste, it, and forget the time of day or year. Autumn needs no clock or calendar.” – Hal Borland

“She looked like autumn, when leaves turned and fruit ripened.” – Sarah Addison Allen

“She loved the fall, all the sun-faded colors of summer repainted by vivid reds and golds still clinging fragilely to branches that would soon be covered with snow.” – Naomi Ragen

“Spring is beautiful, and summer is perfect for vacations, but autumn brings a longing to get away from the unreal things of life, out into the forest at night with a campfire and the rustling leaves.” – Margaret Elizabeth Sangster

“Steam rising underneath a canopy of whispering, changing aspens; starlight in the clear, dark night, and wondrous beauty in every direction. If only all could feel this way, to be so captured and enthralled with autumn.” – Donna Lynn Hope

“The bright summer had passed away, and gorgeous autumn was flinging its rainbow-tints of beauty on hill and dale.” – Cornelia L. Tuthill

“The first breath of autumn was in the air, a prodigal feeling, a feeling of wanting, taking, and keeping before it is too late.” – J. L. Carr

“The goldenrod is yellow,
The corn is turning brown…
The trees in apple orchards
With fruit are bending down.” – Helen Hunt Jackson

“The heart of autumn must have broken here, and poured its treasure upon the leaves.” – Charlotte Bates

“The heat of autumn
is different from the heat of summer.
One ripens apples, the other turns them to cider.” – Jane Hirshfield

“The magic of autumn has seized the countryside; now that the sun isn’t ripening anything it shines for the sake of the golden age; for the sake of Eden; to please the moon for all I know.” – Elizabeth Coatsworth

“The tints of autumn…a mighty flower garden blossoming under the spell of the enchanter, frost.” – John Greenleaf Whittier

“The winter will be short, the summer long,
The autumn amber-hued, sunny and hot,
Tasting of cider and of scuppernong.” – Elinor Wylie

“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

“There is a time in the last few days of summer when the ripeness of autumn fills the air, and time is quiet and mellow.” – Rudolfo Anaya

“There is something incredibly nostalgic and significant about the annual cascade of autumn leaves.” – Joe L. Wheeler

“There is something so special in the early leaves drifting from the trees – as if we are all to be allowed a chance to peel, to refresh, to start again.” – Ruth Ahmed

“Two sounds of autumn are unmistakable…the hurrying rustle of crisp leaves blown along the street…by a gusty wind, and the gabble of a flock of migrating geese.” – Hal Borland

“Use what you have, use what the world gives you. Use the first day of fall: bright flame before winter’s deadness; harvest; orange, gold, amber; cool nights and the smell of fire. Our tree-lined streets are set ablaze, our kitchens filled with the smells of nostalgia: apples bubbling into sauce, roasting squash, cinnamon, nutmeg, cider, warmth itself. The leaves as they spark into wild color just before they die are the world’s oldest performance art, and everything we see is celebrating one last violently hued hurrah before the black and white silence of winter.” – Shauna Niequist

“What is sometimes called a
tongue of flame
or an arm extended burning
is only the long
red and orange branch of
a green maple
in early September.” – Grace Paley