75 Colorful Fall Quotes That Capture Autumn’s Beauty
Updated: Jul. 23, 2024
Fall lovers, rejoice! We have the best fall quotes to perfectly sum up autumn's allure.
Fall quotes for autumn lovers
Aah, autumn. It’s the season when we say goodbye to shorts and beach days and hello to sweaters, fall activities and frightfully fun Halloween events. And nothing will get you in the mood for nature’s most colorful season than inspiring fall quotes.
Fall delivers unmatched beauty—the kind that has spurred centuries of admiration. It’s no wonder the season has inspired some of the most beautiful words (and funniest memes) ever created, and those words deserve to be highlighted. That’s why we compiled a list of some of the best quotes about fall, from odes to the beauty of fall colors and the changing of the leaves to praise for a new season filled with warmth and delight. So keep reading for some of the best fall quotes of the cozy season.
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Beautiful fall quotes
1. “Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.” —Albert Camus
2. “Autumn wins you best by this its mute appeal to sympathy for its decay.” —Robert Browning
3. “Now autumn‘s fire burns slowly along the woods and day by day the dead leaves fall and melt.” —William Allingham
4. “Autumn burned brightly, a running flame through the mountains, a torch flung to the trees.” —Faith Baldwin
5. “It almost seems as if autumn were the true creator, more creative than the spring, which is too even-toned, more creative when it comes with its will-to-change and shatters the much too ready-made, self-satisfied and really almost bourgeois-complacent image of summer.” —Rainer Maria Rilke
6. “Finally, she mused that human existence is as brief as the life of autumn grass, so what was there to fear from taking chances with your life?” —Mo Yan
7. “Flowers are immortal. You cut them in autumn, and they grow again in spring—somewhere.” —Halldór Laxness
8. “It was like autumn, looking at her. It was like driving up north to see the colors.” —Jeffrey Eugenides
9. “How bravely Autumn paints upon the sky the gorgeous fame of summer which is fled!” —Thomas Hood
10. “Autumn resumes the land, ruffles the woods with smoky wings, entangles them.” —Geoffrey Hill
11. “Fade, flowers, fade! Nature will have it so; ’tis but what we in our autumn do.” —Edmund Waller
12. “But I remember more dearly autumn afternoons in bottoms that lay intensely silent under old great trees.” —C.S. Lewis
13. “Of all the seasons, autumn offers the most to man and requires the least of him.” —Hal Borland
14. “Nothing is more fleeting than external form, which withers and alters like the flowers of the field at the appearance of autumn.” —Umberto Eco
15. “Beautiful is old age—beautiful as the slow-dropping mellow autumn of a rich glorious summer.” —James Anthony Froude
16. “A second blow of many flowers appears, flowers faintly tinged and breathing no perfume; but fruits, not blossoms, form the woodland wreath that circles Autumn‘s brow.” —James Grahame
17. “The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last forever. Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year—the days when summer is changing into autumn—the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change.” —E.B. WhiteÂ
18. “So clear and sparkling is this autumn night that, with averted vision, I can see quite readily the wraithlike wisps of nebulosity that festoon and enmesh this entire little cluster.” —Leslie Peltier
19. “It is a vast wilderness of rocks in a sea of light, colored and glowing like oak and maple in autumn, when the sun gold is richest.” —John Muir
20. “And Autumn in his leafless bowers is waiting for the winter’s snow.” —John Greenleaf Whittier
21. “All those golden autumn days the sky was full of wings. Wings beating low over the blue water of Silver Lake, wings beating high in the blue air far above it.” —Laura Ingalls Wilder
22. “Autumn glows upon us like a splendid evening; it is the very sunset of the year.” —Mary Russell Mitford
23. “Autumn is leaving its mellowness behind for its spiky, rotted stage. Don’t remember summer even saying goodbye.” —David Mitchell
24. “We come back to autumn, to zucchini that wilt like witches’ shoes…” —Margaret Hasse
25. “Autumn days have a holiness that spring lacks… They are like old serene saints for whom death has lost its terror.” —Elizabeth Goudge
26. “Autumn is the best season in which to sniff, and to sniff for pleasure, for this is the season of universal pungency.” —Bertha Damon
27. “It is about five o’clock in an evening that the first hour of spring strikes—autumn arrives in the early morning, but spring at the close of a winter day.” —Elizabeth Bowen
We hope these fall quotes encourage you to plan your next fall getaway.
Inspiring fall quotes
28. “Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.” —F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
29. “In autumn, when the leaves are brown, / Take pen and ink, and write it down.” —Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass
30. “No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of spring.” —Samuel Johnson
31. “By all these lovely tokens / September days are here, / With summer’s best of weather / And autumn‘s best of cheer.” —Helen Hunt Jackson
32. “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
33. “I long for the bulbs to arrive, for the early autumn chores are melancholy, but the planting of bulbs is the work of hope and is always thrilling.” —May Sarton
34. “It is only the farmer who faithfully plants seeds in the spring who reaps a harvest in the autumn.” —B.C. Forbes
35. “A life is one autumn day.” –Alan Lightman
36. “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 Geikie
37. “Summer makes me drowsy. Autumn makes me sing. Winter’s pretty lousy, but I hate Spring.” —Dorothy Parker
38. “Autumn can be golden, milder and warmer than summer and is the most productive season of the year.” —Germaine Greer
39. “As long as autumn lasts, I shall not have hands, canvas and colors enough to paint the beautiful things I see.” —Vincent van Gogh
40. “There is no better time than the autumn to begin forgetting the things that trouble us, allowing them to fall away like dried leaves.” —Paulo Coelho
41. “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
42. “I love the chill October days, when the brown leaves lie thick and sodden underneath your feet … the evenings in late autumn time, when the white mist creeps across the fields, making it seem as though old Earth, feeling the night air cold to its poor bones, were drawing ghostly bedclothes round its withered limbs.” —Jerome K. Jerome
43. “Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits.” —Samuel ButlerÂ
Let these autumn quotes inspire you to be your best, just like these hope quotes.
Fall quotes about autumn leaves
44. “Let life be beautiful like summer flowers and death like autumn leaves.” —Rabindranath Tagore
45. “But memory is an autumn leaf that murmurs a while in the wind and then is heard no more.” —Kahlil Gibran
46. “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.” —Al Purdy
47. “The falling leaf that tells of autumn‘s death is, in a subtler sense, a prophecy of spring.” —Robert G. Ingersoll
48. “The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind. The paired butterflies are already yellow with August, Over the grass in the West garden; They hurt me. I grow older.” —Ezra Pound, The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter
49. “Hurry and hurry, autumn leaves hurrying on the rainy wind, snow hurrying out of the sky, life hurrying to death, gods hurrying to oblivion.” —Poul Anderson, The Broken Sword
50. “It is most sad to watch the fall / Of autumn leaves!—but worst of all / It is to watch the flower of Spring / Faded in its fresh blossoming!” —Letitia Elizabeth Landon, The Works of L.E. Landon in Two Volumes
51. “The autumn leaves blew over the moonlit pavement in such a way as to make the girl who was moving there seem fixed to a sliding walk, letting the motion of the wind and the leaves carry her forward.” —Ray Bradbury
52. “Burning autumn leaves, / I yearn to make the bonfire / Bigger and bigger.” —Richard Wright, Haiku: This Other World
53. “I love the start of autumn when the trees in my garden change the color of their leaves in one last dazzling display.” —Michael Caine
54. “I like spring, but it is too young. I like summer, but it is too proud. So I like best of all autumn, because its leaves are a little yellow, its tone mellower, its colors richer, and it is tinged a little with sorrow and a premonition of death. Its golden richness speaks not of the innocence of spring, nor of the power of summer, but of the mellowness and kindly wisdom of approaching age.” —Lin Yutang
55. “When autumn shadows throw their patterns across the land, they are not the images of fragile, dying leaves, not the bared arms of lofty elms, not shadows of a fading summer but swinging shapes as of books upon a strap, of round and square boxes held under an arm, of hurrying little people heading toward the nearest school.” —Djuna Barnes
Like these fall quotes, these nature quotes will remind you that beauty, hope and endless possibilities are all around us.
Literary fall quotes
56. “I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.” —L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
57. “Autumn has come; Storming now heaveth the deep sea with foam, Yet would I gratefully lie there, Willingly die there.” —Esaias Tegnér, Ingeborg’s Lament
58. “It was one of those perfect New York October afternoons, when the explosion of oranges and yellows against the bright blue sky makes you feel like your life is passing through your fingers, that you’ve felt this autumn-feeling before and you’ll probably get to feel it again, but one day you won’t anymore, because you’ll be dead.” —Sarah Dunn, Secrets to Happiness
59. “It was autumn and falling stars / Covered the shriveled forms / Crouched in the moonlight.” —Wallace Stevens, The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens
60. “Yellow, mellow, ripened days, / Sheltered in a golden coating; / O’er the dreamy, listless haze, / White and dainty cloudlets floating; / Winking at the blushing trees, / And the sombre, furrowed fallow; / Smiling at the airy ease, / Of the southward flying swallow / Sweet and smiling are thy ways, / Beauteous, golden Autumn days.” —Will Carleton, “Autumn Days”
61. “Autumn is a weathercock, Blown every way…” —Christina Rossetti, “The Prince’s Progress”
62. “The end is come in thunder and wild rain, Autumn has stormed the golden house of summer.” —Fanny Kemble, Fanny Kemble: A Passionate Victorian
63. “Autumn / Into earth’s lap does throw / Brown apples gay in a game of play, / As the equinoctials blow.” —Dinah Craik, “October”
64. “All through autumn we hear a double voice: One says everything is ripe; the other says everything is dying. The paradox is exquisite. ” —Gretel Ehrlich, The Solace of Open Spaces: Essays
65. “It was a beautiful bright autumn day, with air like cider and a sky so blue you could drown in it.” —Diana Gabaldon, Outlander
66. “Clouds of insects danced and buzzed in the golden autumn light, and the air was full of the piping of the songbirds. Long, glinting dragonflies shot across the path, or hung tremulous with gauzy wings and gleaming bodies.” —Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The White Company
67. “Blaze the mountains in the windless autumn / Frost-clear, blue-nooned, apple-ripening days.” —Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn, Portraits and Protests
68. “The leaves in autumn do not change color from the blighting touch of frost but from the process of natural decay. They fall when the fruit is ripened, and their work is done. And their splendid coloring is but their graceful and beautiful surrender of life when they have finished their summer offering of service to God and man.” —Tryon Edwards, A Dictionary of Thoughts
69. “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
70. “The acrid scents of autumn, Reminiscent of slinking beasts, make me fear.” —D.H. Lawrence, Works: The complete poems
71. “At no other time does the earth let itself be inhaled in one smell, the ripe earth; in a smell that is in no way inferior to the smell of the sea, bitter where it borders on taste, and more honeysweet where you feel it touching the first sounds. Containing depth within itself, darkness, something of the grave almost.” —Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters on Cézanne
72. “It was, as I have said, a fine autumnal day; the sky was clear and serene, and nature wore that rich and golden livery which we always associate with the idea of abundance. The forests had put on their sober brown and yellow, while some trees of the tenderer kind had been nipped by the frosts into brilliant dyes of orange, purple and scarlet.” –Washington Irving, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
73. “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, Martin Chuzzlewit
74. “Draw your chair up and hand me my violin, for the only problem we have still to solve is how to while away these bleak autumnal evenings.” —Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor
75. “When on the breath of Autumn‘s breeze, / From pastures dry and brown, / Goes floating, like an idle thought, / The fair, white thistle-down; / O, then what joy to walk at will, / Upon the golden harvest-hill!” —Mary Howitt
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