There is something so magical about the annual changing and eventual cascade of autumn leaves. It’s like the trees are weeping, tears falling in vibrant colours of scarlet, saffron and harvest gold. They bid adieu with a climactic ending, and a reluctant encore.

Here are some of my favourite first day of fall quotes:

Happy First Day of Fall Quotes

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

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

“Give me a land of boughs in leaf

A land of trees that stand;

Where trees are fallen there is grief;

I love no leafless land.”

~A.E. Housman

“And now, my poor old woman, why are you crying so bitterly? It is autumn. The leaves are falling from the trees like burning tears- the wind howls. Why must you mimic them?”  ~ Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan

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

~ L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintery light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person died for no reason.”

“October’s Party

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

“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

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

[The Autumnal]” ~  John Donne

But then fall comes, kicking summer out on its treacherous ass as it always does one day sometime after the midpoint of September, it stays awhile like an old friend that you have missed. It settles in the way an old friend will settle into your favorite chair and take out his pipe and light it and then fill the afternoon with stories of places he has been and things he has done since last he saw you.” ~ Stephen King, Salem’s Lot

“Autumn…the year’s last, loveliest smile.”

[Indian Summer]”

~ William Cullen Bryant

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

“At no other time (than autumn) 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

“I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house.”

[Notebook, Oct. 10, 1842]”

~ Nathaniel Hawthorne, The American Notebooks

“Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn–that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness–that season which has drawn from every poet worthy of being read some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling.”

~ Jane Austen, Persuasion

“The smell of burning firewood and the molding of organic, earthy substances reminded her of jumping wildly into the enormous leaf piles of autumns past and she suddenly wished that it was appropriate for someone her age to do such a thing.”

~ Abby Slovin, Letters In Cardboard Boxes

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

~ Jim Bishop

“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.”

[Letter to Miss Eliot, Oct. 1, 1841]”

~ George Eliot

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

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