August Quotes

• August rain: the best of the summer gone, and the new fall not yet born. The odd uneven time.

  Sylvia Plath

  Summer, Rain, Fall

  Sylvia Plath (2007). “The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.124, Anchor

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• August creates as she slumbers, replete and satisfied.

  Joseph Wood Krutch

  Summer, Months, Slumber

  Joseph Wood Krutch (1995). “The Best Nature Writing of Joseph Wood Krutch”

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• The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning.

  Natalie Babbitt

  Summer, Years, Long

  Natalie Babbitt (2015). “Tuck Everlasting”, p.3, Macmillan

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• the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color. Often at night there is lightning, but it quivers all alone. There is no thunder, no relieving rain. These are strange and breathless days, the dog days, when people are led to do things they are sure to be sorry for.

  Natalie Babbitt

  Summer, Dog, Sorry

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• Remember to be gentle with yourself and others. We are all children of chance, and none can say while some fields will blossom and others lay brown beneath the August sun. Care for those around you. Look past your differences. Their dreams are no less than yours, their choices in life no more easily made. And give. Give in any way you can, of whatever you possess. To give is to love. To withhold is to wither. Care less for your harvest than how is shared, and your life will have meaning and your heart will have peace.

  Kent Nerburn

  Dream, Children, Heart

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• I love borders. August is the border between summer and autumn; it is the most beautiful month I know. Twilight is the border between day and night, and the shore is the border between sea and land. The border is longing: when both have fallen in love but still haven't said anything. The border is to be on the way. It is the way that is the most important thing.

  Tove Jansson

  Beautiful, Summer, Twilight

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• When summer gathers up her robes of glory, and like a dream of beauty glides away.

  Sarah Helen Whitman

  Summer, Dream, Glory

  Sarah Helen Whitman (1853). “Poems”, p.60

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• Everything good, everything magical happens between the months of June and August. Winters are simply a time to count the weeks until the next summer

  Jenny Han

  Summer, Winter, June

  Shannon Messenger, Suzanne Young, Jodi Picoult, Samantha van Leer, Lauren Barnholdt (2013). “Get a Taste of Pulseit!: Free Pulseit eSampler”, p.123, Simon and Schuster

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• In August, the large masses of berries, which, when in flower, had attracted many wild bees, gradually assumed their bright velvety crimson hue, and by their weight again bent down and broke their tender limbs.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Summer, Flower, Berries

  Henry David Thoreau (1882). “Walden”, p.179

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• August, the summer's last messenger of misery, is a hollow actor.

  Henry Rollins

  Summer, Actors, Lasts

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• Remember to be gentle with yourself and others. We are all children of chance and none can say why some fields will blossom while others lay brown beneath the August sun.

  Kent Nerburn

  Senior, Children, Fields

  Kent Nerburn (1999). “Letters to My Son: A Father's Wisdom on Manhood, Women, Life and Love”, p.189, New World Library

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• August is ripening grain in the fields blowing hot and sunny, the scent of tree-ripened peaches, of hot buttered sweet corn on the cob. Vivid dahlias fling huge tousled blossoms through gardens and joe-pye-weed dusts the meadow purple.

  Jean Hersey

  Weed, Sweet, Garden

  Jean Hersey (1967). “The Shape of a Year”

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• A single sunbeam is enough to drive away many shadows.

  Francis of Assisi

  Inspirational, Happiness, Summer

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• What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps one in a continual state of inelegance.

  Jane Austen

  Summer, Rainy Day, Weather

  "Jane Austen's correspondence and letters".

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• Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

  William Shakespeare

  Summer, Misunderstood, Thee

  Sonnet 18

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• August brings into sharp focus and a furious boil everything I've been listening to in the late spring and summer.

  Henry Rollins

  Summer, Spring, Focus

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• Breathe the sweetness that hovers in August.

  Denise Levertov

  Breathe, Sweetness

  Denise Levertov (1983). “Poems of Denise Levertov, 1960-1967”, p.55, New Directions Publishing

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• Long drawn, the cool, green shadows
  Steal o'er the lake's warm breast,
  And the ancient silence follows
  The burning sun to rest. The calm of a thousand summers,
  And dreams of countless Junes,
  Return when the lake-wind murmurs
  Through golden August noons.

  William Braithwaite

  Summer, Dream, Wind

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• Always keep mint on your windowsill in August, to ensure that buzzing flies will stay outside, where they belong. Don't think the summer is over, even when roses droop and turn brown and the stars shift position in the sky. Never presume August is a safe or reliable time of the year.

  Alice Hoffman

  Summer, Stars, Thinking

  Alice Hoffman (2003). “Practical Magic”, p.122, Penguin

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• Once upon a Lammas Night
  When corn rigs are bonny,
  Beneath the Moon's unclouded light,
  I held awhile to Annie...
  The time went by with careless heed
  Between the late and early,
  With small persuasion she agreed
  To see me through the barley...
  Corn rigs and barley rigs,
  Corn rigs are bonny!
  I'll not forget that happy night
  Among the rigs with Annie!

  Robert Burns

  Summer, Moon, Night

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• The moon is at her full, and riding high, Floods the calm fields with light. The airs that hover in the summer sky Are all asleep to-night.

  William C. Bryant

  Summer, Moon, Night

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• The streets lie, the sidewalks lie, everything lies
  You can try and read it but you're gonna get it wrong...all wrong
  The summer evenings burn and melt and the nights glitter but you're gonna get it wrong
  And it's gonna sink its teeth into your flesh and pull you to the bottom.

  Henry Rollins

  Summer, Lying, Night

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• Let your children be as so many flowers, borrowed from God. If the flowers die or wither, thank God for a summer loan of them.

  Samuel Rutherford

  Summer, Children, Flower

  Samuel Rutherford (1765). “Joshua redivivus, or Mr Rutherford's letters”, p.56

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• 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

  Summer, Fall, Autumn

  'Hymn to Intellectual Beauty' (1816)

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• Prayer is an august avowal of ignorance.

  Victor Hugo

  Prayer, Ignorance

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