19 Positive Winter Quotes, Sorted by Theme
Positive winter quotes tend to come in two kinds: the ones that pretend winter is easy, and the ones that admit it is hard and find something in it anyway.
The second kind is more useful and it is most of what is below.
They are grouped by what you need one for: a short line, a dark morning, a stretch of work that will not end, or a reminder to actually go outside.
That last group is not filler.
Winter is the season people stop walking, and the walk is usually the thing that fixes the mood the quote is trying to fix.
Short Positive Winter Quotes
“If winter comes, can spring be far behind?” — Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ode to the West Wind” (1820)
“In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.” — William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
“Every mile is two in winter.” — George Herbert, Outlandish Proverbs (1640)
“There is no bad weather, only bad clothing.” — Scandinavian saying
“The days are short. Go out in the middle of them.”
Herbert’s proverb is the only one on this list that is not encouraging, and it is here because it is true. Winter distance is harder distance, and planning for that is more useful than pretending otherwise.
Winter Inspirational Quotes
The ones people reach for when the season is wearing on them.
“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” — Albert Camus, “Return to Tipasa” (1952)
“What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.” — John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley (1962)
“Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart.” — Victor Hugo
“How many lessons of faith and beauty we should lose, if there were no winter in our year!” — Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Out-Door Papers (1863)
“Nothing burns like the cold.” — George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones (1996)
The Camus line is the most quoted sentence about winter in English and it is almost always cut off. The full essay is about returning to a place he loved and finding it changed, which makes the invincible summer something he had to go looking for rather than something he had.
Winter Morning Quotes
For the part of the season that is genuinely difficult, which is getting up.
“The frost performs its secret ministry, unhelped by any wind.” — Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Frost at Midnight” (1798)
“Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, arrives the snow.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The Snow-Storm” (1841)
“Cold feet are a clothing problem, not a character problem.”
“The first ten minutes are the whole argument.”
That last one is not a quote from anyone, it is just what winter walking is. Almost nobody turns back after ten minutes, and almost everybody considers it in the first two.
Winter Motivational Quotes for Work
Short enough for a message to a team in February.
“Blow, blow, thou winter wind, thou art not so unkind as man’s ingratitude.” — Shakespeare, As You Like It
“There is a privacy about it which no other season gives you.” — Ruth Stout, How to Have a Green Thumb Without an Aching Back (1955)
“Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire.”
The comfort line circulates under Edith Sitwell’s name on a very large number of posters. Nobody has produced the book or essay it came from, so it runs here without one.
Ruth Stout’s point is the more interesting one for anyone working through a winter. She is arguing that the season gives you long quiet stretches of belonging to yourself, which is a better case for winter than most cheerful quotes manage.
Winter Blessings Quotes
“To appreciate the beauty of a snowflake it is necessary to stand out in the cold.”
“The cold clarifies. That is the whole gift.”
The snowflake line is attributed to Aristotle constantly and appears nowhere in his work. It is a good sentence and it belongs to no one in particular.
Getting Outside in Winter
Every quote above is easier to believe after a walk than before one.
Winter trails are quieter, the views open up once the leaves are gone, and daylight is short enough that you have to plan the day around the walk instead of fitting it in afterward.
The cold is a clothing problem, as noted above, and it is solved by layers you can shed rather than one heavy coat you cannot.
If the season is doing something to your head, how hiking helps clear your mind covers what the walking is actually doing.
For lines to go with the photos, see hiking Instagram captions.
FAQ
What is the most famous positive winter quote?
Camus on the invincible summer, by a wide margin. Shelley’s “if winter comes, can spring be far behind” is second and is two hundred years older.
Who said “winter is the time for comfort”?
It is attributed to Edith Sitwell everywhere and no one has traced it to anything she wrote. Use the line, skip the name.
Did Aristotle say the snowflake quote?
No. It does not appear in his surviving work, and the attribution seems to be twentieth century.
What is a short winter quote for a caption?
“In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy,” from Blake, is nine words and properly sourced. “There is no bad weather, only bad clothing” works if the photo involves weather.
Are there winter quotes that are not about snow?
Most of the useful ones are about darkness and time rather than snow, which is what makes them work for people who live somewhere winter is mainly grey and short on daylight.
