19 Spring Inspirational Quotes, Attributed and Sorted
Spring has more good quotes attached to it than any other season, mostly because English poetry started with a spring poem and never really stopped.
The strongest ones were written by people who were outside watching something specific happen, which is why Chaucer names the month and Leopold names the birds.
Short Spring Quotes
The ones that fit under a photo of the first thing that came back green.
“The snow is melting into music.” — John Muir, John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals, 1938
“March does the work and April takes the credit.”
“The first warm day is a sample, not a promise.”
“Light comes back before warmth does, and the light is the part that helps.”
Inspirational Quotes About Spring
These are the old literary ones, and they are old enough that the spelling gives them away.
“Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote / The droghte of March hath perced to the roote.” — Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, General Prologue, c. 1387
“For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come.” — Song of Solomon 2:11–12, King James Version
“Daffodils, that come before the swallow dares, and take the winds of March with beauty.” — William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale, Act IV, Scene 4, c. 1611
“Nothing is so beautiful as spring — when weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush.” — Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Spring,” 1877
Spring Motivational Quotes
Short on encouragement and long on the point, which is that the season starts whether or not you are organised for it.
“If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant; if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.” — Anne Bradstreet, “Meditations Divine and Moral,” 1664
“A short walk in April beats a long plan for June.”
“You do not have to feel ready to start, because the season is not asking.”
Inspirational Uplifting Spring Quotes
The forgiving ones, written by people who had just come through a bad winter and said so.
“In a pleasant spring morning all men’s sins are forgiven.” — Henry David Thoreau, Walden, “Spring,” 1854
“A Light exists in Spring / Not present on the Year / At any other period.” — Emily Dickinson, “A Light exists in Spring,” c. 1864
“In the Spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.” — Alfred Tennyson, “Locksley Hall,” 1842
“Nothing in a garden runs on your schedule.”
Spring Positive Quotes From People Who Were Outside
Naturalists write the best spring lines because they are describing an event with a date on it rather than a mood.
“One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of a March thaw, is the spring.” — Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 1949
“Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.” — Henry David Thoreau, Journal, August 23, 1853
“It was a spring without voices.” — Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, 1962
“The trail dries from the top down, and the mud is always the last thing to go.”
What the Good Spring Quotes Have in Common
Chaucer, Leopold and Carson are all doing the same thing, which is naming an exact signal rather than describing a feeling about the season.
That is also the reason the vague ones circulate with fake authors attached, because a line with no specific content can be credited to anyone.
If you want the season in person rather than in text, ways to feel nature in the US is organised around what is actually worth going out for.
The summer inspirational quotes list picks up where this one stops, around late June.
FAQ
What is the oldest spring quote in English?
The opening of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, written around 1387, is the one everybody else has been rewriting since.
Did Anaïs Nin write “the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom”?
No, and this is the most reproduced false credit in spring quote lists.
It was written in 1979 by Elizabeth Appell, then working as a public relations director at John F. Kennedy University, for a course brochure that carried no byline.
Appell came forward with evidence and the Anaïs Nin Foundation accepts her account, so the line is not included here under Nin’s name.
What is a good short spring quote?
Muir’s “the snow is melting into music” is four words past the minimum and has a printed source behind it.
