One swallow makes no summer. [ Proverb ]
A happy soul, that all the way
To heaven hath a summer's day. [ Richard Crashaw ]
He mends like sour ale in summer. [ Proverb ]
A gentle wind of western birth,
From some far summer sea,
Wakes daisies in the wintry earth. [ George MacDonald ]
A good winter brings a good summer. [ Proverb ]
Welcome, dear Goldenrod, once more.
Thou mimic, flowering elm!
I always think that summer's store
Hangs from thy laden stem. [ Horace H. Scudder ]
Winter thunder bodes summer hunger. [ Proverb ]
Eyes that droop like summer flowers. [ Miss L. E. Landon ]
Winter draws out what summer laid in. [ Proverb ]
Oh! call my brother back to me!
I cannot play alone;
The summer comes with flower and bee -
Where is my brother gone? [ Mrs. Hemans ]
Can such things be,
And overcome us like a summer's cloud,
Without our special wonder? [ William Shakespeare, Macbeth ]
O lovely eyes of azure.
Clear as the waters of a brook that run
Limpid and laughing in the summer sun! [ Longfellow ]
The kind refresher of the summer heats. [ Thomson ]
It rains in summer as well as in winter. [ Proverb ]
Catch, then, O catch the transient hour;
Improve each moment as it flies;
Life's a short summer - man a flower -
He dies - alas! how soon he dies! [ Dr. Johnson ]
You came as seasonably as snow in summer. [ Proverb ]
The Indian summer - the dead summer's soul! [ Mary Clemmer ]
Kindred objects kindred thoughts inspire,
As summer clouds flash forth electric fire. [ Rogers ]
He bore a simple wild-flower wreath:
Narcissus, and the sweet brier rose;
Vervain, and flexile thyme, that breathe
Rich fragrance; modest heath, that glows
With purple bells; the amaranth bright.
That no decay, nor fading knows.
Like true love's holiest, rarest light;
And every purest flower, that blows,
In that sweet time, which Love most blesses,
When spring on summer's confines presses. [ Thomas Love Peacock ]
O, he's as tedious
As is a tired horse, a railing wife;
Worse than a smoky house; I had rather live
With cheese and garlic in a windmill, far,
Than feed on cates, and have him talk to me,
In any summer-house in Christendom. [ William Shakespeare ]
Ye flowers that droop forsaken by the spring;
Ye birds that left by summer cease to sing;
Yet trees that fade when autumn heats remove.
Say, is not absence death to those who love? [ Pope ]
Morn on the mountain, like a summer bird.
Lifts up her purple wing, and in the vales
The gentle wind, a sweet and passionate wooer,
Kisses the blushing leaf. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]
Soldiers in peace are like chimneys in summer. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Sweet, good night!
This bud of love, by summer's ripening breath,
May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet. [ William Shakespeare ]
Crabbed age and youth cannot live together;
Youth is full of pleasance, age is full of care;
Youth like summer morn, age like winter weather;
Youth like summer brave, age like winter bare.
Youth is full of sport, age's breath is short;
Youth is nimble, age is lame;
Youth is hot and bold, age is weak and cold;
Youth is wild, and age is tame.
Age, I do abhor thee; youth I do adore thee. [ William Shakespeare ]
The summer's flower is to the summer sweet,
Though to itself it only live and die;
But if that flower with base infection meet.
The basest weed outbraves its dignity:
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds. [ William Shakespeare ]
So work the honey-bees;
Creatures, that by a rule in nature teach
The art of order to a peopled kingdom.
They have a king and officers of sorts;
Where some, like magistrates, correct at home;
Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad;
Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings,
Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds;
Which pillage they, with merry march, bring home.
To the tent royal of their emperor;
Who, busied in his majesty, surveys
The singing masons building roofs of gold;
The civil citizens kneading up the honey;
The poor mechanic porters crowding in
Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate;
The sad-ey'd justice, with his surly hum.
Delivering over to executors pale
The lazy yawning drone. [ William Shakespeare ]
He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one;
Exceeding wise, fair spoken, and persuading;
Lofty and sour to them that loved him not;
But to those men that sought him, sweet as summer. [ William Shakespeare, Henry VIII ]
'Tis the last rose of summer, left blooming alone. [ Moore ]
Drink wine in winter for cold, and in summer for heat. [ Proverb ]
They must hunger in winter, that will not work in summer. [ Proverb ]
Hope smiled when your nativity was cast. Children of Summer! [ Wordsworth ]
Summer friends vanish when the cask is drained to the dregs. [ Horatius ]
Woman's grief is like a summer storm, short as it is violent. [ Joanna Baillie ]
Tears of joy, like summer rain-drops, are pierced by sunbeams. [ H. Ballou ]
I propose to fight it out on this line, if it takes all summer. [ Grant ]
Woman's grief is like a summer's shower - short as it is violent. [ Joubert ]
Tell me why the ant midst summer's plenty thinks of winter's want. [ Prior ]
The bee from her industry in the summer eats honey all the winter. [ Proverb ]
The opening and the folding flowers, that laugh to the summer's day. [ Mrs. Hemans ]
O beautiful, awful summer day, what hast thou given, what taken away? [ Longfellow ]
Beauty is as summer fruits, which are easy to corrupt and cannot last. [ Bacon ]
The windflower and the violet, they perished long ago.
And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow;
But on the hills the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood,
And the yellow sunflower by the brook, in autumn beauty stood.
Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, as falls the plague on men.
And the brightness of their smile was gone, from upland glade and glen. [ Bryant ]
Look at the fate of summer flowers, which blow at daybreak, droop ere even-song. [ Wordsworth ]
When summer gathers up her robes of glory, and like a dream of beauty glides away. [ Sarah Helen Whitman ]
Here (in Italy) is ceaseless spring, and summer in months in which summer is alien. [ Virgil ]
The good die first; and they whose hearts are dry as summer dust burn to the socket. [ Wordsworth ]
This avarice sticks deeper; grows with more pernicious root than summer-seeding lust. [ William Shakespeare ]
Nothing can check his watchful daring. For him the summer has no heat, the winter no ice. [ Boileau of Louis XIV ]
The quarrels of lovers are like summer showers that leave the country more verdant and beautiful. [ Mme. Necker ]
The quarrels of lovers are like summer storms: everything is more beautiful when they have passed. [ Madame Necker ]
Mild May's eldest child, the coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, the murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves. [ Keats ]
A summer friendship, whose flattering leaves, that shadowed us in our prosperity, with the least gust drop off in the autumn of adversity. [ Massinger ]
O earth! I will befriend thee more with rain than youthful April shall with all his showers; in summer's drought I'll drop upon thee still. [ William Shakespeare ]
Yellow japanned buttercups and star-disked dandelions - just as we see them lying in the grass, like sparks that have leaped from the kindling sun of summer. [ O. W. Holmes ]
The heart must be at rest before the mind, like a quiet lake under an unclouded summer evening, can reflect the solemn starlight and the splendid mysteries of heaven. [ Macdonald Clarke ]
For every grain of sand is a mystery; so is every daisy in summer, and so is every snow-flake in winter. Both upwards and downwards, and all around us, science and speculation pass into mystery at last. [ William Mountford ]
I am constitutionally susceptible of noises; a carpenter's hammer, in a warm summer noon, will fret me into more than midsummer madness; but those unconnected, unset sounds are nothing to the measured malice of music. [ C. Lamb ]
Courtship is a fine bowling-green turf, all galloping round and sweethearting, a sunshine holiday in summer time; but when once through matrimony's turnpike, the weather becomes wintry, and some husbands are seized with a cold, aguish fit, to which the faculty give the name of indifference. [ G. A. Stevens ]
A woman's life can be divided thus: the age when she dances but does not dare to waltz - it is the spring; the age when she dances and dares to waltz - it is summer; the age when she dances but prefers to waltz - it is autumn; finally, when she dances no longer - it is winter, that rigorous winter of life. [ Mme. de Girardin ]
What profusion is there in His work! When trees blossom there is not a single breastpin, but a whole bosom full of gems; and of leaves they have so many suits that they can throw them away to the winds all summer long. What unnumbered cathedrals has He reared in the forest shades, vast and grand, full of curious carvings, and haunted evermore by tremulous music; and in the heavens above, how do stars seem to have flown out of His hand faster than sparks out of a mighty forge! [ Beecher ]
Though no participator in the joys of more vehement sport, I have a pleasure that I cannot reconcile to my abstract notions of the tenderness due to dumb creatures, in the tranquil cruelty of angling. I can only palliate the wanton destructiveness of my amusement by trying to assure myself that my pleasure does not spring from the success of the treachery I practice toward a poor little fish, but rather from that innocent revelry in the luxuriance of summer life which only anglers enjoy to the utmost. [ Bulwer-Lytton ]
The love of flowers seems a naturally implanted passion, without any alloy or debasing object in its motive; we cherish them in youth, we admire them in declining years; but perhaps it is the early flowers of spring that always bring with them the greatest degree of pleasure; and our affections seem to expand at the sight of the first blossom under the sunny wall, or sheltered bank, however humble its race may be. With summer flowers we seem to live, as with our neighbors, in harmony and good order; but spring flowers are cherished as private friendships. [ G. A. Sola ]
He must have an artist's eye for color and form who can arrange a hundred flowers as tastefully, in any other way, as by strolling through a garden, and picking here one and there one, and adding them to the bouquet in the accidental order in which they chance to come. Thus we see every summer day the fair lady coming in from the breezy side hill with gorgeous colors and most witching effects. If only she could be changed to alabaster, was ever a finer show of flowers in so fine a vase? But instead of allowing the flowers to remain as they were gathered, they are laid upon the table, divided, rearranged on some principle of taste, I know not what, but never again have that charming naturalness and grace which they first had. [ Beecher ]