March 20 marks the start spring—or as we enjoy thinking of it, the season of fresh beginnings. Whether you like to usher in the promising time by making adjustments to your surroundings (think: planting flowers or tackling the cleaning projects you put off in winter), or you're looking forward to the jolt of positivity that warmer weather tends to bring, these spring quotes may help inspire a new outlook. We've gathered excerpts from literature's most famous writers like Ernest Hemingway and Maya Angelou, which can serve as Instagram captions, as well as short sayings to help wish others a happy spring. However you use these quotes, we hope you're encouraged to spend time outdoors, because as author Harriet Ann Jacobs observed, "The beautiful spring came; and when Nature resumes her loveliness, the human soul is apt to revive also."
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1
Christopher Morley
"...April prepares her green traffic light and the world thinks Go," journalist and author Christopher Morley wrote in his 1931 autobiographical novel John Mistletoe.
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3
George Orwell
“The point is that the pleasures of spring are available to everybody, and cost nothing. Even in the most sordid street the coming of spring will register itself by some sign or other, if it is only a brighter blue between the chimney pots or the vivid green of an elder sprouting on a blitzed site,” Animal Farm author and social critic George Orwell wrote in his essay Some Thoughts on the Common Toad.
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4
Arthur Conan Doyle
Arthur Conan Doyle wrote, “It was an ideal spring day, a light blue sky, flecked with little fleecy white clouds drifting across from west to east. The sun was shining very brightly, and yet there was an exhilarating nip in the air, which set an edge to a man’s energy," in his 1892 novel The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
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5
Emily Dickinson
Renowned American poet Emily Dickinson wrote, “The older I grow the more do I love spring and spring flowers. Is it so with you?” in a letter.
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6
Emily Dickinson
In "A Light Existed in Spring," Dickinson wrote, "A light exists in Spring/ Not present in the year/ at any other period/ When March is scarcely here."
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7
Kathleen Norris
Poet and essayist Kathleen Norris wrote "Spring seems far off, impossible, but it is coming. Already there is dusk instead of darkness at five in the afternoon; already hope is stirring at the edges of the day" in her book Dakota: A Spiritual Geography.
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8
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Romantic poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, wrote "And Spring arose on the garden fair,/ Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere;/ And each flower and herb on Earth's dark breast/ rose from the dreams of its wintry rest" in the poem "A Sensitive Plant."
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9
Neltje Blanchan
Scientific historian and nature writer Neltje Blanchan wrote “Can words describe the fragrance of the very breath of spring—that delicious commingling of the perfume of arbutus, the odor of pines, and the snow-soaked soil just warming into life?” in his book Nature’s Garden: An Aid to Knowledge of our Wild Flowers and Their Insect Visitors.
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10
Algernon Charles Swinburne
“Blossom by blossom the spring begins," 19th century English poet Algernon Charles Swinburne wrote in his 1902 tragedy Atalanta in Calydon.
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11
Christina Rossetti
English poet Christina Georgina Rossetti wrote, “There is no time like Spring,/ When life’s alive in everything."
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12
Reginald Heber
“…Spring unlocks the flower to paint the laughing soul,” English bishop and writer Reginald Heber wrote in a collected publication of his poems and hymns.
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13
Harriet Ann Jacobs
Harriet Ann Jacobs, a woman who was enslaved but later escaped, wrote about being revived in the springtime in her autobiography Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. "The beautiful spring came; and when Nature resumes her loveliness, the human soul is apt to revive also."
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14
T.S. Eliot
"April is the cruellest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing / Memory and desire, stirring / Dull roots with spring rain," 20th century Nobel Prize-winning poet T.S. Eliot wrote in his poem "The Waste Land."
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15
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway wrote, "When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest" in his memoir A Moveable Feast.
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16
Anne Bradstreet
“If we had no winter the spring would not be so pleasant," poet Anne Bradstreet wrote in a book of her collected works.
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17
Mark Twain
"It's spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you've got it, you want—oh, you don't quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!" Mark Twain wrote in Tom Sawyer, Detective.
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18
Charles Dickens
English novelist and social critic Charles Dickens wrote in Great Expectations, "It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade."
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19
Margaret Atwood
Handmaid's Tale author Margaret Atwood wrote "In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt" in a book of short stories, Bluebeard's Egg.
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20
H. Peter Loewer
"May and June. Soft syllables, gentle names for the two best months in the garden year: cool, misty mornings gently burned away with a warming spring sun, followed by breezy afternoons and chilly nights," gardening and natural history writer H. Peter Loewer wrote in his 1983 book Peter Loewer's Month by Month Garden Almanac for Indoor & Outdoor Gardening.