August: A Month of Warmth and Happiness
The name for the month of August comes from the Latin surname “Augustus,” meaning “consecrated” or “venerable.” According to the Gregorian calendar used in most parts of the world, August is the eighth month of the year. When August begins, and we race toward autumn, we feel a range of emotions from joy over childhood memories to nostalgia about more recent summers to enthusiasm about our plans for the upcoming seasons. Thoughts on August and the end of summertime often have a bittersweet quality. Below is a collection of quotes that reflect an array of ideas and emotions about August, offering inspiration to elevate your mood and kindle some happiness as you take pleasure in this time before fall begins. Post a quote or two on your dry erase wall every day or once a week to help you and your loved ones in the home office or home school feel more motivated for your daily tasks.
The Love of August
1. “I love borders. August is the border between summer and autumn; it is the most beautiful month I know.”
– Tove Jansson (Finnish author, painter, and comic strip writer)
2. “August still stretched before us — long and golden and reassuring, like an endless period of delicious sleep.”
– Lauren Oliver (US author)
3. “Breathe the sweetness that hovers in August.”
– Denise Levertov (British-American poet)
4. “Everything good, everything magical happens between the months of June and August.”
– Jenny Han (US author)
5. “The seasons between spring and autumn, comprising in the Northern Hemisphere, the warmest months of the year: June, July, and August — the period of finest development, perfection, or beauty previous to any decline; the summer of life.”
– Cecelia Ahern (Irish novelist)
6. “The west coast of Corsica on a boat in August is probably as beautiful as it gets.”
– Antoine Arnault (French businessman)
7. “Take me to that island where people celebrate in the streets in August. Take me to Barbados.”
– Charmaine J. Forde (US writer and philanthropist)
Nature in August
8. “This morning, the sun endures past dawn. I realize that it is August: the summer’s last stand.”
– Sara Baume (Irish novelist), A Line Made by Walking
9. “August rain: The best of the summer gone, and the new fall not yet born. The odd uneven time.”
– Sylvia Plath
10. “Did you know that around the tenth of August, any year, you can look up in the sky at night and see dozens and dozens of shooting stars?”
– Elizabeth Enright (US writer), Then There Were Five
11. “August of another summer, and once again, I am drinking the sun, and the lilies again are spread across the water.”
– Mary Oliver (US poet)
12. “August is ripening grain in the fields. Vivid dahlias fling huge tousled blossoms through gardens and joe pye weed dusts the meadow purple.”
– Jean Hersey (US author)
13. “August was nearly over — the month of apples and falling stars, the last care-free month for the school children.”
– Victor Nekrasov (Russian writer)
14. “August is the month of the high-sailing hawks. The hen hawk is the most noticeable. He is a bird of leisure and seems always at his ease.”
– John Burroughs (US naturalist)
15. “It’s part of the American experience: We deal with mosquitoes in August.”
– Monica Hesse (US author)
16. “It was August, and the fields were high with corn.”
– Melanie Gideon (US author)
17. “Today is the first of August. It is hot, steamy, and wet. It is raining. I am tempted to write a poem.”
– Sylvia Plath (US poet)
18. “August is a great month in the garden, with many flowers, including dahlias, sunflowers and other hot-colored blooms at their peak.”
– BBC Gardeners’ World Magazine
19. “The brilliant poppy flaunts her head Amidst the ripening grain, And adds her voice to sell the song That August’s here again.”
– Helen Winslow (US editor and author)
20. “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 (US naturalist, essayist, poet, and philosopher
21. “I love the little garden in the back of my family’s brownstone in Brooklyn. Digging out there in the dirt is a joy for me, although by the time August rolls around and my roses have black spot, I need the break winter provides.”
– Siri Hustvedt (US novelist)
Insights on August
22. “August brings into sharp focus and a furious boil everything I’ve been listening to in the late spring and summer.”
– Henry Rollins (US singer)
23. “There is something about August that feels bittersweet. Each sunrise comes a little later. Some nights are cooler. You realize this time of the year is ending, and you wish for just a little more time to savor the days of early morning light and the evenings of lingering dusk.”
– Julie Hage (US writer and blogger)
24. “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 (US author)
25. “August is that last flicker of fun and heat before everything fades, the final moments of fun before the freeze. In the winter, everything changes.”
– Rasmenia Massoud (US author)
26. “August creates as she slumbers, replete and satisfied.”
– Joseph Wood Krutch (US writer and naturalist)
27. “When summer opens, I see how fast it matures and fear it will be short; but after the heats of July and August, I am reconciled, like one who has had his swing, to the cool of autumn.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson (US essayist, philosopher, and poet)
28. “The month of August had turned into a griddle where the days just lay there and sizzled.”
– Sue Monk Kidd (US writer)
29. “Childhood is June, and old age is August, but here it is, July, and my life, this year, is July inside of July.”
– Rick Bass (US writer)
30. “That smell of freshly cut grass makes me think of Friday night football in high school. The cutting of the grass reminds me of the August practice.”
– Garth Brooks (US singer-songwriter)
31. “One evening in August, you have an errand outdoors, and all of a sudden, it’s pitch-black. It is still summer, but the summer is no longer alive.”
– Tove Jansson (Finnish author, painter, and comic strip writer)
32. “But I can see us lost in the memory, August slipped away into a moment in time.”
– Taylor Swift (US singer-songwriter), ‘August’
33. “In August, an inescapable blanket of heat settled over Paducah, the last gasping breath of summer roaring its weight out over the populace.”
– Kelsey Brickl (US linguist)
34. “The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning.”
– Natalie Babbitt (US writer of children’s books)
35. “Caught in the doldrums of August, we may have regretted the departing summer.”
– Denis Mackail (English novelist)
36. “Leaving any bookstore is hard, especially on a day in August, when the street outside burns and glares, and the books inside are cool and crisp to the touch.”
– Jane Smiley (US novelist)
37. “It is best to be born in April or August when the life-giving Sun is in its exaltation. For then we enter the sea of life on the crest-wave and are backed in the battle of existence by an abundant fund of vim and energy.”
– Max Heindel (Danish-American astrologer)
38. “August is a gentle reminder for not doing a single thing from your New Year resolution for seven months and not doing it for the next five.”
– Crestless Wave (aka Anjit Sharma – Indian writer)
39. “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 (US writer)