101 Inspirational and Wistful Fall Quotes Highlighting the Season’s Delightful Dichotomy

The autumn reigns supreme as my favorite season. I love the sights and smells of the leaves changing color, and the cooler winds that blow away summer’s humidity.

The transitional season also hosts my favorite holidays, Halloween and Thanksgiving. What’s not to love?

Let’s get into the spirit of the season with inspiration and wistful fall quotes to help us celebrate.

The Best Fall Quotes

Some fall quotes inspire, while others make us ponder our lives. They come to us from famous poets celebrating the season’s glory, songwriters lamenting lost love, and writers comparing the autumn to all aspects of the human experience.

Discover our favorite quotes about the fall, and share your own in the comments!

Uplifting and Inspirational Fall Quotes

Fall is my favorite season, so let’s start with the best uplifting quotes about autumn, reminding us of the season’s blessings.

Here are my favorites:

“Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.” – Albert Camus

“And all the lives we ever lived and all the lives to be are full of trees and changing leaves…” – Virginia Woolf

“…Fall has always been my favorite season. The time when everything bursts with its last beauty, as if nature had been saving up all year for the grand finale.” – Lauren Destefano

“Autumn is the season to find contentment at home by paying attention to what we already have.” – Unknown

“As long as autumn lasts, I shall not have hands, canvas, and colors enough to paint the beautiful things I see.” – Vincent Van Gogh

“Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting, and autumn a mosaic of them all.” – Stanley Horowitz

“May you fall in love with October / and all the beauty it brings, May your life be as colorful as
the turning of the leaves, On each blessed autumn day.” – Charmaine J. Forde

“Autumn leaves don’t fall, they fly. They take their time and wander on this their only chance to soar.” – Delia Owens

“Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.” – George Eliot

“Autumn whispered to the wind, ‘I fall but always rise again.’” – Angie Weiland-Crosby

“It’s the first day of autumn! A time of hot chocolatey mornings, and toasty marshmallow evenings, and, best of all, leaping into leaves!” – Winnie the Pooh 

“Every leaf speaks bliss to me, fluttering from the autumn tree.” – Emily Brontë  

“Give me juicy autumnal fruit, ripe and red from the orchard.” – Walt Whitman

“Even those fallen leaves dance, on the musical wind cadence.” – Anoushka Tyagi

“Happily, we bask in the warm September sun, which illuminates all creatures.” – Henry David Thoreau

“Autumn arose and my soul bloomed.” – Angie Weiland-Crosby

I’ll still feel the glow that time cannot fade / When I hear that lovely autumn serenade” – John Coltrane & Johnny Hartman

“A friend you are, sweet autumn day; to never falter, in my soul you stay.” – Angie Weiland-Crosby

“Autumn carries more gold in its pocket than all the other seasons.” – Jim Bishop

“The heat of autumn is different from the heat of summer. One ripens apples, the other turns them to cider.” – Jane Hirshfield

“Of all the seasons, autumn offers the most to man and requires the least of him.” – Hal Borland

“The leaves are changing; I feel poetry in the air.” – Laura Jaworski

“Love the trees until their leaves fall off, then encourage them to try again next year.” – Chad Sugg

“It’s harvest time in this little town / Time to bring it on in.” –  Luke Bryan

“If you run, then allow those first few breaths on a cool autumn day to FREEZE your lungs and do not just be alarmed, be ALIVE.” – Kyle Lake

“If a year was tucked inside of a clock, then autumn would be the magic hour.” – Victoria Erickson

“Autumn is a visual gift given by nature to raise the morale of human beings who is worried as they enter the dark days of winter!” – Mehmet Murat ildan

“I hope I can be the autumn leaf, who looked at the sky and lived. And when it was time to leave, gracefully it knew life was a gift.” – Dodinsky

“Don’t you love New York in the fall? It makes me want to buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address.” – Nora Ephron

“Autumn lingered on as if fond of its own perfection.” – Winston Graham

“Wild is the music of the autumnal winds amongst the faded woods.” – William Wordsworth

“I come alive in the fall time.” – The Weeknd

“There is no better time than the autumn to begin forgetting the things that trouble us, allowing them to fall away like dried leaves.” – Paulo Coelho

“I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house.” – Nathaniel Hawthorne

“It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life.” – P.D. James

 “Notice that autumn is more the season of the soul than of nature.” – Friedrich Nietzsche  

“Autumn is the season to find contentment at home by paying attention to what we already have, to deepen our relationship with our favorite people and activities, and to simply slow down.” – Unknown

“The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn.” – John Muir

“It is only the farmer who faithfully plants seeds in the spring, who reaps a harvest in the autumn.” – B.C. Forbes

Fall Quotes About Change

In the fall, the leaves change color and fall to the ground in preparation for winter. It’s a transitional season that humanity has long used to represent change and growth.

Some of the best autumn quotes use the season’s symbolism to highlight the necessity of change.

“The leaves fall, the wind blows, and the farm country slowly changes from the summer cottons into its winter wools.” – Henry Beston

 “Just as the leaves fall, I let go of what no longer serves me.” – Unknown

“Be like a tree and let the dead leaves drop.” – Rumi

“My heart is drumming in my chest so hard it aches, but it’s the good kind of ache, like the feeling you get on the first real day of autumn, when the air is crisp and the leaves are all flaring at the edges and the wind smells just vaguely of smoke – like the end and the beginning of something all at once.” – Lauren Oliver

“The heart of autumn shows us how beautiful it is to let things go.” – Unknown

“The trees are about to show us how to be gracefully strong in the face of change.” – Unknown

“Another fall, another turned page: there was something of a jubilee in that annual autumnal beginning, as if last year’s mistakes had been wiped clean by summer.” – Wallace Stegner

“There is something so special in the early leaves drifting from the trees – as if we are all to be allowed a chance to peel, to refresh, to start again.” – Ruth Ahmed

“I am most radiant and full of energy when the leaves are falling and there is a ghost of change in the air.” – Anna Madsen

“Success is like the fall leaves—slowly but surely, we change and grow.” – Unknown

“The magic of new beginnings is truly the most powerful of them all.” – Josiyah Martin  

“Autumn leaves shower like gold, like rainbows, as the winds of change begin to blow.” – Dan Millma

“The beauty of autumn is that it reminds us that even the most beautiful things have to end, and it’s okay.” – Unknown

“There is something so special in the early leaves drifting from the trees – as if we are all to be allowed a chance to peel, to refresh, to start again.” – Ruth Ahmed

“The windows are open, admitting the September breeze: a month that smells like notepaper and pencil shavings, autumn leaves and car oil. A month that smells like progress, like moving on .” – Lauren Oliver

“Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Autumn teaches us that letting go is a part of moving forward.” – Unknown

Wistful Autumn Quotes

Autumn also represents aging and endings. It’s a season for nostalgia, memories, and looking back at what was, or what could have been.

My favorite fall quotes are the wistful ones, reminding us that time never stops.

“And all at once, summer collapsed into fall.” – Oscar Wilde

“Autumn… the year’s last, loveliest smile.” – William Cullen Bryant

“The tints of autumn…a mighty flower garden blossoming under the spell of the enchanter, frost.” – John Greenleaf Whittier

“In Autumn she achieves / A still more golden blaze \ But nothing golden stays.” –  Robert Frost

“Autumn wins you best by this, its mute appeal to sympathy for its decay.” – Robert Browning

“Is not this a true autumn day? Just the still melancholy that I love – that makes life and nature harmonise.” – George Eliot

“September days have the warmth of summer in their briefer hours, but in their lengthening evenings a prophetic breath of autumn.” – Rowland E. Robinson

“The leaves as they spark into wild color just before they die are the world’s oldest performance art, and everything we see is celebrating one last violently hued hurrah before the black and white silence of winter.” – Shauna Niequist

“Since you went away, the days grow long \ And soon I’ll hear old winter’s song \ But I miss you most of all my darling \ When autumn leaves start to fall.”  – Nat King Cole

“There is something incredibly nostalgic and significant about the annual cascade of autumn leaves.” – Joe L. Wheeler

“There is a time in late September when the leaves are still green, and the days are still warm, but somehow you know that it is all about to end, as if summer was holding its breath, and when it let it out again, it would be autumn.” – Sharyn McCrumb

“I love the autumn—that melancholy season that suits memories so well. When the trees have lost their leaves, when the sky at sunset still preserves the russet hue that fills with gold the withered grass, it is sweet to watch the final fading of the fires that until recently burnt within you.” – Gustave Flaubert

“Summer has come and passed, the innocent can never last, wake me up, when September ends.” – Billy Joe Armstrong

“He found himself wondering at times, especially in the autumn, about the wild lands, and strange visions of mountains that he had never seen came into his dreams.” – J.R.R. Tolkien

“How beautifully leaves grow old! How full of light and color are their last days!” – John Burroughs

“Why is summer mist romantic and autumn mist just sad?” – Dodie Smith

“Autumn is as joyful and sweet as an untimely end.” –  Rémy de Gourmont

“A wind has blown the rain away and blown the sky away and all the leaves away, and the trees stand. I think, I too, have known autumn too long.” –  E.E. Cummings

“Fall colors are funny. They’re so bright and intense and beautiful. It’s like nature is trying to fill you up with color, to saturate you so you can stockpile it before winter turns everything muted and dreary.” – Siobhan Vivian

“The first breath of autumn was in the air, a prodigal feeling, a feeling of wanting, taking, and keeping before it is too late.” – J. L. Carr

“When an early autumn walks the land and chills the breeze / And touches with her hand the summer trees / Perhaps you’ll understand what memories I own.” – Ella Fitzgerald

“I like best of all autumn, because its leaves are a little yellow, its tone mellower, its colours richer, and it is tinged a little with sorrow and a premonition of death. It’s golden richness speaks not of the innocence of spring, nor of the power of summer, but of the mellowness and kindly wisdom of approaching age.” – Lin Yutang

“Autumn leaves shower like gold, like rainbows, as the winds of change begin to blow, signaling the later days of autumn.” – Dan Millman

“You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintery light.” – Ernest Hemingway

“Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits.” – Samuel Butler

“A gentle rain falls softly on my weary eyes / As if to hide a lonely tear / My life will be forever autumn / Cos you’re not here.” – Justin Hayward

Quotes about Autumn’s Sights & Smells

Some of the best fall quotes celebrate the season for its own sake. And why not? Autumn brings pumpkins and harvests, gorgeous bursts of color, fantastic scents and flavors, cool winds, and anticipation of a wonderful holiday season.

“It looked like the world was covered in a cobbler crust of brown sugar and cinnamon.” – Sarah Addison Allen

“Autumn mornings: sunshine and crisp air, birds and calmness, year’s end and day’s beginnings.” – Terri Guillemets

“Autumn mornings: sunshine and crisp air, birds and calmness, year’s end and day’s beginnings.” – Terri Guillemets

“Autumn glows upon us like a splendid evening; it is the very sunset of the year.” – Mary Russell Mitford

“I was drinking in the surroundings: air so crisp you could snap it with your fingers and greens in every lush shade imaginable offset by autumnal flashes of red and yellow.” – Wendy Delsol

“Everyone must take time to sit and watch the leaves turn.” – Elizabeth Lawrence

“Dancing of the autumn leaves on a surface of a lake is a dream we see when we are awake.” – Mehmet Murat Idles

“The tree-lined streets formed golden archways of autumnal colour, and whatever foliage had already fallen formed a russet carpet that came alive and danced around our wheels as we drove over it.” – Alex Kefford

“See it, smell it, taste it, and forget the time of day or year. Autumn needs no clock or calendar.” – Hal Borland

“Anyone who thinks fallen leaves are dead has never watched them dancing on a windy day.” – Shira Tamir

“The fallen leaves in the forest seemed to make even the ground glow and burn with light.” – Malcolm Lowry

“Two sounds of autumn are unmistakable…the hurrying rustle of crisp leaves blown along the street…by a gusty wind, and the gabble of a flock of migrating geese.” – Hal Borland

“I can smell autumn dancing in the breeze. The sweet chill of pumpkin, and crisp sunburnt leaves.” – Ann Drake

“Fall has always been my favorite season. The time when everything bursts with its last beauty, as if nature had been saving up all year for the grand finale.” – Lauren DeStefano

“No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace as I have seen in one autumnal face.” – John Donne

“Autumn would come and the air would grow cool, dry, and magic, as it does that time of the year.” – Henry Rollins

“Once in a while I am struck all over again; By just how blue the sky appears; On wind-played autumn mornings; Blue enough to bruise a heart.” – Sanober Khan

“At no other time (than autumn) does the earth let itself be inhaled in one smell, the ripe earth; in a smell that is in no way inferior to the smell of the sea, bitter where it borders on taste, and more honeysweet where you feel it touching the first sounds. Containing depth within itself, darkness, something of the grave almost.” – Rainer Maria Rilke

“I loved autumn, the one season of the year that God seemed to have put there just for the beauty of it.” – Lee Maynard

“Autumn paints in colors that summer has never seen.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Enjoy Fall!

I hope these fall quotes gave you even more reason to enjoy the season of change. 

Have a great autumn!