August is that bittersweet stretch of summer where everything feels just a little more golden. The days are long, the nights are warm, and there’s a quiet urgency to soak up every last moment before fall starts to stir. Whether you’re holding onto summer or looking ahead to a fresh start, the right words can help you capture the feeling of the season. These August quotes celebrate change, reflection, sunshine, and the simple joy of now—perfect for inspiring your mood, your journal, or your next Instagram caption.
- “August rain: the best of the summer gone, and the new fall not yet born. The odd uneven time.” — Sylvia Plath
- “Everything good, everything magical happens between the months of June and August.” — Jenny Han, The Summer I Turned Pretty
- “Breathe the sweetness that hovers in August.” — Denise Levertov
- “August slipped away into a moment in time.” — Taylor Swift, “august”
- “August is the border between summer and autumn; it is the most beautiful month I know.” — Tove Jansson
- “The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color.” — Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting
- “August of another summer, and once again I am drinking the sun and the lilies again are spread across the water.” — Mary Oliver
- “That August time it was delight / To watch the red moons wane to white.” — Algernon Charles Swinburne
- “If it could only be like this always – always summer, always alone, the fruit always ripe.” – Evelyn Waugh
- “Summer has filled her veins with light and her heart is washed with noon.” — C. Day Lewis
- “August creates as she slumbers, replete and satisfied.” — Joseph Wood Krutch
- “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
- “August was nearly over – the month of apples and falling stars, the last care-free month for the school children. The days were not hot, but sunny and limpidly clear – the first sign of advancing autumn.” ―Victor Nekrasov
- “Some days in late August at home are like this, the air thin and eager like this, with something in it sad and nostalgic and familiar.” — William Faulkner
- “Summer ends, and Autumn comes, and he who would have it otherwise would have high tide always and a full moon every night.” — Hal Borland
- August slipped away like a bottle of wine / ‘Cause you were never mine.” — Taylor Swift, “august”
- “The summer night is like a perfection of thought.” — Wallace Stevens
- “In summer, the song sings itself.” — William Carlos Williams
- “One must maintain a little bit of summer, even in the middle of winter.” — Henry David Thoreau
- “If June was the beginning of a hopeful summer, and July the juice middle, August was suddenly feeling like the bitter end.” — Sarah Dessen
- “What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.” — John Steinbeck
- “I know I am but summer to your heart, / And not the full four seasons of the year.” — Edna St. Vincent Millay
- “Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it.” — Russell Baker
- “In the long dusks of summer, we walked the suburban streets through scents of maple and cut grass, waiting for something to happen.” — Steven Millhauser
- “Summer bachelors like summer breezes, are never as cool as they pretend to be.” — Nora Ephron
- “August used to be a sad month for me. As the days went on, the thought of school starting weighed heavily upon my young frame.” ― Henry Rollins
- “Do what we can, summer will have its flies.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
- “Less than a month ago, all of August still stretched before us – long and golden and reassuring, like an endless period of delicious sleep.” ― Lauren Oliver
- “The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last for ever. Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year – the days when summer is changing into autumn – the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change.”― E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web
- “Today is the first day of August; it is no longer July. Summer passes, and Summer friends will melt away like snow in spring.” ― Rolf van der Wind
- “Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.” ― Henry David Thoreau
- “This morning, the sun endures past dawn. I realize that it is August: the summer’s last stand.” ― Sara Baume
- “August is the slow, gentle month that stretches out the longest across the span of a year. It yawns and lingers on with the light in its palms.” — Victoria Erickson
- “One day you discover you are alive… but, not long after, the sun goes out. Snow falls, but no one sees it, on an August noon.” ― Ray Bradbury
Related Resources to August Quotes
As August winds down, it’s a reminder that seasons—both in nature and in life—are always shifting. Whether these quotes helped you hold onto a summer memory or look ahead to what’s next, we hope they brought a little inspiration to your day. Save your favorites, share them with someone who needs them, or return to them whenever you’re craving a moment of pause. After all, August may be the end of summer, but it’s also the beginning of something new.
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