Photo Hacks: 20 quotes about seasons and nature that will inspire you to take photographs.

“The simplicity of winter has a deep moral. The return of Nature, after such a career of splendor and prodigality, to habits so simple and austere, is not lost either upon the head or the heart. It is the philosopher coming back from the banquet and the wine to a cup of water and a crust of bread”. ~John Burroughs, “The Snow-Walkers,” 1866

“The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of world and wake up in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment then where is it to be found?” ~J.B. Priestley

“The snow itself is lonely or, if you prefer, self-sufficient. There is no other time when the whole world seems composed of one thing and one thing only”. ~Joseph Wood Krutch

“There is nothing in the world more beautiful than the forest clothed to its very hollows in snow. It is the still ecstasy of nature, wherein every spray, every blade of grass, every spire of reed, every intricacy of twig, is clad with radiance”. ~William Sharp

“Our destiny often looks like a fruit-tree in winter. Who would think from its pitiable aspect that those rigid boughs, those rough twigs could next spring again be green, bloom, and even bear fruit? Yet we hope it, we know it”. ~Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Wilhelm Meister’s Travels (translated by A.H. Gunlogson).

“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

“A life without love is like a year without summer”. ~Swedish Proverb

“Hey! It’s summer! Be free and happy and danceful and uninhibited and now-y!” ~Terri Guillemets

“If it could only be like this always — always summer, always alone, the fruit always ripe...” ~Evelyn Waugh

“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the blue sky, is by no means waste of time”. ~John Lubbock, The Use of Life, 1894

“Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky”. ~Rabindranath Tagore

“Then summer fades and passes and October comes. We'll smell smoke then, and feel an unexpected sharpness, a thrill of nervousness, swift elation, a sense of sadness and departure” ~Thomas Wolfe

“Summer is already better, but the best is autumn. It is mature, reasonable and serious, it glows moderately and not frivolously… It cools down, clears up, makes you reasonable…” ~Valentin

“I cherish the loneliness of autumn.... I am forty, I have become mortal. I have no further psychic, emotional, or intellectual need to prolong summer seasons, and it is only when autumn begins its play that I can truly focus on the rich and vital life I am living. All of a sudden I grow alert. October is a hallelujah! reverberating in my body year-round.... The air is dusty, it smells of dry pine needles; yet I sense imminent ice in the clear blue sky.... How I appreciate everything... fully! After all, tomorrow this reprieve will be buried by blizzards, crushed under slabs of doomsday ice. I cannot waste a minute indoors! I must take advantage of this gift, wedged so tentatively between summer’s hectic somnolence and winter’s harsh apogee.... Each perfect day, I know, is going to be the last beautiful day of autumn”. ~John Nichols, The Last Beautiful Days of Autumn.

“It was October again... a glorious October, all red and gold, with mellow mornings when the valleys were filled with delicate mists as if the spirit of autumn had poured them in for the sun to drain — amethyst, pearl, silver, rose, and smoke-blue. The dews were so heavy that the fields glistened like cloth of silver and there were such heaps of rustling leaves in the hollows of many-stemmed woods to run crisply through”. ~L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables.

“A moral character is attached to autumnal scenes; the leaves falling like our years, the flowers fading like our hours, the clouds fleeting like our illusions, the light diminishing like our intelligence, the sun growing colder like our affections, the rivers becoming frozen like our lives, all bear secret relation to our destinies. It gave me indescribable pleasure to see the return of the tempestuous season...” ~François-René de Chateaubriand, “My Autumn Joys”.

“We all live under the same sky, but we don't all have the same horizon”. ~Konrad Adenauer

“A pessimist sees only the dark side of the clouds, and mopes; a philosopher sees both sides, and shrugs; an optimist doesn't see the clouds at all — he's walking on them”. ~Leonard Louis Levinson

“Afflictive emotions — our jealousy, anger, hatred, fear — can be put to an end. When you realize that these emotions are only temporary, that they always pass on like clouds in the sky, you also realize they can ultimately be abandoned”. ~Tenzin Gyatso