Category: Seasonal Trends

If one season can inspire the greatest creative minds, it is fall. Perhaps it’s the sound of crunching leaves beneath the soles of the season’s best boots, porches crowded with gourds, or the aromatic flavors enticing us from the kitchen. The sounds, sights, and scents of autumn have been a source of inspiration for ages.

But don’t take our word for it: When trying to craft the perfect summation to this vibrant season, tap into the best of what’s been written to add the perfect sentiment to your autumn scrapbook, letters, and greeting cards.

Fall quotes about leaves

1. “Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away; Lengthen night and shorten day; Every leaf speaks bliss to me.” – Emily Brontë
2. “There’s nothing quite like autumn in New York. But it’s not only the leaves that change. Something in the air brings out the true colors in everyone.” – “Gossip Girl”
3. “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. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person died for no reason.” – Ernest Hemingway
4. “Autumn leaves don’t fall, they fly. They take their time and wander on this their only chance to soar.” – Delia Owens

5. “October, baptize me with leaves! Swaddle me in corduroy and nurse me with split pea soup. October, tuck tiny candy bars in my pockets and carve my smile into a thousand pumpkins. O autumn! O teakettle! O grace!” – Rainbow Rowell
6. “It looked like the world was covered in a cobbler crust of brown sugar and cinnamon.” – Sarah Addison Allen
7. “The lesson of the falling leaves the leaves believe such letting go is love such love is faith such faith is grace such grace is god I agree with the leaves.” – Lucille Clifton
8. “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
9. “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
10. “Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.” – Albert Camus
11. “How beautifully leaves grow old! How full of light and color are their last days!” – John Burroughs
12. “Autumn leaves shower like gold, like rainbows, as the winds of change begin to blow.” – Dan Millman

13. “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
14. “The leaves fall, the wind blows, and the farm country slowly changes from the summer cottons into its winter wools.” – Henry Beston
15. “The falling leaves, all over the forest, are protecting the roots of my plants. Only look at what is to be seen, and you will have garden enough, without deepening the soil in your yard. We have only to elevate our view a little to see the whole forest as a garden.” – Henry David Thoreau
16. “There is something incredibly nostalgic and significant about the annual cascade of autumn leaves.” – Joe L. Wheeler

Fall quotes about the new season

17. “Days decrease, / And autumn grows, autumn in everything.” – Robert Browning
18. “There is a time of year in New York when…even before the first leaf falls…you can feel the seasons click. The air is crisp, the summer is gone. And for the first night in a long time, you need a blanket on your bed.” – Carrie Bradshaw
19. “Autumn… the year’s last, loveliest smile.” – William Cullen Bryant
20. “And the sun took a step back, the leaves lulled themselves to sleep and autumn was awakened.” – Raquel Franco
21. “August rain: the best of the summer gone, and the new fall not yet born. The odd uneven time.” – Sylvia Plath

Fall quotes about natural beauty

22. “Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting, and autumn a mosaic of them all.” – Stanley Horowitz
23. “Why, it’s the climax of the year,—The highest time of living!—Till naturally its bursting cheer. Just melts into Thanksgiving.” – Perry Laurence Dunbar
24. “Listen! The wind is rising, and the air is wild with leaves, we have had our summer evenings, now for October eves.” – Humbert Wolfe
25. “It was a beautiful, bright autumn day, with air like cider and a sky so blue you could drown in it.” – Diana Gabaldon
26. “October’s poplars are flaming torches lighting the way to winter.” – Nova S. Blair
27. “Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn, that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness , that season which has drawn from every poet worthy of being read some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling.” – Jane Austen

28. “But when fall comes, kicking summer out on its treacherous ass as it always does one day sometime after the midpoint of September, it stays awhile like an old friend that you have missed. It settles in the way an old friend will settle into your favorite chair and take out his pipe and light it and then fill the afternoon with stories of places he has been and things he has done since last he saw you.” – Stephen King
29. “The little flowers of yesterday. Have all forgotten May. The last gold leaf turned to brown. The last bright day is grey. The cold of winter comes space. And you have gone away.” – Langston Hughes
30. “Autumn seemed to arrive suddenly that year. The morning of the first September was crisp and golden as an apple.” – J.K. Rowling
31. “I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.” – L.M. Montgomery
32. “And all at once, summer collapsed into fall.” – Oscar Wilde
33. “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
34. “No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace as I have seen in one autumnal face.” – John Donne
35. “Autumn colors remind us we are all one dancing in the wind.” – Lorin Morgan-Richards

36. “Another fall, another turned page.” – Wallace Stegner
37. “The heat of autumn is different from the heat of summer. One ripens apples, the other turns them to cider.” – Jane Hirshfield
38. “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
39. “Autumn burned brightly, a running flame through the mountains, a torch flung to the trees.” – Faith Baldwin
40. “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
41. “The garden of love is green without limit and yields many fruits other than sorrow or joy. Love is beyond either condition: without spring, without autumn, it is always fresh.” – Rumi
42. “And all the lives we ever lived and all the lives to be are full of trees and changing leaves.” – Virginia Woolf

43. “November is the pearl-grey month, the changeling between warm crimson October and cold white December, the month when the leaves fall in slow drifting whirls, and the shapes of the trees are revealed, when the earth imperceptibly wakes, and stretches her bare limbs and displays her stubborn unconquerable strength before she settles uneasily into winter. November is secret and silent.” – Alison Uttley
44. “The leaves are changing; I feel poetry in the air.” – Laura Jaworski
45. “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
46. “I am such an autumn person. Give me a quiet, cozy spot with a simple view of gorgeous trees with colorful leaves on a crisp September day, fuzzy socks, a warm drink, and a good book and I will be in all my glory.” – McKenna Kaelin
47. “That country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain.” – Ray Bradbury

Fall quotes about renewal

48. “Only lovers / see the fall / a signal end to endings / a gruffish gesture alerting / those who will not be alarmed / that we begin to stop / in order simply / to begin / again.” –Maya Angelou
49. “Notice that autumn is more the season of the soul than of nature.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
50. “I cannot endure to waste anything as precious as autumn sunshine by staying in the house. So I spend almost all the daylight hours in the open air.” – Nathaniel Hawthorne
51. “Aprils have never meant much to me, autumns seem that season of beginning, spring.” – Truman Capote

52. “Spring passes and one remembers one’s innocence. Summer passes and one remembers one’s exuberance. Autumn passes and one remembers one’s reverence. Winter passes and one remembers one’s perseverance.” – Yoko Ono
53. “Of all the seasons, autumn offers the most to man and requires the least of him.” – Hal Borland
54. “Wild is the music of the autumnal winds amongst the faded woods.” – William Wordsworth
55. “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
56. “I can smell autumn dancing in the breeze. The sweet chill of pumpkin, and crisp sunburnt leaves.” – Ann Drake
57. “Autumn leaves are falling, filling up the streets; golden colors on the lawn, nature’s trick or treat!” – Rusty Fischer
58. “Autumn is the hardest season. The leaves are all falling, and they’re falling like they’re falling in love with the ground.” – Andrea Gibson
59. “The bright summer had passed away, and gorgeous autumn was flinging its rainbow-tints of beauty on hill and dale.” – Cornelia Tuthill
60. “I loved autumn, the season of the year that God seemed to have put there just for the beauty of it.” – Lee Maynard
61. “Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
62. “Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits.” – Samuel Butler
63. “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
64. “There was a hint of spring in her sole green eyes, something summery in her complexion, and a rich autumn ripeness in her walk.” – Toni Morrison

The series “What I Love About Fall” captures passions for the season from people of all walks of life. In this article, writer Joanne Camas explores the myriad reasons people are loving fall.

Fall signals a welcome return to routine after a casual summer. It’s a chance to enjoy changes in the weather, seasonal day trips, and autumnal treats. It’s also the start of a slow easing into the holidays. The pumpkin obsessed — a rapidly growing breed — keep a watchful eye on specialty coffees and cookies, of course. Artists and writers draw inspiration from the changing seasons. In fact, autumn is a favorite time of year for many of us.

Loving fall family traditions

For Alvernia Fernandez Silva, fall is a go-with-the-flow season. “We are pretty spontaneous,” she explains. “We do love going to the pumpkin patches and doing corn mazes, and football season in our home is super huge.”

Of course, with four young children, family activities take center stage. “We love decorating for fall,” Fernandez Silva says, “and the kids look forward to the pumpkin patches, carving pumpkins, and dressing up for Halloween.” Costumes might be a problem this year, though: “We are still deciding on costumes for the two older ones, but my two toddlers both want to be Snow White!” The whole family goes trick-or-treating, and when they get home, they all greet the costumed kids who come to their house and give them Halloween candy.

Some family activities have become traditions — going to the pumpkin patch to choose their pumpkins and enjoying all the activities there, then watching as their pumpkins turn into cool carved characters — but this year Fernandez Silva plans to add a couple of twists: “I would love to go apple picking as a family, and I’d like to try some new fall crafts.”

Creating a sense of comfort

Alice Lewis brings seasonal experiences into people’s homes live through her business Alice’s Table, which 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, Inc., acquired in January 2022. And, at the risk of breaking an entertaining code of ethics, she’s willing to admit that fall is, in fact, her favorite season.

“I love the transition from summer to fall — the coming together that fall has always meant,” she says. Gathering family and friends for a weekend or the upcoming holidays at her New England home is an important part of her life. For Lewis, autumn also brings back memories of apple picking, which she does faithfully every year, and the apple and cranberry crisp she bakes later.

Cooking is a big part of autumn for Lewis, who says she’s happy to get back into her kitchen after a summer of grilling. Football and slow-cooked comfort food, such as chili or beef stew, make her Sunday. “My current favorite is barbecue-pulled-pork-stuffed sweet potatoes,” she says with a grin.

When she’s creating online experiences for customers, she makes sure to feature fall flowers. “There’s an abundance of flowers ready for the picking,” she says. “Sunflowers, hydrangeas, dahlias…I’m a sucker for dahlias! They are so short-lived but have an amazing variety of colors, shapes, and sizes.”

Lewis adds, “I typically encourage people to bring a harvest mentality to floral arrangements. Apples, dried corn… Be creative about what you use in the fall season.” For her part, with people starting to decorate their homes again, she offers classes on making a fall wreath and a pumpkin arrangement through Alice’s Table. “Fall is a crazy time for us!”

Falling into football season

John Casey, a writer based in New York, is also happy when fall rolls around. The Pittsburgh Steelers superfan says he eagerly counts the days until the start of football season. “Fall is the time of year when my Sunday afternoons are booked long in advance,” he explains. And when he says “booked,” he means booked. “Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, R.E.M., and Coldplay could all be performing in a concert outside my door on any given crisp, fall Sunday afternoon, but nothing will take me away from my television, watching the Steelers.”

Of course, such commitment to a fall sport means forgoing other traditional fall activities — and that can leave his family and friends scratching their heads. “It’s hard for people to understand the fierce loyalty I have to the team, and why there are no weekend getaways to watch the leaves turn, for example, in upstate New York during the fall,” Casey says. “Those escapes can only occur if the Steelers are on Monday Night Football. Bottom line: The Steelers have owned my falls for over 40 years.”

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Fall gift ideas

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Celebrating a bountiful harvest

As founder of Renee’s Garden, a seed company that introduces international specialty vegetables and herbs to home gardeners and restaurants, Renee Shepherd can often be found somewhere between her trial garden and speaking engagements around the country.

She views autumn as a second-chance season, one in which you can sneak in hardy crops before the first frost. “The cooler weather slows down the harvest,” she explains, “and you can plant fast-growing, healthy greens like spinach, bok choy, tatsoi, lettuce, and cilantro. You have the luxury of having plenty of produce to enjoy throughout the fall.”

“A fall garden is a pleasure,” says Shepherd of Felton, California. “The rewards of gardening come now — it’s a feeling of bounty.” She looks forward to freezing and canning surplus vegetables. “If you freeze tomatoes whole, then the skin comes off and you can make delicious winter sauce,” she says, “or slice them in half and bag them for the freezer.” Peppers are another reliable bumper crop.

Autumn is also the perfect time to clean up and mulch. Shepherd suggests planting a cover crop to nourish the soil and provide shelter for wildlife. She also enjoys planting garlic, saffron (crocus bulbs), and daffodils and tulips in the fall as a friendly nod to spring.

Fire-pit pie parties

For Jackie Rupp of Philadelphia, autumn means whipping out her apron and dusting off the pie plates…all in the name of building community. “Pre-pandemic, I moved to a new neighborhood and wanted to get to know people, so I decided to host some neighborhood dessert swaps where I could make new friends,” she explains.

“My favorite was our pie party, when I hosted a group of about a dozen ladies, most of whom I’d never met before,” Rupp says. “We were grateful to have an evening to ourselves where we could sit around with the smells of cinnamon and cloves in the air and enjoy conversations while eating copious and absurd amounts of pie. (We also learned that wine goes amazing with pies, by the way…”)

Rupp is eyeing the cooler fall evenings for another pie party, “this time outside, around our firepit,” she says. “It’ll be BYOB (bring your own blanket), and I picture us sipping warmed spiked…I mean spiced apple cider and digging into some more delicious pies.”

Loving fall for picture-perfect days

“Autumn is a fabulous season because of the color of the leaves and plants, the world all around me,” says photographer Denise Maccaferri of Plymouth, Massachusetts. And the alignment of the stars helps her take full advantage of fall: “The sun is lower, and early in the morning it’s the perfect light for taking photos,” she explains. “In the fall, I find myself driving around a lot more, just looking for the perfect picture.”

One distinctly local favorite for Maccaferri is the cranberry harvest. She loves the warm red and yellow colors, and has recently started using drone photography to capture the floating cranberries being corralled and scooped onto trucks. “It’s best from the air,” she explains, “but I do like to take closeups of the workers, too.”