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The best literary quotes about spring

As spring approaches, these quotes from authors including Margaret Atwood and Zadie Smith are sure to fill you with the joys of the new season.

The tulips and crocuses have been slowly brightening up grassy patches along pathways, there are days when you brave going out without a coat, and it no longer gets dark at 4pm. Spring is definitely on the way.

The season signifies new beginnings, and a fresh start. It’s a sign of brighter, warmer, longer days to come, with all the possibilities they bring.

Here, we gather together some of the best literary quotes about spring to help put a little pep in your step and get your ready. And if you're still in need of a little inspirartion, why not take a look at our favourite literary quotes about new beginnings.

"In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt."
-from Bluebeard’s Egg by Margaret Atwood

“Spring is the time of plans and projects.”
-from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

“'Is the spring coming?' he said. 'What is it like?'

'It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine…'”
-from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

“That is one good thing about this world…there are always sure to be more springs.”
-from Anne of Avonlea by L M Montgomery

A joyous illustration of the word 'promise' with flowers growing out of the letters.
Image credit: Alicia Fernandes/Penguin

“What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good again.”
-from Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

"Spring drew on: she was indeed already come; the frosts of winter had ceased; its snows were melted, its cutting winds ameliorated.
-from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

“The morning air was like a new dress. That made her feel the apron tied around her waist. She untied it and flung it on a low bush beside the road and walked on, picking flowers and making a bouquet [...] From now on until death she was going to have flower dust and springtime sprinkled over everything.”
-from Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Joyful illustration of the word 'light' with flowers growing out of it.
Image credit: Alicia Fernandes/Penguin

"It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade."
-from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

"A sprawling North London parkland, composed of oaks, willows and chestnuts, yews and sycamores, the beech and the birch; that encompasses the city’s highest point and spreads far beyond it; that is so well planted it feels unplanned; that is not the country but is no more a garden than Yellowstone; that has a shade of green for every possible felicitation of light; that paints itself in russets and ambers in autumn, canary-yellow in the splashy spring; with tickling bush grass to hide teenage lovers and joint smokers, broad oaks for brave men to kiss against, mown meadows for summer ball games, hills for kites, ponds for hippies, an icy lido for old men with strong constitutions, mean llamas for mean children and, for the tourists, a country house, its façade painted white enough for any Hollywood close-up, complete with a tea room, although anything you buy there should be eaten outside with the grass beneath your toes, sitting under the magnolia tree, letting the white blossoms, blush-pink at their tips, fall all around you.”
-from On Beauty by Zadie Smith

"If people did not love each other, I really do not see what use there would be in having any springtime."
-from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

“But the true nature of the human heart is as whimsical as spring weather. All signals may aim toward a fall of rain when suddenly the skies will clear.”
-from The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou by Maya Angelou

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