Summer brings the promise of lazy days, sunny skies, and breezy visits to the beach.
Even if your school days are a distant memory, the start of summer still holds the promise of joyful, lazy freedom — that is, until Labor Day rudely rolls around.
In fact, Ella Fitzgerald summed it up best when she famously sang, “Summertime, and the livin’ is easy.”
Not only are the days are longer, but the the weather is brighter too. Whether you’re hoping to relax with a good beach read, watch a steamy summer classic, or simply explore the great outdoors, there’s a summer activity for nearly everyone.
Summer is historically a time of renewal and abundance, and a variety of cultures observe the summer solstice with Midsummer celebrations and traditions.
The season also brings the romance — just ask Danny Zuko and Sandy Olsson from the 1978 classic, “Grease.” Summer love has inspired countless songs, novels, and movies, from “Dirty Dancing” to “The Summer I Turned Pretty.”
However you're planning to spend your summer, take a moment to soak in all that the season has to offer. Lazy summer days may feel like they last forever, but autumn soon puts an end to balmy trips to the beach.
Soak up the sun with these Instagram-worthy quotes from artists, writers and poets that will inspire you to appreciate the beauty of summer.
Summer quotes for Instagram
“In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” — Albert Camus
“Summertime is always the best of what might be.” — Charles Bowden
“Summer is the time when one sheds one’s tensions with one’s clothes, and the right kind of day is jeweled balm for the battered spirit.” — Ada Louise Huxtable
“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
“Paradise is a state of mind / Where mother nature nurtures and man is kind / We need a change now wouldn’t it be nice / If we could bring back summer.” — The Beach Boys, “Summer in Paradise”
“Sometimes I feel this summer as if I were walking through the green meadow again; idly, aimlessly, unthinking, and unguided.” — Kate Chopin, “The Awakening”
“Summer afternoon — summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.” — Henry James
“Is childhood ever long enough, or a happy time, or even a beautiful summer day?” — Eugene Kennedy
“It was a splendid summer morning and it seemed as if nothing could go wrong.” — John Cheever
“Oh when I look back now / That summer seemed to last forever / And if I had the choice / Yeah, I’d always wanna be there / Those were the best days of my life.”— Bryan Adams, “Summer Of ‘69”
“In summer the song sings itself above the muffled words.” — William Carlos Williams
“Summer is delicately made. While it is, it is ceasing.” — Genevieve Taggard
“Sweet days of summer, the jasmine’s in bloom / July is dressed up and playing her tune.” — Seals and Crofts, “Summer Breeze”
“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, “Dangerous Laughter”
“I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days.” — Henry David Thoreau
“If it could only be like this always — always summer, always alone, the fruit always ripe...” — Evelyn Waugh, “Brideshead Revisited”
“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”
“Well, summer slipped us underneath her tongue / Our days and nights are perfumed with obsession” — Lorde, “The Louvre”
“I can feel a sunshine stealing into my soul and making it all summer, and every thorn, a rose.” — Emily Dickinson
“How quick time goes by now, compared to when you were a kid. Summer used to last forever. Now it’s twelve weeks.” — John Goodman
"Hold summer in your hand, pour summer in a glass, a tiny glass of course, the smallest tingling sip, for children; change the season in your veins by raising glass to lip and tilting summer in." — Ray Bradbury, “Dandelion Wine”
“Summer’s here and the time is right / For dancing in the street” — Martha and the Vandellas, “Dancing in the Street”
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? / Thou art more lovely and more temperate: / Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, / And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.” — William Shakespeare, Sonnet XVIII
“Dancing days are here again, As the summer evenings grow.” — Led Zeppelin, “Dancing Days”
“It was June, and the world smelled of roses. The sunshine was like powdered gold over the grassy hillside.” — Maud Hart Lovelace,“Betsy-Tacy and Tib”
“How softly summer shuts, without the creaking of a door.” — Emily Dickinson
“The lovely thing about real happiness is that it is there all of a sudden, unexpected, weightless as a little summer cloud and just as radiant and intangible.” — Vicki Baum
“Sometimes I wonder what I’m gonna do / But there ain’t no cure for the summertime blues.” — Eddie Cochran
“I expect some new phases of life this summer, and shall try to get the honey from each moment.” — Lucy Stone
“There is always in February some one day, at least, when one smells the yet distant, but surely coming, summer.” — Gertrude Jekyll
“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.” — Natalie Babbett, “Tuck Everlasting”
“Kindred objects kindred thoughts inspire, / As summer clouds flash forth electric fire.” — Samuel Rogers
“I can’t wait to fall in love with you / You can’t wait to fall in love with me / This just can’t be summer love, you’ll see.” — Justin Timberlake, “Summer Love”
“Swim through the serene summer sky.” — Virgil
“Summertime and the living is easy. Fish are jumping and the cotton is high.” — “Summertime,” by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong
This article was originally published on TODAY.com
