George Gershwin said it best in Porgy and Bess: “Summertime and the livin’ is easy.” As the days stretch longer, a certain liberation sets in — it’s a season without rules, or expectations, or pressure. Summer is a season of simply being present, of soaking up every sun-drenched second and dreaming of the sea. It’s lush and green. It’s lazy, hazy, and delicious. Let’s be honest, it can’t come as a surprise to anyone that so many people wax poetic about this sunniest of seasons. The result? Summer quotes that capture all there is to love about these carefree months.
Summer’s universal nature makes it easy to immortalize her through word and lyric. While it’s true summer looks a little different for each of us — because we’re all unique in our own ways — there are also tons of things we all associate with summer: summer bucket lists, road trips with your BFFs, beach days, endless snacks, beach reads, and the music that serves to soundtrack it all.
Whether you’re reveling in summer’s warm (read: hot, it’s so hot) embrace or just trying to enjoy it as much as you can until the cool respite of winter rolls around, the following summer quotes will help you channel all the best summer vibes.
Happy Summer Quotes
- “A little bit of summer is what the whole year is all about.” — John Mayer
- “In summer, the song sings itself.” — William Carlos Williams
- “Summertime is always the best of what might be.” — Charles Bowden
- “Summer means happy times and good sunshine. It means going to the beach, going to Disneyland, having fun.” — Brian Wilson
- “Summer afternoon: To me, those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.” — Henry James
- “When the sun is shining, I can do anything; no mountain is too high, no trouble too difficult to overcome.” — Wilma Rudolph
- “Everything good, everything magical happens between the months of June and August.” — Jenny Han
- “Friends, sun, sand, and sea: That sounds like a summer to me.” — Unknown
- “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
- “Summer is singing with joy, and the beaches are inviting you with dancing waves.” — Debasish Mridha
- “Summer has always been my favorite season. I feel happier.” — Zooey Deschanel
- “Rejoice as summer should… chase away sorrows by living.” — Melissa Marr
- “Smell the sea, and feel the sky. Let your soul and spirit fly.” — Van Morrison
- “All in all, it was a never-to-be-forgotten summer — one of those summers which come seldom into any life, but leave a rich heritage of beautiful memories in their going — one of those summers which, in a fortunate combination of delightful weather, delightful friends, and delightful doing, come as near to perfection as anything can come in this world.” — L.M. Montgomery
- “It is easy to forget now, how effervescent and free we all felt that summer.” — Anna Godberson, Bright Young Things
- “Summer has filled her veins with light and her heart is washed with noon.” — C. Day Lewis
- “In the summertime, when the weather is hot, you can reach right up and touch the sky.” — Mungo Jerry
- “Keep your face to the sunshine and you will never see the shadows.” — Helen Keller
- “If it could only be like this always — always summer, always alone, the fruit always ripe.” — Evelyn Waugh
- “Tears of joy are like the summer rain drops pierced by sunbeams.” — Hosea Ballou
- “I was made for sunny days.” — Unknown
- “Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air, and you.” — Langston Hughes
- “You can feel it in the streets. On a day like this, the heat I feel like summer.” — Childish Gambino
- “Summer breeze makes me feel fine.” — Seals & Crofts
- “It’s a smile, it’s a kiss, it’s a sip of wine… it’s summertime!” — Kenny Chesney
- “Let us dance in the sun, wearing wildflowers in our hair.” — Susan Polis Schutz
- “Spring being a tough act to follow, God created June.” — Al Bernstein
- “There shall be eternal summer in the grateful heart.” — Celia Thaxter
- “Some of the best memories are made in flip-flops.” — Kellie Elmore
- “Be groovy or leave, man.” — Bob Dylan
- “She smelled of sun and daisies with a hint of river water.” — Katie Daisy
- “Sun is shining. Weather is sweet. Make you wanna move your dancing feet.” — Bob Marley
- “At the end of the day, your feet should be dirty, your hair messy, and your eyes sparkling.” — Shanti
- “Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “Summer has a flavor like no other. Always fresh and simmered in sunshine.” — Oprah Winfrey
Funny Summer Quotes
- “Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it.” — Russell Baker
- “A man says a lot of things in summer he doesn’t mean in winter.” — Patricia Briggs
- “Summer bachelors, like summer breezes, are never as cool as they pretend to be.”
- “A perfect summer day is when the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing, and the lawnmower is broken.” — James Dent
- “It’s a sure sign of summer if the chair gets up when you do.” — Walter Winchell
- “Why is summer mist romantic and autumn mist just sad?” — Dodie Smith
- “A lot of parents pack up their troubles and send them off to summer camp.” — Raymond Duncan
- “Do what we can, summer will have its flies.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “I’m sorry for the things I said when it was winter.” — Unknown
- “The grill is the summer equivalent of a fireplace; everyone gravitates to it.” — Katie Lee
- “If you’re not barefoot, then you’re overdressed.” — Unknown
- “One benefit of summer was that each day we had more light to read by.” — Jeanette Walls
- “Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability.” — Sam Keen
- “When all else fails, take a vacation.” — Betty Williams
- “If summer had one defining scent, it’d definitely be the smell of barbecue.” — Katie Lee
Summer Vibes Quotes
- “I drifted into a summer-nap under the hot shade of July, serenaded by a cicadae lullaby, to drowsy-warm dreams of distant thunder.” — Terri Guillemets
- “Do you remember how, when we were younger, all the summers lasted forever?” — Chance the Rapper, “Do You Remember”
- “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
- “I love how summer just wraps its arms around you like a warm blanket.” — Kellie Elmore
- “I wonder what it would be like to live in a world where it was always June.” — L.M. Montgomery
- “Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.” — John Lubbock
- “In early June, the world of leaf and blade and flowers explode, and every sunset is different.” — John Steinbeck
- “Spring has many American faces. There are cities where it will come and go in a day and counties where it hangs around and never quite gets there. Summer is drawn blinds in Louisiana, long winds in Wyoming, shade of elms and maples in New England.” — Archibald Macleish
- “Feel that salt in my hair, almost there, got that wind in my hair, Ray-Ban glare.” — Little Big Town, “Summer Fever”
- “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
- “Summertime. It was a song. It was a season. I wondered if that season would ever live inside me.” — Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Last Night I Sang to the Monster
- “I have only to break into the tightness of a strawberry, and I see summer — its dust and lowering skies.” — Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye
- “Summer was on the way; Jem and I awaited it with impatience. Summer was our best season: It was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the tree house; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape; but, most of all, summer was Dill.” — Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- “Again and again, the cicada’s untiring cry pierced the sultry summer air like a need at work on thick cotton cloth.” — Yukio Mishima, Runaway Horses: The Sea of Fertility
- “Summer is the annual permission slip to be lazy. To do nothing and have it count for something. To lie in the grass and count the stars. To sit on a branch and study the clouds.” — Regina Brett
- “Summer, after all, is a time when wonderful things can happen to quiet people. For those few months, you’re not required to be who everyone thinks you are, and that cut-grass smell in the air and the chance to dive into the deep end of a pool give you a courage you don’t have the rest of the year. You can be grateful and easy, with no eyes on you, and no past. Summer just opens the door and lets you out.” — Deb Caletti
- “In the summer, the days were long, stretching into each other. Out of school, everything was on pause and yet happening at the same time, this collection of weeks when anything was possible.” — Sarah Dessen
- “I keep on hoping we’ll eat cake by the ocean.” — DNCE, “Cake By the Ocean”
- “Even so, there were times I saw freshness and beauty. I could smell the air, and I really loved rock ‘n’ roll. Tears were warm, and girls were beautiful, like dreams. I liked movie theaters, the darkness and intimacy, and I liked the deep, sad summer nights.” — Haruki Murakami
- “The summer sun was not meant for boys like me. Boys like me belonged to the rain.” — Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
- “Green was the silence, wet was the light, the month of June trembled like a butterfly.” — Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets
- “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
- “The summer stretched out the daylight as if on a rack. Each moment was drawn out until its anatomy collapsed. Time broke down. The day progressed in an endless sequence of dead moments.” — China Miéville, Perdido Street Station
- “The castle grounds were gleaming in the sunlight as though freshly painted; the cloudless sky smiled at itself in the smoothly sparkling lake, the satin-green lawns rippled occasionally in a gentle breeze: June had arrived.” — J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
- “The morning heat had already soaked through the walls, rising up from the floor like a ghost of summers past.” — Erik Tomblin, Riverside Blues
- “The beauty of that June day was almost staggering. After the wet spring, everything that could turn green had outdone itself in greenness and everything that could even dream of blooming or blossoming was in bloom and blossom. The sunlight was a benediction. The breezes were so caressingly soft and intimate on the skin as to be embarrassing.” — Dan Simmons, Drood
- “There’s a place on the corner of Cherry Street, we could walk to the beach in our bare feet.” — Yellowcard, “Ocean Avenue”
- “Yellow butterflies look like flowers flying through the warm summer air.” — Andrea Willis
- “Dandelion wine. The words were summer on the tongue. The wine was summer caught and stoppered… sealed away for opening on a January day with snow falling fast and the sun unseen for weeks.” — Ray Bradbury
- “Well, summer slipped us underneath her tongue; our days and nights are perfumed with obsession.” — Lorde, “The Louvre”
End of Summer Quotes
- “One must maintain a little bit of summer, even in the middle of winter.” — Henry David Thoreau
- “Summer will end soon enough, and childhood as well.” — George R.R. Martin, Game of Thrones
- “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
- “The end-of-summer winds make people restless.” — Sebastian Faulks
- “If June was the beginning of a hopeful summer, and July the juicy 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 love summertime more than anything else in the world. That is the only thing that gets me through the winter, knowing that summer is going to be there.” — Jack McBrayer
- “Summer passes and one remembers one’s exuberance.” — Yoko Ono
- “Summer’s lease hath too short a date.” — William Shakespeare
- “This morning, the sun endures past dawn. I realize that it is August: the summer’s last stand.” — Sara Baume
- “The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last forever. 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
- “August has passed, and yet summer continues by force to grow days. They sprout secretly between the chapters of the year, covertly included between its pages.” — Jonathan Safran Foer, Tree of Codes
- When the winter comes, the summer shines infinitely in our hearts.” — Mehmet Murat Ildan
- “In the depth of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.” — Albert Camus
- “He who marvels at the beauty of the world in summer will find equal cause for wonder and admiration in winter.” — John Burroughs
Summer Love Quotes
- “I know I am but summer to your heart, and not the full four seasons of the year.” — Edna St. Vincent Millay
- “A life without love is like a year without summer.” — Swedish Proverb
- “Your voice was the soundtrack of my summer.” — Boys Like Girls
- “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate.” — William Shakespeare
- “I almost wish we were butterflies and liv’d but three summer days — three such days with you, I could fill with more delight than 50 common years could ever contain.” — John Keats
- “We can’t possibly have a summer love. So many people have tried that the name’s become proverbial. Summer is only the unfulfilled promise of spring, a charlatan in place of the warm balmy nights I dream of in April. It’s a sad season of life without growth. It has no day.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise
- “Meet me where the sky touches the sea.” — Jennifer Donnelly
- “She acts like summer and walks like rain.” — Train
- “You are so much sunshine in every square inch.” — Walt Whitman
- “She had that whiskey sipping, skinny dipping smile.” — Atticus
- “Sweet, sweet burn of sun and summer wind, and you, my friend, my new fun thing, my summer fling.” — K.D. Lang
- “Summer romances begin for all kinds of reasons, but when all is said and done, they have one thing in common. They’re shooting stars, spectacular moments of light from the heavens, a fleeting glimpse of eternity, and in a flash they’re gone.” — Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook
- “Under the summer roses, when the flagrant crimson lurks in the dusk of the wild red leaves, love, with little hands, comes and touches you with a thousand memories, and asks you beautiful, unanswered questions.” — Carl Sandburg
- “It was rapture enough just to sit there beside him in silence, alone in the summer night in the white splendor of moonshine, with the wind blowing down on them out of the pine woods.” — L.M. Montgomery
“Like strawberry wine, seventeen, - Hot July moon, saw everything,
My first taste of love, oh, bittersweet,
Green on the vine,
Like strawberry wine.” — Deana Carter, “Strawberry Wine”
Summer Night Quotes
- “Oh, the summer night, has a smile of light, and she sits on a sapphire throne.” — Bryan Procter
- “The dreamy days and sticky nights of summer were already calling, as if anything could happen.” — C.J. Carlyon, The Cherry House
- “The summer night is like a perfection of thought.” — Wallace Stevens
- “The moon is swimming naked and the summer night is fragrant with a mighty expectation of relief.” — Leonard Cohen
- “If a June night could talk, it would probably boast it invented romance.” — Bern Williams
- “The summer night was settling upon the neighborhood like a dark lace veil, casting dappled shadows on the roofs and sidewalks and lawns.” — Victoria Kahler, Luisa Across the Bay
- “Ain’t nothing like them summer nights.” — Lil Rob
- “Summer night — even the stars are whispering to each other.” — Kobayashi Issa
- “You’re like a cold beer, darling, on a long hot summer night.” — Rod Stewart
- “It’s as if everything else in the world stops as we lie here in the summer night.” — Huntley Fitzpatrick
Short Summer Quotes for Instagram
- “It’s always summer somewhere.” — LIlly Pulitzer
- “Go where the sun is warm, the WIFI is weak, and the rum is strong.” — Unknown
- “There is always that one summer that changes you.” — Unknown
- “But tomorrow may rain, so I’ll follow the sun.” — The Beatles
- “It felt like summer had taken me over.” — Junot Diaz, This Is How You Lose Her
- “Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer.” — Sam Cooke
- “Summer is the height of being alive.” — Gary Shteyngart
- “Summertime, and the livin’ is easy.” — Porgy and Bess
- “Life is better when you’re under the sun.” — Unknown
- “There is something about the summer that makes me moody.” — Best Coast, “Summer Mood”
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