Sometimes it takes me a few weeks to realize that I’m in a new season of life. I try to live in the present, but my mind is often preoccupied with the last season, replaying its joyful and disappointing scenes, analyzing my major decisions, and trying to identify what I can do differently.
Even though the heat has been reminding me that this is summer, I didn’t feel like it was a new season until yesterday, the Fourth of July. We hosted an Independence Day party, and as I lit sparklers next to the lake, enjoying a warm evening filled with laughter and friendship, I realized that summertime had truly arrived.
Since summer is a time for relaxing, I really want to do two things: read a good book and enjoy the outdoors.
I don’t know what that will look like yet. To start out, I’ve put together some quotes about summer (and the outdoors) from classic books that I’ve never read. That seemed like a good way to find inspiration for both of my summer goals.
“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
“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, Anne’s House of Dreams
“Joy the depths! Live, O creation! The world is a great diamond. I am happy. The birds are astonishing. What a festival everywhere! The nightingale is a gratuitous Elleviou. Summer, I salute thee!”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“Spring flew swiftly by, and summer came; and if the village had been beautiful at first, it was now in the full glow and luxuriance of its richness. . . . The earth had donned her mantle of brightest green; and shed her richest perfumes abroad. It was the prime and vigour of the year; all things were glad and flourishing.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist
