July is here — marking the height of summer and bringing a spirit of celebration that makes us want to soak in every sunlit moment! It’s a month of continued growth, exciting possibilities, and the joy of full-blown summer.
To help you savor the essence of July, we’ve curated a selection of positive and inspiring quotes (and poems) about the seventh month of the year.
And because we’re Good Good Good — we’ve also highlighted the best quotes around July’s awareness months and national days — like Disability Pride Month, Plastic Free July, Independence Day, Be Love Day, and International Self-Care Day. Plus, quotes from inspirational celebrities and leaders with July birthdays.
Whether you’re embracing the heart of summer, celebrating a July birthday, or just looking to add a dose of positivity to kick off the month, these quotes are for you. Scroll all the way through to find some hidden gems.
Here’s to making the most of July!
Explore more monthly quotes: January | February | March | April | May | June | July | August | September | October | November | December
The Best July Quotes
Famous Quotes About July
“July is hollyhocks and hammocks, fireworks and vacations, hot and steamy weather, cool and refreshing swims, beach picnics, and vegetables all out of the garden.”
— Jean Hersey
“There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life’s July and left standing amid the piercing chill of an alpine November.”
— Martin Luther King Jr.
“July is hot afternoons and sultry nights and mornings when its joy just to be alive. July is a picnic and a red canoe and a sunburned neck and a softball game and ice tinkling in a tall glass. July is a blind date with summer.”
— Hal Borland, Sundial of the Seasons
“If I had my way, I’d remove January from the calendar altogether and have an extra July instead.”
— Roald Dahl
“July, with its days of blue skies and time that seemingly stands still, holds a special place in my heart.”
— Daisaku Ikeda
Quotes for Awareness Holidays in July
A collection of quotes to celebrate July’s awareness months and national days.
→ Explore more of this month’s awareness days in our July calendar
Disability Pride Month
July 1 - July 31
“As people celebrate Disability Pride, they prove that disabled people haven’t just been surviving in the face of oppression — they’ve been thriving. As we celebrate Disability Pride, we honor the progress that the disability community has made thus far so that we can have these public events, so that we can be in public as ourselves. But we also express hope in building a future that’s even better for the disabled people who will come after us.”
— Laken Brooks, in an article
“Being proud to be disabled isn’t about liking my disability. It isn’t about pretending that disability doesn’t straight-up suck. Rather, claiming disability pride is a rejection of the notion that I should feel ashamed of my body or my disability. It’s a rejection of the idea that I am less able to contribute and participate in the world.”
— Ardra Shephard, in an article
“Disability Pride Month is a chance for the community I call home to show you all of our beauty. It is also a time for all disabled people to unapologetically celebrate our bodies as they are. Whether you are disabled or an ally, Disability Pride Month is full of so much to celebrate.”
— Daphne Frias, in an article
→ Read about how to celebrate Disability Pride Month
Plastic Free July
July 1 - July 31
“We don’t need a handful of people doing zero waste perfectly. We need millions of people doing it imperfectly.”
— Anne Marie Bonneau
“The most environmentally friendly product is the one you didn’t buy.”
— Joshua Becker
“If we want to move towards a low-polluting, sustainable society, we need to get consumers to think about their purchases.”
— David Suzuki
Independence Day (4th of July)
July 4
“It’s Fourth of July weekend, or, as I call it, Exploding Christmas.”
— Stephen Colbert
“Where you see wrong or inequality or injustice, speak out, because this is your country. This is your democracy. Make it. Protect it. Pass it on.”
— Thurgood Marshall
“I am red and white and blue, these are the colors that ring true, to all I am and, feel and love and do, I stand proud and brave and tall, I want justice for us all, so color me America, red, white and blue”
— Dolly Parton, Color Me America
Be Love Day
July 16
“Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy to a friend.”
— Martin Luther King Jr.
“Love is not passive.
It is active, transformative, and just.”
— Bernice King
“Struggle is a never-ending process. Freedom is never really won, you earn it and win it in every generation.”
— Coretta Scott King
International Self-Care Day
July 24
“I have come to believe that caring for myself is not self-indulgent. Caring for myself is an act of survival.”
— Audre Lorde
“Talk to yourself like you would to someone you love.”
— Brené Brown
“When you take care of yourself, you’re a better person for others. When you feel good about yourself, you treat others better.”
— Solange Knowles
→ Read about how to celebrate International Self-Care Day
→ Read about ideas to practice self-care, the best self-care apps, and more self-care articles
→ Read more quotes about self-care
Birthday Quotes from Inspiring People Born in July
Sylvia Rivera
July 2
“We should not be ashamed of who we are. We have to show the world that we are numerous. There are many of us out there.”
— Sylvia Rivera, in an essay
“Before I die, I will see our community given the respect we deserve. I’ll be damned if I’m going to my grave without having the respect this community deserves. I want to go to wherever I go with that in my soul and peacefully say I’ve finally overcome.”
— Sylvia Rivera, in an essay
“I am tired of seeing my children — I call everybody including yous in this room, you are all my children. I am tired of seeing homeless transgender children, young, gay, youth children.”
— Sylvia Rivera, in a speech
→ Read more Sylvia Rivera quotes
→ Read more quotes from transgender leaders and activists
Tom Hanks
July 9
“If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. It’s the hard that makes it great.”
— Tom Hanks
“Truth is, I’ll never know all there is to know about you just as you will never know all there is to know about me. Humans are by nature too complicated to be understood fully. So, we can choose either to approach our fellow human beings with suspicion or to approach them with an open mind, a dash of optimism and a great deal of candour.”
— Tom Hanks
“As long as you as an individual… can convince yourself that in order to move forward as best you can you have to be optimistic, you can be described as ‘one of the faithful,’ one of those people who can say, ‘Well, look, something’s going to happen! Let’s just keep trying. Let’s not give up.’”
— Tom Hanks
Arthur Ashe
July 10
“True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost.”
— Arthur Ashe
“One important key to success is self-confidence. An important key to self-confidence is preparation.”
— Arthur Ashe
“From what we get, we can make a living. What we give; however, makes a life.”
— Arthur Ashe
Malala Yousafzai
July 12
“Let us pick up our books and our pens, they are the most powerful weapons.”
— Malala Yousafzai
“We must tell girls their voices are important.”
— Malala Yousafzai
“All we are asking is for girls to be able to go to school, for women to be safer... we are not asking for a privilege, these are like basic human rights.”
— Malala Yousafzai
→ Read more Malala Yousafzai quotes
Chef José Andrés
July 13
“The modernity of yesterday is the tradition of today, and the modernity of today will be tradition tomorrow.”
— Chef José Andrés
“I realized very early the power of food to evoke memory, to bring people together, to transport you to other places, and I wanted to be a part of that.”
— Chef José Andrés
“As legal residents, immigrants would contribute more in taxes, spend more at our businesses, start companies of their own and create more jobs. Immigration is not a problem for us to solve but an opportunity for America to seize.”
— Chef José Andrés
→ Read more Chef José Andrés quotes
Nelson Mandela
July 18
“As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.”
— Nelson Mandela
“May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.”
— Nelson Mandela
“As I have said, the first thing is to be honest with yourself. You can never have an impact on society if you have not changed yourself... Great peacemakers are all people of integrity, of honesty, but humility.”
— Nelson Mandela
→ Read more Nelson Mandela quotes
Inspirational July Quotes
“In these divine pleasures permitted to me of walks in the July night under moon and stars, I can put my life as a fact before me and stand aloof from its honor and shame.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
“When the sun is shining, I can do anything; no mountain is too high, no trouble too difficult to overcome.”
— Wilma Rudolph
“What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.”
— John Steinbeck
July Poems
“Hot July brings cooling showers, apricots and gillyflowers.”
— Sara Coleridge
“Grand against the crimson of the sky,
Kings of the sunshine and the thunder,
Come they and go they in July.”
— Edwin Arnold
“For sailing boats on little seas,
Where just the smallest summer breeze
Can blow; for picking flowers any day;
July comes for flags and play.”
— Annette Wynne
“Hey.
I don’t know
what kind of day
you’ve had so far,
but I do know this is true
you made it here,
through the wild of June,
and I hope July holds
something beautiful for you.
And if ‘something beautiful’ is small,
and it does not seem like much,
I do hope it’s just enough
to remind you that even here,
there is room for love.
And while love
might show up
in subtle and seemingly
fleeting ways,
and you might find yourself
with big questions
lingering at the edges
of seemingly ordinary days,
I hope this July
has one of those moments
where your playlist shuffles
in just the right way,
to that one song
that makes you feel
like you’re going to be okay,
and you are free to be just here,
in July’s unknowns,
breathing deep,
anyway.”
— Morgan Harper Nichols
“Such days are like a sigh
That beauty heaves from a full heart of bliss:
Such nights are like the sweetness of a kiss
On lips that half deny,
The warm lips of July.”
— Madison Cawein, July
“All through the languid July day
I catch the scent of new-mown hay.
The morning-glories and scarlet vine
Over the doorway twist and twine;
And every day, when the house is still,
The humming-bird comes to the window-sill.”
— Ella Wheeler Wilcox, My Home
“Sweet July, warm July!
Month when mosses near the stream,
Soft green mosses thick and shy,
Are a rapture and a dream.
Summer Queen! whose foot the fern
Fades beneath while chestnuts burn;
I welcome thee with thy fierce love,
Gloom below and gleam above.”
— George Meredith, July
“In vain the cruel skies their hot rays shed;
The lily does not feel their brazen glare.
In vain the pallid clouds refuse to share
Their dews, the lily feels no thirst, no dread.
Unharmed she lifts her queenly face and head;
She drinks of living waters and keeps fair.”
— Helen Hunt Jackson, ‘A Calendar of Sonnets: July’
Summer Quotes
“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
“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 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
“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
“Summer was here again. Summer, summer, summer. I loved and hated summers. Summers had a logic all their own and they always brought something out in me. Summer was supposed to be about freedom and youth and no school and possibilities and adventure and exploration. Summer was a book of hope. That’s why I loved and hated summers. Because they made me want to believe.”
— Benjamin Alire Sáenz
“Summer is a period of luxurious growth. To be in harmony with the atmosphere of summer, awaken early in the morning and reach to the sun for nourishment to flourish as the gardens do. Work, play, travel, be joyful, and grow into selfless service. The bounty of the outside world enters and enlivens us.”
— Paul Pitchford
“Tears of joy are like the summer rain drops pierced by sunbeams.”
— Hosea Ballou
Funny Quotes
“July, that lovely hell, all velvet dresses and drapes stuffed into a hot little hole.”
— Laura Kasischke
“If summer had one defining scent, it’d definitely be the smell of barbecue.”
— Katie Lee
“Being a traditionalist, I’m a rabid sucker for Christmas. In July, I’m already worried that there are only 146 shopping days left.”
— John Waters
“I have always had a certain aversion to heat. And for me, the name of the game on the stage is ‘beat the heat.’ It’s always July under the lights.”
— Bob Weir
“Every July, I look forward to taping a Christmas show — in July in Nashville. In 98-degree weather. I love it.”
— Larry the Cable Guy
“In July and August, when everyone I know is at the beach, I am cooking through turkey, potato, and pie recipes for Bon Appetit’s November issue.”
— Chris Morocco
“One thing I love about Detroit is that in the wintertime, they have a great device for removing snow. It’s called July.”
— Soupy Sales
Short Quotes
“The summer looks out from her brazen tower, through the flashing bars of July.”
— Francis Thompson
“The noise from good toast should reverberate in the head like the thunder of July.”
— E. V. Lucas
“It’s July and I have hope in who I am becoming.”
— Charlotte Eriksson
“Everything good, everything magical happens between the months of June and August.”
— Jenny Han
“July, like eternity, has no end.”
— Jorge Luis Borges
“July, that lovely hell.”
— Gabrielle Zevin
“Thinking back to when it’s warm outside. Oh, why couldn’t Christmas be in July?”
— Haley Mary Artzab
“July is like the sunniest hour of the day.”
— William C. Bryant
More Quotes
“My life, I realize suddenly, is July. Childhood is June, and old age is August, but here it is, July, and my life, this year, is July inside of July.”
— Rick Bass
“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
“They talk about big skies in the western United States, and they may indeed have them, but you have never seen such lofty clouds, such towering anvils, as in Iowa in July.”
— Bill Bryson
“If the first of July be rainy weather, It will rain, more of less, for four weeks together.”
— John Ray
“I have lived pain, and my life can tell: I only deepen the wound of the world when I neglect to give thanks to the heavy perfume of wild roses in early July and the song of crickets on summer humid nights, and the rivers that run and the stars that rise, and the rain that falls, and all the good things that a good God gives.”
— Ann Voskamp
“Words to repeat to yourself at the end of July:
I am proud of the ways I am learning to let go.
I am free to feel what I need to feel for everything that happened this month. I am free to be gentle with myself as I work through those feelings.
The small amounts of progress I've made this July are integral parts of my growth.
I am grateful for the progress I’ve made in learning when to say ‘no’ and when to say ‘yes.’
I am grateful for every opportunity I’ve had to grow in empathy and compassion.
I am grateful for the good music that found me this month.
I do not know all of what the future holds, but I will be grateful for slow and steady growth.
No matter what awaits me in August, I will continue to breathe deep. I will travel through each day seeking big and small ways to practice peace.
Somehow, after everything, I am learning to fall in love with the journey.”
— Morgan Harper Nichols
