September is here — marking the transition from summer to fall and ushering in an energy that makes us want to savor every moment of crisp mornings and cozy evenings!
It’s a month of new beginnings, heartwarming traditions, and the enchantment of golden leaves and apple orchards.
To help you absorb the allure of September, we’ve curated a selection of positive and inspiring quotes (and poems!) about the ninth month of the year.
And because we’re Good Good Good — we’ve also highlighted the best quotes around September’s awareness months and national days — like Hispanic Heritage Month, National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, Arbor Day, and National Public Lands Day, and more.
Plus, quotes from inspirational celebrities and leaders with September birthdays.
Whether you’re greeting autumn, celebrating a September 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 September!
Explore more monthly quotes: January | February | March | April | May | June | July | August | September | October | November | December
The Best September Quotes
Famous Quotes About September
“All the months are crude experiments, out of which the perfect September is made.”
— Virginia Woolf
“Happily we bask in this warm September sun, which illuminates all creatures.”
— Henry David Thoreau
“But the days grow short when you reach September.”
— Maxwell Anderson
“By all these lovely tokens, September days are here. With summer’s best of weather and autumn’s best of cheer.”
— Helen Hunt Jackson
“How smartly September comes in, like a racing gig, all style, no confusion.”
— Eleanor Clark
“Wine is the divine juice of September.”
— Voltaire
“In many ways, September feels like the busiest time of the year: The kids go back to school, work piles up after the summer’s dog days, and Thanksgiving is suddenly upon us.”
— Brené Brown
“September is dressing herself in showy dahlias and splendid marigolds and starry zinnias.”
— Olive Wendell Holmes
Quotes for Awareness Holidays in September
A collection of quotes to celebrate September’s awareness months and national days.
→ Explore more of this month’s awareness days in our September calendar
Library Card Sign-up Month
September 1 - September 30
“Having fun isn’t hard
When you’ve got a library card.”
— Arthur, Episode: Arthur’s Almost Live Not Real Music Festival
“Your library card is a passport to anywhere.”
— Mary Schmich
“Access to knowledge is the superb, the supreme act of truly great civilizations. Of all the institutions that support to do this, free libraries stand virtually alone in accomplishing this.”
— Toni Morrison
→ Read about why libraries are important
National Self-Care Awareness Month
September 1 - September 30
“I have come to believe that caring for myself is not self-indulgent. Caring for myself is an act of survival.”
— Audre Lorde
“Nourishing yourself in a way that helps you blossom in the direction you want to go is attainable, and you are worth the effort.”
— Deborah Day
“Every one of us needs to show how much we care for each other and, in the process, care for ourselves.”
— Princess Diana
→ Read more quotes about self-care
National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month
September 1 - September 30
“No matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow.”
— Maya Angelou
“To anyone out there who’s hurting — it’s not a sign of weakness to ask for help. It’s a sign of strength.”
— Barack Obama
“If you feel too much, there’s still a place for you here. If you feel too much, don’t go. If this world is too painful, stop and rest. It’s okay to stop and rest. If you need a break, it’s okay to say you need a break… There is still some time to ask for help. There is still some time to start again. There is still some time for love to find you. It’s not too late. You’re not alone.”
― Jamie Tworkowski, If You Feel Too Much: Thoughts on Things Found and Lost and Hoped For
→ Read more quotes about suicide prevention
→ Read about ways to take action during Suicide Prevention Month
Hispanic Heritage Month
September 15 - October 15
“I’m proud of being Hispanic.”
— Lisa Guerrero
“Preservation of one’s own culture does not require contempt or disrespect for other cultures.”
— Cesar Chavez
“It is important for all of us to appreciate where we come from and how that history has really shaped us in ways that we might not understand.”
— Sonia Sotomayor
→ Read more quotes about Hispanic Heritage Month
→ Read about how to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month
Arbor Day
September 21
“We need to protect our forests to protect all of life.”
— Samantha Lynch
“Learn character from trees, values from roots, and change from leaves”
— Tasneern Harneed
“Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.”
— Martin Luther
→ Read more quotes about trees
National Public Lands Day
September 23
“A national park is not a playground. it’s a sanctuary for nature and for humans who will accept nature on nature’s own terms.”
— Michael Frome
“In a world that is becoming increasingly virtual, the parks remain places of visceral beauty. Places where we can remember that we are but a small part of the life on this planet, and that it is a truly wonderful planet and the only one we’ve got.”
— Nevada Barr
“National parks and reserves are an integral aspect of intelligent use of natural resources. It is the course of wisdom to set aside an ample portion of our natural resources as national parks and reserves, thus ensuring that future generations may know the majesty of the earth as we know it today.”
— John F. Kennedy
→ Read more quotes about national parks
→ Read about how to celebrate National Public Lands Day
Quotes from Inspiring People with September Birthdays
Freddie Mercury
September 5
“The most important thing is to live a fabulous life. As long as it’s fabulous, I don’t care how long it is.”
— Freddie Mercury
“I won’t be a rock star. I will be a legend.”
— Freddie Mercury
“I love the fact that I can make people happy, in any form. Even if it’s just an hour of their lives, if I can make them feel lucky or make them feel good, or bring a smile to a sour face, that to me is worthwhile.”
— Freddie Mercury
Ruby Bridges
September 8
“I believe it doesn’t do yourself any good to hate.”
— Ruby Bridges
“We may not all be equally guilty. But we are all equally responsible for building a decent and just society.”
— Ruby Bridges
“If kids have the opportunity to come together to get to know one another, they can judge for themselves who they want their friends to be. All children should have that choice. We, as adults, shouldn’t make those choices for children. That’s how racism starts.”
— Ruby Bridges
Saint Francis of Assisi
September 26
“While you are proclaiming peace with your lips, be careful to have it even more fully in your heart.”
— St. Francis of Assisi
“All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle.”
— St. Francis of Assisi, The Little Flowers of St. Francis of Assisi
“Grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand,
to be loved as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying [to ourselves] that we are born to eternal life.”
— St. Francis of Assisi
Inspirational September Quotes
“The windows are open, admitting the September breeze: a month that smells like notepaper and pencil shavings, autumn leaves and car oil. A month that smells like progress, like moving on.”
— Lauren Oliver, Vanishing Girls
“September is the month of maturity; the heaped basket and the garnered sheaf. It is the month of climax and completion. September! I never tire of turning it over and over in my mind. It has warmth, depth and color. It glows like old amber.”
— Patience Strong
“September was a thirty-days long goodbye to summer, to the season that left everybody both happy and weary of the warm, humid weather and the exhausting but thrilling adventures.”
— Lea Malot
“That old September feeling, left over from school days, of summer passing, vacation nearly done, obligations gathering, books and football in the air… Another fall, another turned page: there was something of jubilee in that annual autumnal beginning, as if last year’s mistakes had been wiped clean by summer.”
— Donna Tartt, The Secret History
“As the alluring song of September begins to whisper in my ear, my passionate spirit yearns for the splendor of its promise.”
— Peggy Toney Horton
Welcoming Fall Quotes
“September days have the warmth of summer in their briefer hours, but in their lengthening evenings a prophetic breath of autumn.”
— Rowland E. Robinson
“There comes a day each September when you wake up and know the summer is over and fall has arrived. The slant of the sun looks different and something is in the air — a coolness, a hint of frosty mornings to follow.”
— Ann Rinaldi
“But when fall comes, kicking summer out on its treacherous ass as it always does one day sometime after the midpoint of September, it stays awhile like an old friend that you have missed. It settles in the way an old friend will settle into your favorite chair and take out his pipe and light it and then fill the afternoon with stories of places he has been and things he has done since last he saw you.”
— Stephen King, Salem’s Lot
“September has come, it is hers whose vitality leaps in the autumn, whose nature prefers trees without leaves and a fire in the fireplace.”
— Louis MacNeice
“But there is a clarity about September. On clear days, the sun seems brighter, the sky more blue, the white clouds take on marvelous shapes; the moon is a wonderful apparition, rising gold, cooling to silver; and the stars are so big. The September storms — the hurricane warnings far away, the sudden gales, the downpour of rain that we have so badly needed here for so long — are exhilarating, and there’s a promise that what September starts, October will carry on, catching the torch flung into her hand.”
— Faith Baldwin, Evening Star
“We know that in September, we will wander through the warm winds of summer’s wreckage. We will welcome summer’s ghost.”
— Henry Rollins
September Poems
“Nostalgia — that’s the Autumn,
Dreaming through September
Just a million lovely things
I always will remember.”
— Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
“O sweet September, thy first breezes bring
The dry leaf’s rustle and the squirrel’s laughter,
The cool fresh air whence health and vigor spring
And promise of exceeding joy hereafter.”
— George Arnold
“Lo! a ripe sheaf of many golden days
Gleaned by the year in autumn’s harvest ways,
With here and there, blood-tinted as an ember,
Some crimson poppy of a late delight
Atoning in its splendor for the flight
Of summer blooms and joys
This is September.”
— Lucy Maud Montgomery, The Watchman & Other Poems
“September has come, it is hers
Whose vitality leaps in the autumn,
Whose nature prefers
Trees without leaves and a fire in the fireplace.”
— Louis MacNeice, Autumn Journal
“When I flashback to the lovely days of September
Where I’ve kept some dreams and stories to remember
Something like old streets and avenues to wander
Something like my toys when I was younger
I have a fond belief that September will stay forever
There were many things in September, sweet and tender
Something like love, something like adventure
Something like childhood, something like the rain, like the water”
— Hayet Ben Bada
“The sultry summer past, September comes,
Soft twilight of the slow-declining year.
All mildness, soothing loneliness, and peace;
The fading season ere the falling come,
More sober than the buxom blooming May,
And therefore less the favourite of the world,
But dearest month of all to pensive minds.”
— Carlos Wilcox
“September’s Baccalaureate
A combination is
Of Crickets — Crows — and Retrospects
And a dissembling Breeze
That hints without assuming —
An Innuendo sear
That makes the Heart put up its Fun
And turn Philosopher.”
— Emily Dickinson, The Poems of Emily Dickinson
“This windy, bright September afternoon
My heart is wide awake, yet full of dreams.”
— Charles George Douglas Roberts
Funny September Quotes
“Happy September! The world shall now transform into pumpkin everything.”
— Keith Wynn
“September showed up right on schedule, and lasted a whole month.”
— Jenny Wingfield
“I used to love September, but now it just rhymes with remember.”
— Dominic Riccitello
“September tries its best to have us forget summer.”
— Bernard Williams
“Rest your eyes well before September because with all its colours autumn is coming to visit them!”
— Mehmet Murat Ildan
“Come September, children return to school, grownups to work, and the brain to the head.”
— Roger Rosenblatt
“It must be September, July sun has disappeared”
— Charmaine J. Forde
Short September Quotes
“The seasonal urge is strong in poets. Burns chose autumn. Longfellow liked the month of September.”
— Helen Bevington
“It was September. In the last days when things are getting sad for no reason.”
— Ray Bradbury
“It was September, and there was a crackly feeling to the air.”
— Carolyn Parkhurst
“Making your Christmas cake in September is perfect, as too fresh a cake crumbles when cut.”
— Mary Berry
“Let’s all be nice to September.”
— Nitya Prakash
“I love September, especially when we’re in it.”
— Willie Stargell
“September is the other January.”
— Gretchen Rubin
“Ah, September! You are the doorway to the season that awakens my soul.”
— Peggy Toney Horton
More September Quotes & Captions
“The roses hung their heads and dreamed under the still September clouds, and the water plashed and murmured softly among the pebbles of the shore.”
— E.L. Voynich
“Time turns flames to embers
You’ll have new Septembers
Everyone of us has messed up too
Minds change like the weather
I hope you remember
Today is never too late to be brand new”
— Taylor Swift, Innocent
“I miss your tan skin, your sweet smile
So good to me, so right
And how you held me in your arms that September night
The first time you ever saw me cry
Maybe this is wishful thinkin’
Probably mindless dreamin’
But if we loved again, I swear I’d love you right”
— Taylor Swift, Back to December
“I’m not sure what August looked like for you, or what September will reveal to you but no matter the unknowns, you are still free to hope…”
— Morgan Harper Nichols
“Let August be August. Let September be September.
Let yourself just be even in the uncertainty.
And doing this doesn’t mean you’re not doing anything.
It means that you’re slowly learning to trust.
You can give your all in this life and also identify where enough is enough.”
— Morgan Harper Nichols
“For summer there, bear in mind, is a loitering gossip, that only begins to talk of leaving when September rises to go.”
— George Washington Cable
“Outside the leaves on the trees constricted slightly; they were the deep done green of the beginning of autumn. It was a Sunday in September.”
— Ali Smith
“The old summer’s-end melancholy nips at my heels. There’s no school to go back to; no detail of my life will change come the onset of September; yet still, I feel the old trepidation.”
— Sara Baume, A Line Made By Walking
“It was a lovely afternoon — such an afternoon as only September can produce when summer has stolen back for one more day of dream and glamour.”
— L.M. Montgomery
“September: it was the most beautiful of words, he’d always felt, evoking orange-flowers, swallows, and regret.”
— Alexander Theroux
