May is finally here. And spring has truly begun.
Many things have begun to bloom (at least here in Sweden). The days are warm and long.
It’s a lot easier and simpler to keep the energy and optimism up during this month compared to the previous ones during the fall and winter.
So to celebrate this month, here’s 60 of the best and most wonderful May quotes.
And if you want more uplifting inspiration and advice then check out this post with quotes on work ethic and motivation and this one filled with quotes about having a healthy balance in life.
Inspirational May Quotes
“The world’s favorite season is the spring. All things seem possible in May.”
– Edwin Way Teale
“May: the lilacs are in bloom. Forget yourself.”
– Marty Rubin
“At last came the golden month of the wild folk – honey-sweet May, when the birds come back, and the flowers come out, and the air is full of the sunrise scents and songs of the dawning year.”
– Samuel Scoville Jr.
“And a bird overhead sang follow, and a bird to the right sang here. And the arch of the leaves was hollow, and the meaning of May was clear.”
– Algernon Charles Swinburne
“May has come in, young May the beautiful, weaving the sweetest chaplet of the year. Along the eastern corridors, she walks. What time the clover rocks the earliest bee. Her feet a flush with sunrise, and her veil floating in breezy odors o’er her hair.”
– Thomas Buchanan Read
“Warm, wild, rainy wind, blowing fitfully, stirring dreamy breakers on the slumberous May sea. What shall fail to answer thee? What thing shall withstand the spell of thine enchantment, flowing over sea and land?”
– Celia Thaxter
“The month of May is the pleasant time; its face is beautiful; the blackbird sings his full song, the living wood is his holding, the cuckoos are singing and ever singing; there is a welcome before the brightness of the summer.”
– Lady Gregory
“May day is a great time to plan or put on a Spring Festival for parents. Students can sing their favorite songs, recite poems, and perform the Maypole dance.”
– Elizabeth Cole Midgley
“Lines of baled hay / Yellowing in the sunshine / Dry May day.”
– Mike Garofalo
“A great difference between ‘May’ and ‘Day’ is the ‘M’ and ‘D!’ Be a good managing director of your life each day in May.”
– Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
“It is now May. It is the month wherein nature hath her fill of mirth and the senses are filled with delights. I conclude it is from the Heavens, a grace, and to Earth, a gladness.”
– Nicholas Breton
“The flowry May, who from her green lap, throws the yellow cowslip and the pale primrose. Hail bounteous May that dost inspire mirth and youth and warm desire. Woods and groves are of thy dressing. Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing.”
– John Milton
“Fair flowers are springing beneath thy genial ray, and thousand happy birds are singing, all welcome to thee, May!”
– Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
“Along with the greening of May came the rain. Then the clouds disappeared, and a soft pale lightness fell over the city as if Kyoto had broken free of its tethers and lifted up toward the sun.”
– Victoria Abbott Riccardi
“New month, new intentions, new goals, new love, new light, and new beginnings.”
– April Mae Monterrosa
“Let us make our future now, and let us make our dreams tomorrow’s reality.”
– Malala Yousafzai
“Winds of May that dance on the sea, dancing a ring-around in glee. From furrow to furrow, while overhead, the foam flies up to be garlanded.”
– James Joyce
“I cannot tell you how it was, but this I know, it came to pass upon a bright and sunny day when May was young. Ah, pleasant May!”
– Christina Georgina Rossetti
Beautiful May Quotes
“In the marvelous month of May when all the buds were bursting, then in my heart did love arise. In the marvelous month of May when all the birds were singing, then did I reveal to her my yearning and longing.”
– Heinrich Heine
“Oh! Gladly do we welcome thee, fair pleasant month of May. The month which we’ve eager longed to see through many a wintry day.”
– Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
“May is the most beautiful month of the year, a month alive with warm color. The flowers and trees are in full bloom, and even the sun joins this rhapsody be emitting warmer rays.”
– Lillian Berliner
“That I may reach that happy time the kindly gods I pray, for are not ducks and pease in prime upon the last of May?”
– William Makepeace Thackeray
“Yes, it is May! Though not that the young leaf pushes its velvet out of the sheath, that the stubbornest sprays are beginning to bourgeon, larks responding aloft to the mellow flute of the bluebird, nor that song and sunshine and odors of life immingled even as wines in a cup.”
– Bayard Taylor
“Hebe’s here, May is here! The air is fresh and sunny, and the miser-bees are busy hoarding golden honey.”
– Thomas Bailey Aldrich
“Month of May, everybody’s in love, and the city was sent from above, and just when I knew what I wanted to say, the violent wind blew the wires away.”
– Win Butler
“Ah! My heart is weary waiting, waiting for the May, waiting for the pleasant rambles where the fragrant hawthorn brambles. Where the woodbine alternating, scent the dewy way. Ah! My heart is weary, waiting, waiting for the May.”
– Denis Florence MacCarthy
“When purple finches sing and soar with vernal gladness running o’er. When joys like these salute the sense, then waiting long hath recompense, and all the world is glad with May.”
– John Burroughs
“When April steps aside for May, like diamonds, all the raindrops glisten, fresh violets open every day to some new bird, each hour we listen.”
– Lucy Larcom
“Horticulturally, the month of May is opening night, homecoming, and graduation day all rolled into one.”
– Tam Mossman
“By May, most of the harshness of winter has passed. The sky is bright, and warm sunshine filters through the new leaves on the trees.”
– Ellen Jackson
“When April steps aside for May, like diamonds all the rain drops glisten; fresh violets open every day: to some new bird each hour we listen.”
– Lucy Larcom
“Among the changing months, May stands confest the sweetest, and in fairest colors dressed.”
– James Thomson
“Sweet May hath come to love us, flowers, trees, their blossoms don. And through the blue heavens above us, the very clouds move on.”
– Heinrich Heine
“Soft syllables, gentle names for the two best months in the garden year: cool, misty mornings gently burned away with a warming spring sun, followed by breezy afternoons and chilly nights. The discussion of philosophy is over; it’s time for work to begin.”
– Peter Loewer
“Queer things happen in the garden in May. Little faces forgotten to appear, and plants thought to be dead suddenly wave a green hand to confound you.”
– William Earl Johns
“I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers. Of April, May, or June, and July flowers.”
– Robert Herrick
“May has decked the world, that we may bring the brave on land, or sea Earth’s glory on Memorial Day, the lovely meadow gifts of May.”
– Annette Wynne
“May means long walks in the evenings, eating outside in the garden whenever possible, and lots of healthy, fresh salads to use up all the lovely summer veg that’s available.”
– Sophie Morris
May Quotes for New Insights on Life
“I cannot tell you what it was, but this I know, it did but pass. It passed away with sunny May, like all sweet things it passed away, and left me old, and cold, and gray.”
– Christina Georgina Rossetti
“Beneath the apple blossoms, I go a wintry way, for love that smiled in April is false to me in May.”
– Sara Teasdale
“Ah, in those earliest days of love, how naturally the kisses spring into life! So closely, in their profusion, do they crowd together that lovers would find it as hard to count the kisses exchanged in an hour as to count the flowers in a meadow in May.”
– Marcel Proust
“It was the month of May, the month when lovers, subject to the same force which reawakens the plants, feel their hearts open again, recall past trusts and past vows, and moments of tenderness, and yearn for a renewal of the magical awareness which is love.”
– Thomas Malory
“We roamed the fields and riversides when we were young and gay. We chased the bees and plucked the flowers in the merry, merry month of May.”
– Stephen Foster
“Yes, May is come, and its sweet breath shall well-nigh make you weep today, and pensive with swift-coming death, shall ye be satiate of the May.”
– William Morris
“May, more than any other month of the year, wants us to feel most alive.”
– Fennel Hudson
Short May Quotes
“The last days of May are among the longest of the year.”
– Alice Munro
“And after winter folweth grene May.”
– Geoffrey Chaucer
“The month of May has come, when every lusty heart beginneth to blossom, and to bring forth fruit.”
– Thomas Malory
“Bright May afternoons, mango trees in the garden echoed with cuckoo calls.”
– Meeta Ahluwalia
“Another May, new buds and flowers shall bring. Ah! Why has happiness no second spring?”
– Charlotte Smith
“Lots of people go mad in January. Not as many as in May, of course, nor June.”
– Karen Joy Fowler
“I curled closer to May, comforted by her warmth.”
– Kiera Cass
“Life changes very quickly, in a very positive way, if you let it.”
– Lindsey Vonn
“As it fell upon a day in the merry month of May, sitting in a pleasant shade which a grove of myrtles made.”
– Richard Barnfield
“It’s May, the lusty month of May, that darling month when everyone throws self-control away.”
– Alan Jay Lerner
“What potent blood hath modest May.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
“May! Queen of blossoms, and fulfilling flowers, with what pretty music shall we charm the hours?”
– Baron Thurlow
“When the sun is out, and the wind is still, you’re one month on in the middle of May.”
– Robert Frost
“What is so sweet and dear as a prosperous morn in May, the confident prime of the day.”
– William Watson
“Let all thy joys be as the month of May, And all thy days be as a marriage day.”
– Francis Quarles
“Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, and summer’s lease hath all too short a date.”
– William Shakespeare
If you liked these May quotes then share them with a friend or family member that could do with a spring in her or his step via social media or email.
Want more inspirational and positive quotes? Check out this post with quotes about being a good man, this one with many thankfulness quotes and this one with inner peace quotes.