Quotes from September | 2024

Happy Wednesday! Thanks for all the support for my covid and flu shots on Monday afternoon. I am happy to say that I’ve only had a slightly sore arm and no other ill effects – not even a headache. I believe my window for illness has passed so I think I escaped this round of vaccinations* unscathed, for which I’m grateful. Last February’s flu was enough illness to last quite a while. And trust me, you don’t want it either. Here’s my little PSA to remind you to schedule your shots before Halloween, as advised by my children’s doctor.

I got some comments about trying to zoom in on the quotes I chose for my journal last month, so I thought I’d make it easy on you and share them here. I know I’m always on the lookout for a good quote, so hopefully this will help you find the perfect one you’re looking for.

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A quick note on easy ways to collect quotes:

• If you see something you like on social media, take a screen shot and crop the image so that it includes the quote and the source. Then save to the Files app on your phone.
• Create a folder in your files app for general quotes. Within that folder you can create folders to help keep them organized. Examples of folders: Rain, Fall, August, October, etc. Whatever topics you tend to be drawn to!
• Write down or take pictures of quotes from books you’re reading.
• You can also use a note taking app, like Notion or Evernote, to save quotes. The benefit of those apps are that you can search by keyword and find exactly what you’re looking for.
• Also: don’t overthink it. The quote doesn’t have to perfectly capture your mood or the weather. It’s just a way to gather some of your favorite sayings together in a way that is enjoyable for you.

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The quotes I chose for September:

9/1: “Autumn is my season, dear; it is, after all, the season of the soul.” Virginia Woolf

9/2: “I feel entirely demoralized by the sun now, and wish for the fog, snow, rain, humanity.” Virginia Woolf letter to Edward Sackville-West, 1926

9/3: “Life starts over again when it gets crisp in the fall.” F. Scott Fitzgerald

9/4: Song for Autumn by Mary Oliver:

Don’t you imagine the leaves dream now
how comfortable it will be to touch
the earth instead of the
nothingness of the air and the endless
freshets of wind? And don’t you think
the trees, especially those with
mossy hollows, are beginning to look for

the birds that will come–six, a dozen–to sleep
inside their bodies? And don’t you hear
the goldenrod whispering goodbye,
the everlasting being crowned with the first
tuffets of snow? The pond
stiffens and the white field over which
the fox runs so quickly brings out
its long blue shadows. The wind wags
its many tails. And in the evening
the piled firewood shifts a little,
longing to be on its way.

9/5: “but if eternity has a beginning, how can it be infinite? I think this is eternity.” Enlightenment by Sarah Perry, p. 205

9/6: “What is there to do but strive, and seek, and find, and not to yield.” Enlightenment by Sarah Perry, p. 312

9/7: “Perhaps no matter how we conceive it, time is unredeemable, and as soon as we do a thing, it’s done. There was a time this would have made me sad. Now it refines every minute in my possession into something so precious I can’t bear to throw it away.” Enlightenment by Sarah Perry p. 280

9/8: “If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.” WH Auden quoted in Enlightenment by Sarah Perry, p. 227

9/9: “Success does not lie in sticking to things. It lies in picking the right thing to stick to and quitting the rest.” Anne Duke via http://www.askatknits.com

9/10: “Trump was fired by 81 million people.” Kamala Harris at the Presidential debate tonight

9/11: “The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight,
but they, while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night.”
The Ladder of Saint Augustine by Longfellow, as displayed in Ketanji Brown Jackson’s office

9/12: “We do not see things as they are, we see things as we are.” Anais Nin.

9/13: “She preferred most of all to live with flowers and music and to have a book in complete solitude.” Herman Hesse, Iris

9/14: “Who knows how deep the heart is and how much it holds?” Emily Dickinson

9/15: “Normality is a paved road: it’s comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow.” Vincent van Gogh

9/16: “I can only connect deeply or not at all.” Anais Nin

9/17: “There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night.” Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

9/18: “It’s a pale silent day: I would like to be walking in a wood, far away.” Katherine Mansfield

9/19: “I want to be inside your darkest everything.” Frida Kahlo

9/20: “I have done nothing all summer but wait for myself to be myself again.” Georgia O’Keefe

9/21: “I am afraid. Of what? Life without having lived, chiefly.” Sylvia Plath journals

9/22: “Colossal desire to escape, retreat, not talk to anybody.” Sylvia Plath journals

9/23: ” I want to be inside your darkest everything.” Friday Kahlo (I guess I accidentally used this one twice!)

9/24: “I love your silences. They are like mine.” Anais Nin

9/25: “As for myself, I had a lot to say. But I was silent.” Albert Camus

9/26: “All morning it has been raining. In the language of the garden, this is happiness.” Mary Oliver, From the Garden

9/27: “Am I in love with the nightmare, as Kafka was, as so many poets.” Anais Nin

9/28: “That September was a month of golden mists and purple hazes.” LM Montgomery, Anne’s House of Dreams

9/29: “It’s all I have to bring today—
This, and my heart beside—
This, and my heart, and all the fields—
And all the meadows wide—
Be sure you count—should I forget
Someone the sum could tell—
This, and my heart, and all the Bees
Which in the Clover dwell.”
Emily Dickinson

9/30: “I can sit alone by an open window for hours if I like, and hear only bird songs, and the rustle of leaves. The trees are pure gold and orange.” Virginia Woolf

And if you missed my September journal flip through, you can watch it here:

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Have you been collecting quotes? Where do you save them? How do you make it easy on yourself to find them later? I want to know all of your quote-keeping secrets!

I hope Wednesday treats you well. We’re nearly to the weekend! Take good care.

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*I’ve dropped down a rabbit hole this morning when trying to determine if I should use the term vaccinations or immunizations in this post. I learned that the two are basically used interchangeably. If you’re interested, here’s what the CDC says:

Vaccination: The act of receiving a vaccine through injection, drops, or swallowing.
Immunization: The process of becoming protected against a disease through vaccination.

Both work in this case!