On Autumn

"Autumn is a second spring when every leaf's a flower."

— Albert Camus

Camus reframes autumn from a season of decline to a season of different but equal beauty. Spring's flowers get all the attention, but autumn's leaves are no less spectacular - perhaps more so for their variety and intensity. This is wisdom for aging, for endings, for transitions: they can have their own beauty, their own value. The second spring isn't inferior to the first; it's simply different. When we're in life's autumn, we can either mourn lost youth or celebrate the particular glory of this season. Camus votes for celebration.

"Autumn arrives in the early morning, but spring at the close of a winter day."

— Elizabeth Bowen

Bowen captures how seasons sneak up on us. Autumn comes when you're not looking - suddenly it's cool, suddenly the light is different. But spring we anticipate eagerly, watching for every sign. This reflects our relationship with change: we notice decline immediately but must wait patiently for renewal. There's poetry in this observation and also practical wisdom: autumn arrives whether we're ready or not, but spring must be awaited. Both are inevitable, but they require different responses from us.

"Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns."

— George Eliot

Eliot's enthusiasm for autumn is infectious. While others pine for endless summer, she would chase autumn around the globe. What does she love? Perhaps autumn's perfect balance - still warm enough to be comfortable, cool enough to be invigorating. Or autumn's richness - the harvest abundance, the concentrated beauty. Or maybe autumn's honesty - it doesn't pretend to last forever, doesn't promise what it can't deliver. It's a season comfortable with its own temporality, and that comfort becomes its particular charm.

"Autumn is a season followed immediately by looking forward to spring."

— Doug Larson

Larson's humor contains truth: we're never fully present to the current season. In autumn we're already anticipating spring, skipping right over winter. This is human nature - always reaching for what's next, unable to fully inhabit now. But it's also a missed opportunity. Autumn deserves our full attention while it's here. Those who skip autumn, always looking ahead, miss its particular gifts. The practice is to be where we are: in autumn fully in autumn, accepting winter when it comes, trusting spring will follow in its time.

"October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks in. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August, and February."

— Mark Twain

Trust Twain to undercut autumn's romance with financial humor. But beneath the joke is insight: we're always looking for patterns, for safe times and dangerous times, when really all times carry risk. October's stock crashes are famous, but Twain reminds us that danger lurks in every month. Applied to life more broadly: we can't find a risk-free season. Autumn brings change and uncertainty, yes, but so does every other time. The wisdom isn't in finding safety but in learning to live with uncertainty.

"Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves."

— John Muir

Muir uses autumn as metaphor for release. Just as trees let go of leaves without struggle or attachment, we can let go of what burdens us. The cares drop off not through effort but through natural process - they've served their season, now they fall away. This is different from forcing or fighting. It's allowing what needs to fall to fall, trusting that like the tree, we won't be diminished by the loss. We'll be ready for winter, and eventually for new growth. Autumn teaches the wisdom of timely release.

"Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting and autumn a mosaic of them all."

— Stanley Horowitz

Horowitz gives us an artistic taxonomy of seasons. Autumn as mosaic suggests complexity, variety, integration. It contains elements of all other seasons - winter's crisp air beginning, spring's memory lingering, summer's warmth fading. Autumn is transitional, composite, rich with layers. This makes it the most complex season visually and emotionally. Like a mosaic, autumn requires stepping back to appreciate the whole pattern. Up close it's just pieces, but from proper distance it reveals beauty in how everything fits together - the leaving and the staying, the death and the preparation for life.

"Our judgment ripens; our imagination decays. We cannot at once enjoy the flowers of the Spring of life and the fruits of its Autumn."

— Thomas Babington Macaulay

Macaulay names the trade-off of maturity: we gain wisdom but lose wonder. Autumn's fruits - experience, judgment, accumulated knowledge - come at the cost of spring's imaginative freshness. We can't have both simultaneously. This isn't entirely loss, though it feels like it sometimes. The fruits nourish in ways flowers can't. Wisdom sustains in ways excitement doesn't. The art is appreciating what each season brings rather than mourning what it takes. Every gain includes loss; every loss includes gain. That's the nature of time.

"Youth is like spring, an over-praised season more remarkable for biting winds than genial breezes. Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits."

— Samuel Butler

Butler challenges youth worship by suggesting autumn (middle age) is actually superior. Spring/youth gets idealized in retrospect, but living through it often means confusion, struggle, instability - those biting winds. Autumn/maturity offers mellowness - settled wisdom, established identity, relationships that have deepened. Yes, we've lost youth's beauty and possibility, but we've gained autumn's harvest - the fruits of decades of living and learning. Butler invites us to value where we are rather than always looking back to where we were.

Closing Reflection

Autumn teaches acceptance without resignation, appreciation without attachment. It shows us that letting go can be graceful, that endings can be beautiful, that decrease and decay are part of life's natural rhythm.

In a culture obsessed with youth, growth, and accumulation, autumn's wisdom is counter-cultural. It suggests that releasing, ripening, and preparing for rest have their own value. That maturity brings compensations for what age takes away. That there's dignity in moving with time's flow rather than fighting it.

When I'm in life's autumn - whether literally or metaphorically - these quotations remind me to appreciate this season's particular gifts. To notice the brilliant colors precisely because they're temporary. To harvest what I've grown. To let go of what no longer serves. And to prepare, without fear, for the winter that must follow.