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Quotations about February
Welcome to my page of quotations about the month of February. Beginnings of springtime, valentine kisses, and yummy hot cocoa to fend off the evening chill! I've spent many, many hours over the years reading through old books and poetry to find these literary treasures, and I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.
Today is the first of February, snowy, brilliant, but dripping with the sound of spring wherever the sun lies warm, and calling with the heart of spring yonder where the crows are assembling. There is spring in the talk of the chickadees outside my window, and in the cheerful bluster of a red squirrel in the hickory. ~Dallas Lore Sharp, The Atlantic Monthly, February 1908
Without Valentine's Day, February would be... well, January. ~Jim Gaffigan, tweet, 2011, jimgaffigan.com
The most serious charge which can be brought against New England is not Puritanism, but February.... Spring is too far away to comfort even by anticipation, and winter long ago lost the charm of novelty. This is the very three a.m. of the calendar. ~Joseph Wood Krutch
...February bites its way into the calendar... ~Charles Lee, "February," An Almanac of Reading, 1940
February brings the rain,
Thaws the frozen lake again...
~Sara Coleridge (1802–1852), "The Months"
Good morrow, Benedick. Why, what's the matter,
That you have such a February face,
So full of frost, of storm and cloudiness?
~William Shakespeare, Much Ado about Nothing, c.1598 [V, 4, Don Pedro]
[I]n the gloomy month of February.... The Deserts of Arabia are not more dreary and inhospitable than the streets of London at such a time... ~Washington Irving, Oliver Goldsmith: A Biography, 1849
A small bird twitters on a leafless spray,
Across the snow-waste breaks a gleam of gold:
What token can I give my friend to-day
But February blossoms, pure and cold?
Frail gifts from Nature's half-reluctant hand...
I see the signs of spring about the land...
[T]hese chill snowdrops, fresh from wintry bowers,
Are the forerunners of a world of flowers.
~Sarah Doudney, "Snowdrops (Consolation)," c.1881
With the lengthening days which distinguish the third month of winter from its predecessor, come ardent desires for spring, and longings for the time of birds and flowers. An adventurous swallow too early flying from the south, a vision of snowdrops in the snow, a day of April warmth lit by a slant February sun, are all hailed with pleasure as harbingers of a more gracious season on its northland way. ~Oscar Fay Adams, January 1886
February, a form
Pale-vestured, wildly fair,—
One of the North Wind's daughters,
With icicles in her hair.
~Edgar Fawcett, "The Masque of Months," c.1878
Fair Maid of February! — drop of snow
Enchanted to a flower, and there within
A dream of April green, — who without sin
Conceived wast, but how no man may know...
~"A Flower," Fraser's Magazine, February 1879
I thought the world was cold in death;
The flowers, the birds, all life was gone,
For January's bitter breath
Had slain the bloom and hushed the song.
And still the earth is cold and white,
And mead and forest yet are bare;
But there's a something in the light
That says the germ of life is there.
~Mrs. Jane [Goodwin] Austin, "February," c.1886
I know him, February's thrush,
And loud at eve he valentines
On sprays that paw the naked bush
Where soon will sprout the thorns and bines.
~George Meredith, "The Thrush in February," c.1885
The shortest day has passed, and whatever nastiness of weather we may look forward to in January and February, at least we notice that the days are getting longer. Minute by minute they lengthen out. It takes some weeks before we become aware of the change. It is imperceptible even as the growth of a child, as you watch it day by day, until the moment comes when with a start of delighted surprise we realize that we can stay out of doors in a twilight lasting for another quarter of a precious hour. ~V. Sackville-West, "Over winter's hump"
When February sun shines cold
There comes a day when in the air
The wings of winter slow unfold
And show the golden summer there.
~Philip Henry Savage (1868–1899)
Like mimic meteors the snow
In silence out of heaven sifts,
And wanton winds that wake and blow
Pile high their monumental drifts.
And looking through the window-panes
I see, 'mid loops and angles crossed,
The dainty geometric skeins
Drawn by the fingers of the Frost.
'Tis here at dawn where comes his love,
All eager and with smile benign,
A golden Sunbeam from above,
To read the Frost's gay valentine.
~Frank Dempster Sherman, "In February," c.1886
Wan, wind-wracked month, of all the months most bare
Of outward beauty or of inward grace...
~Mary Barker Dodge, "A String of Beads: The Year's Rosary, Second Bead: Valentine's Day — February," 1885
February is the border between winter and spring. ~Terri Guillemets, "Outlines of joy," 2002
On the wind in February
Snowflakes float still,
Half inclined to turn to rain,
Nipping, dripping, chill.
~Christina Georgina Rossetti, "A Year's Windfalls," 1866
Even winter — the hardest season, the most implacable — dreams, as February creeps on, of the flame that will presently melt it away. Everything tires with time, and starts to seek some opposition, to save it from itself. ~Clive Barker, The Hellbound Heart, 1986
Pure and white the singers flutter,
Nestle in earth's heart and mine,
Little snow-flakes, and their message
Is a glad world's valentine.
~Sara L. Vickers Oberholtzer, "February," Souvenirs of Occasions, 1892
The hedge-rows cast a shallow shade
Upon the frozen grass,
But skies at evening song are soft,
And comes the Candlemas.
Each day a little later now
Lingers the westering sun;
Far out of sight the miracles
Of April are begun.
O barren bough! O frozen field!
Hopeless ye wait no more.
Life keeps her dearest promises—
The Spring is at the door!
~Arthur Ketchum, in The Atlantic Monthly, February 1904
Cold and snowy February
Does seem slow and trying, very.
Still, a month made gay by Cupid
Never could be wholly stupid.
~Louise Bennett Weaver and Helen Cowles LeCron, "February," A Thousand Ways to Please a Husband with Bettina's Best Recipes, 1917
[T]he season of snow is past;
The mild south wind is on high;
And the scent of the spring is cast
From his wing as he hurries by...
The little birds twitter and cheep
To their loves on the leafless larch:
But seven foot deep the snow-wreaths sleep,
And the year hath not worn to March.
~John Addington Symonds, "In February," 1880
On those brilliant and, at the same time, mellow days which we get once in awhile in February, when the sun is so warm that it seems to ignore your clothes and touch your skin, I would go out to the vegetable garden to see if the ground wasn't beginning to thaw a little bit. I don't know what I had in mind to do if it was thawing. Cheer, I suppose. ~Ruth Stout, "The Second Season," How to Have a Green Thumb Without an Aching Back, 1955
Late February, and the air's so balmy
snowdrops and crocuses might be fooled
into early blooming. Then, the inevitable blizzard
will come, blighting our harbingers of spring,
and the numbed yards will go back undercover...
~Gail Mazur, "The Idea of Florida During a Winter Thaw," The Common, 1995
I used to try to decide which was the worst month of the year. In the winter I would choose February. I had it figured out that the reason God made February short a few days was because he knew that by the time people came to the end of it they would die if they had to stand one more blasted day. December and January are cold and wet, but, somehow, that's their right. February is just plain malicious. It knows your defenses are down... So February sneaks in a couple of beautiful days early on, and just when you're stretching out like a cat waking up, bang! February hits you right in the stomach... February is a mean bully. Nothing could be worse — except August. ~Katherine Paterson, Jacob Have I Loved, 1980
Thick February mists cling heavily
To the dead earth and to each leafless tree,
And closer down upon the hilltops draw,
Dull forecasts there of bright, sure-coming spring;
Yet the heart gathers hope and strange delight
From this dear, unlovely, wished-for sight
Of leaden-misted twilights lengthening.
~Emma Lazarus, "Expectation," c.1872
Along about the beginning of February, when the days of winter seem endless and no amount of wistful recollecting can bring back any air of summer, I caught one of those colds which last for two days in the children and two weeks with me. ~Shirley Jackson, Raising Demons, 1957
To the rough year just awake...
The brightest hour of unborn spring,
Through the winter wandering,
Found it seems the halcyon morn,
To hoar February born;
Bending from Heaven, in azure mirth,
It kissed the forehead of the earth,
And smiled upon the silent sea,
And bade the frozen streams be free;
And waked to music all their fountains,
And breathed upon the frozen mountains...
~Percy Bysshe Shelley, "The Invitation"
February makes a bridge and March breaks it. ~Proverb
Late February days; and now, at last,
Might you have thought that winter's woe was past;
So fair the sky was, and so soft the air.
~William Morris, "February: Bellerophon in Lycia," The Earthly Paradise: A Poem, 1870
It must be terrible to bury someone you love in early May... Or in September... Or at Christmas. It must be terrible at Christmas. February is a suitable month for dying. Everything around is dead, the trees black and frozen so that the appearance of green shoots two months hence seems preposterous, the ground hard and cold, the snow dirty, the winter hateful, hanging on too long. ~Anna Quindlen, One True Thing: A Novel, 1994
I am a little fellow,
Though I'm always up to date.
The days I hold within my hand are only twenty-eight;
But I just save my moments up,
And count them o'er and o'er,
Till in four years I've saved enough to make up one day more.
But little folks that kindly are, and pleasant in their play,
May save enough in far less time to make a happy day.
~Pauline Frances Camp, "February," in St. Nicholas, February 1906
It is frequently asked, "Why must February have only 28 days? Why can't you borrow one day from the end of January and one day from the beginning of March and make all three months 30 days long?" The answer is that while you can end January on the 30th, you can't begin March on the 2nd. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
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