Celebrate Summer With These 50 Best Summer Solstice Quotes

For those of us living in the Northern Hemisphere, summer unofficially begins on Memorial Day Weekend. But the actual, official first day of summer this year is June 20, 2024. This date is the astronomical beginning of the summer season known as the summer solstice. And we're ready to celebrate with these 50 inspiring summer solstice quotes!

Also known as estival solstice or (sometimes) Midsummer, the summer solstice is the exact moment when the sun reaches its farthest point from the celestial equator in its path through the sky. For the northern part of Earth, this will be on Thursday, June 20, 2024, at 4:51 p.m. EST, according to Almanac. At that precise time, the North Pole will be at its maximum tilt toward the sun, making the sun appear the highest in the sky and giving those of us on Earth the most daylight hours and the shortest night of the calendar year. Conversely, the daylight hours are the shortest on this day in the Southern Hemisphere and the sun is at its lowest point, as the June solstice marks the start of winter.

Since the date of the June Solstice is an astronomical event based on when the sun reaches its highest point in the sky (and not a date on the traditional Gregorian calendar), it can vary from year to year—but it is always somewhere between June 20 and June 22.

Are you ready to greet the warm weather and longer days with open arms? This list of 50 summer solstice quotes is sure to inspire you to embrace those endless beach days and magical summer sunsets! 

Related: June Holidays & Observances 2024 by Day, Week, Month

50 Summer Solstice Quotes

1. “The summer solstice is a time for strength and vitality for action and movement.” ― Carole Carlton

2. “Sweet, sweet burn of sun and summer wind, And you my friend, my new fun thing, my summer fling. Laugh, oh how we would laugh at anything, and so pretend a never-ending summer fling.” — K.D. Lang

3. “I have only to break into the tightness of a strawberry, and I see summer—its dust and lowering skies.” — Toni Morrison

4. “It was June, and the world smelled of roses. The sunshine was like powdered gold over the grassy hillside.” — Maud Hart Lovelace

5. “Green was the silence, wet was the light, the month of June trembled like a butterfly.” — Pablo Neruda

6. “June has never looked more beautiful than she does now, unadorned and honest, vulnerable yet invincible.” ― Marie Lu

7. “And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.” ― F. Scott Fitzgerald 

8. “...This is the solstice, the still point of the sun, its cusp and midnight,
the year’s threshold and unlocking, where the past lets go of and becomes the future; the place of caught breath, the door of a vanished house left ajar...” ― Margaret Atwood

9. “I have laughed more than daffodils and cried more than June.” ― Sanober Khan

10. “I wonder what it would be like to live in a world where it was always June.” ― L. M. Montgomery 

Related: 25 Tasty Non-Alcoholic Summer Drinks 

11. “Smell the sea and feel the sky. Let your soul and spirit fly.” — Van Morrison

12. “Hot weather opens the skull of a city, exposing its white brain, and its heart of nerves, which sizzle like the wires inside a lightbulb. And there exudes a sour extra-human smell that makes the very stone seem flesh-alive, webbed and pulsing.” — Truman Capote

13. “Everything good, everything magical happens between the months of June and August.” — Jenny Han 

14. “Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.” — Henry James

15. “The days were longer then (for time, like money, is measured by our needs), when summer afternoons were spacious, and the clock ticked slowly in the winter evenings.” ― George Eliot

16. “Both the Winter and the Summer Solstices are expressions of love. They show us the opposition of light and dark, expansion and contraction, that characterize our experiences in the Earth school so that we can recognize our options as we move through our lives.” — Gary Zukav

17. “Summer was a book of hope. That's why I loved and hated summers. Because they made me want to believe.” — Benjamin Alire Sáenz

18. “Summer set lip to earth's bosom bare and left the flushed print in a poppy there.” ― Francis Thompson

19. “The days draw out, the weather gets warmer, and it's what we call summer, with a bitter laugh when we’ve said it.” — Stan Barstow

20. “One way of celebrating the Solstice is to consider it a sacred time of reflection, release, restoration, and renewal.” — Sarah Ban Breathnach

Related: 50 Best Summer Movies of All Time

21. “What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.” — John Steinbeck

22. “Early summer days are a jubilee time for birds. In the fields, around the house, in the barn, in the woods, in the swamp—everywhere love and songs and nests and eggs.” — E.B. White

23. “A perfect summer day is when the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing, and the lawn mower is broken.” — James Dent

24. “Summertime is always the best of what might be.” — Charles Bowden

25. “Oh, the summer night, has a smile of light, And she sits on a sapphire throne.” — Bryan Proctor

26. “It is Summer, it is the solstice the crowd is cheering, the crowd is laughing in detail permanently, seriously without thought.” — William Carlos Williams

27. “But thy eternal Summer shall not fade.” — William Shakespeare

28. “Eternal summer gilds them yet. But all, except their sun, is set.” — Lord Byron

29. “Summer is come, for every spray now springs.” — Henry Howard

30. “After the longest night, tomorrow we sing up the dawn. There is a rejoicing that, even in the darkest time, the sun is not vanquished. As of tomorrow, the days begin to get longer as the light of day grows. While the gentle winter sun slowly opens its eyes, let us all bring more light and compassion into the world.” ― Dacha Avelin

Related: Easy Summer Salad Recipes

31. “Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the treehouse; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape; but most of all, summer was Dill.” — Harper Lee

32. “In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.” — Albert Camus

33. “Let the energy of the summer solstice help you to balance, release, recharge.” — Unknown

34. “Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability.” — Sam Keen

35. “I love how summer just wraps its arms around you like a warm blanket.” — Kellie Elmore

36. “When the sun is shining, I can do anything; no mountain is too high, no trouble too difficult to overcome.” — Wilma Rudolph

37. “I am summer, come to lure you away from your computer… come dance on my fresh grass, dig your toes into my beaches.” — Oriana Green

38. “The summer night is like a perfection of thought.” — Unknown

39. “Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it.” — Russell Baker

40. “Summer is the annual permission slip to be lazy. To do nothing and have it count for something. To lie in the grass and count the stars. To sit on a branch and study the clouds.” — Regina Brett

41. “Enjoy the sun that is now out and cherish it so that it can move eternally into your heart.” — Unknown

42. “The summer night is like a perfection of thought.” — Wallace Stevens

43. “The sun does not shine for a few trees and flowers, but for the wide world’s joy.” — Henry Ward Beecher

44. “It is easy to forget now, how effervescent and free we all felt that summer.” — Anna Godbersen

45. “The great gift of the energy of the summer solstice is that it’s designed to move you from one phase to the next on your terms.” — Deborah King

46. “May the long time sun shine upon you all love surround you, and the pure light within you guide your way on.” — Snatam Kaur

47. “Let every dawn be to you as the beginning of life, and every setting sun be to you as its close.” — John Ruskin

48. “Not only is it summer solstice, there is a full moon. May love surround you like sunshine on a sunny day.” — William Shakespeare

49. “If I had to choose a religion, the sun as the universal giver of life would be my god.” ― Napoleon Bonaparte

50. “To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides.” — David Viscott

Next, check out these 100 Summer Instagram Captions!