As we approach the autumnal equinox, which falls on Sept. 22 this year, we are reminded through these poetic quotes of life’s end, the cyclical nature of life and the fleeting seasons that mark our days. While we may have favorite seasons, they are all essential, with each serving a specific purpose, promoting growth, providing for rest and renewal, encouraging biodiversity and maintaining a balanced ecosystem. Likewise, the metaphorical seasonal symbols of life’s end, while somewhat less predictable than Mother Nature’s, each serve a purpose; the human experience is enriched by joyful events like birthdays and weddings and tempered by somber events like getting diagnosed with a serious illness or saying goodbye to a loved one who has died.

While our lives may differ from one another in many ways, some experiences are universal, namely, birth and death. The certainty of death is one of the most poignant facts of life, and in the face of that reality, we can find comfort and guidance in the wisdom of fellow travelers along life’s shared paths. May the following quotes of this “Poetic Quotes as Symbols of Life’s End” resonate with you and speak to your heart as you reflect on life’s cyclical, seasonal, and temporal nature. 

1. Let the campfire die… we can better see the summit, this night of stars.”

– J. W. Hackett

2. “Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.”

-John W. Gardner

 

3 .”And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

– Elizabeth Appell

4. ”Waking or asleep, / Thou of death must deem / Things more true and deep / Than we mortals dream, / Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?”

–Percy Bysshe Shelley

5. “Now at journey’s end, circling the shallow stream… years of open sea.”

– J. W. Hackett

6. “For poems are like rainbows: they escape you quickly.”

—Langston Hughes

7. “Farewell–and though there be no budding in the spring, no autumn withering–all is well.”

-Hakusai

8. ”I shift my pillow closer to the full moon.”

– Saiba, Died on the fifteenth day of the eighth month, 1858 at the age of fifty-one.

9. Yesterday is gone and its tale told. Today new seeds are growing.”

– Rumi

10. “How beautifully leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days.”

– John Burrows

 

11. “And if you don’t believe the sun will rise, stand alone and greet the coming night in the last remaining light.”

– Chris Cornell

12. “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.”

– Albert Einstein

13. “Our life dreams the Utopia. Our death achieves the Ideal.”

-Victor Hugo

 

14. “Time is the school in which we learn, time is the fire in which we burn.”

– Delmore Schwartz

15. “Take your cues from trees in autumn, which do not stubbornly hold onto their leaves or will them to stay green. Resisting change doesn’t stop it from happening. Let go, if only a little. Try to make yourself at home in a new season. Keep moving.”

– Maggie Smith

16. “The year hastens to the close. What is it to me? That I am 25 or 58 is as nothing. Should I mourn that the spring flowers are gone, that the summer fruit has ripened, that the harvest is ripened, that the snow has fallen?”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

17. “Someday, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love. Then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.”

– Teilhard de Chardin

18. “Sometimes we stare so long at the balloon in the sky that we forget our ice cream is melting on the plate. Enjoy your ice cream!”

-Anonymous

 

19. “The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.”

– Rabindranath Tagore

20. “Life is for the living. Death is for the dead. Let life be like music. And death a note unsaid.”

-Langston Hughes

21. “The stillness of dawn: crashing between the branches, a solitary leaf.”

– J. W. Hackett

22. “The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Whoever will be born must destroy a world.”

– Hermann Hesse

23. “Life is not like water. Things in life don’t necessarily flow over the shortest possible route.”

– Haruki Murakami

24. “Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.”

– Anne Lamott

 

25. “In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.”

– William Blake

26. “Kindness is like snow—it beautifies everything it covers.”

– Kahlil Gibran