37 Inspirational South Quotes

In the heart of the South, one can find a unique blend of charm, resilience, and wisdom, all of which are beautifully reflected in its rich tapestry of quotes. Whether you're seeking motivation, a touch of Southern humor, or a glimpse into the soul of this remarkable region, our curated collection of the top 37 Inspirational South Quotes promises to deliver. Each quote not only embodies the spirit of the South but also offers timeless lessons and reflections to inspire and uplift. So, grab a sweet tea, settle into your favorite rocking chair, and let these words take you on a journey through the enduring beauty and insight of Southern life.

1. “All over Atlanta that fall, in the blue twilights, girls came clicking home from their jobs in their clunky heels and miniskirts and opened their apartment windows to the winesap air, and got out ice cubes, and put on Petula Clark singing 'Downtown', and sat down to wait. Soon the young men would come, drifting out of their bachelor apartments in Bermuda shorts and Topsiders, carrying beers and gin and tonics, looking for a refill and a a date and the keeping of promises that hung in the bronze air like fruit on the eve of ripeness.” - Anne Rivers Siddons

2. “It was always so hot, and everyone was so polite, and everything was all surface but underneath it was like a bomb waiting to go off. I always felt that way about the South, that beneath the smiles and southern hospitality and politeness were a lot of guns and liquor and secrets.” - James McBride

3. “Louisiana in September was like an obscene phone call from nature. The air - moist, sultry, secretive, and far from fresh - felt as if it were being exhaled into one's face. Sometimes it even sounded like heavy breathing.” - Tom Robbins

4. “He tried to name which of the deadly seven might apply, and when he failed he decided to append an eighth, regret.” - Charles Frazier

5. “So I sit there kicked my heels, thinking about New Orleans, and watching a morbid blue-bottle fly attempt to commit suicide by butting his head against the windowpane.” - Thomas Bailey Aldrich

6. “Carolina beach music," Dupree said, coming up on the porch. "The holiest sound on earth.” - Pat Conroy

7. “Maycomb was a tired old town, even in 1932 when I first knew it. Somehow, it was hotter then. Men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon after their three o'clock naps. And by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frosting from sweating and sweet talcum. The day was twenty-four hours long, but it seemed longer. There's no hurry, for there's nowhere to go and nothing to buy...and no money to buy it with.” - Harper Lee

8. “Walking the streets of Charleston in the late afternoons of August was like walking through gauze or inhaling damaged silk.” - Pat Conroy

9. “Fincher was the kind of Southerner who will try to address you through a web of deep and antic southernness, and who assumes every body in earshot knows all about his parents and history and wants to hear an update about them at every opportunity. He looks young, but still manages to act 65.” - Richard Ford

10. “Everyone in the South has no time for reading because they are all too busy writing.” - William Faulkner

11. “Could you just imagine? If every suicide rose--think of Faulkner's Quentin Compson as a vampire. I don't hate the South I don't I don't. She wondered how they'd have worked it out in Cambridge when Quentin threw himself off the Andersen bridge into the Charles amid the odor of the honeysuckle, not the beer, sweat, rum, and tainted magnolias of this city, precariously beneath the level of the water. The Compson blood had thinned out; at least this way, he's restore it after a fashion.” - Susan Shwartz

12. “In my South, the most treasured things passed down from generation to generation are the family recipes.” - Robert St. John (editor)

13. “You can say a lot of bad things about Alabama, but you can't say that Alabamans as a people are duly afraid of deep fryers.” - John Green

14. “Though Anne was born in Alabama and schooled in Mississippi, she had traveled North, and, like many Southerners, gained a theoretical understanding of the concept of cold. But the mind is an overprotective parent. What it doesn't care for, it hides. Like many inhabiting the subtropics, Anne had repressed the reality of subzero mercury. ” - Kathy Reichs

15. “She was so Southern that she cried tears that came straight from the Mississippi.” - Sarah Addison Allen

16. “I've barely said five words to you. What indication could you possibly have that I am a Yankee?" "Well, we could start with the words 'what indication.' Someone from south of the Mason-Dixon would have said, 'Who the hell are you calling a Yankee?' Then we would have fought.” - Jana Deleon

17. “The women of the South have brought into American literature a unique mixture of domesticity and grotesquerie.” - James Dickey

18. “There's also way too much religion in the South to be consistent with good mental health.Still, I love traveling down there, especially when I'm in the mood for a quick trip to the thirteenth century. I'm not someone who buys into all that 'New South' shit you hear; I judge a place by the number of lynchings they've had, overall.” - George Carlin

19. “That's all a grit is, a vehicle. For whatever it is you rather be eating.” - Kathryn Stockett

20. “I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted.” - Flannery O'Connor

21. “She said that it was a mistake to have made as few superficial friends as I have done in my life, and to have concentrated only on the few things I have concentrated on--her, for one. My children, for another. Sportswriting and being an ordinary citizen. This did not leave me well enough armored for the unexpected, was her opinion. She said this was because I didn't know my parents very well, had gone to a military school, and grown up in the south, which was full of betrayers and secret-keepers and untrustworthy people, which I agree is true, though I never knew any of them.” - Richard Ford

22. “Summer in the deep South is not only a season, a climate, it's a dimension. Floating in it, one must be either proud or submerged.” - Eugene Walter

23. “Louie brought his new girlfriend over, and the nicest thing I can say about her is all her tattoos are spelled correctly.” - Robert Harling

24. “It stood calm against the suburban storm raging around it. The thunder screamed across the sky; it slapped the clouds into a heated turmoil that flew towards the south.” - J.D. Stroube

25. “The ranks opened covertly to avoid the corpse. The invulnerable dead man forced a way for himself. The youth looked keenly at the ashen face. The wind raised the tawny beard. It moved as if a hand were stroking it. He vaguely desired to walk around and around the body and stare; the impulse of the living to try to read in dead eyes the answer to the Question.” - Stephen Crane - The Red Badget of Courage

26. “Tyranny flourishes in those societies that reject the Reformed Faith. Tyranny is squelched and liberty flourishes in those societies that embrace the Reformed Faith in all its fullness.” - Joseph C. Morecraft III

27. “The past was like a bad dream; the future was all happy holiday as I moved Southwards week by week, easily, lazily, lingering as long as I dared, but always heeding the call!” - Kenneth Grahame

28. “Marcel was from Louisiana, so for four years Emily had been southern by association. She insisted on Lynchburg Lemonades. She scheduled interviews around the Gators. She championed gentility. Anyone at a dinner party who thought they could tell a joke making fun of the region encountered a faceful of Emily, quick and ferocious as a convert, as a woman who loved a man. Emily now had no claim to the South. The region and its interests would proceed without her.” - Marie-Helene Bertino

29. “She soon decided that she disliked the south, everything except for the humongous manor house. She did adore that. And perhaps, maybe Warren, since he came with the house.” - Lynn Hubbard

30. “No, I'm from the South, remember? We get snow when we've done something to upset God, which we don't do very often.” - Autumn Jordon

31. “Every culture has its southerners -- people who work as little as they can, preferring to dance, drink, sing brawl, kill their unfaithful spouses; who have livelier gestures, more lustrous eyes, more colorful garments, more fancifully decorated vehicles, a wonderful sense of rhythm, and charm, charm, charm; unambitious, no, lazy, ignorant, superstitious, uninhibited people, never on time, conspicuously poorer (how could it be otherwise, say the northerners); who for all their poverty and squalor lead enviable lives -- envied, that is, by work-driven, sensually inhibted, less corruptly governed northerners. We are superior to them, say the northerners, clearly superior. We do not shirk our duties or tell lies as a matter of course, we work hard, we are punctual, we keep reliable accounts. But they have more fun than we do ... They caution[ed] themselves as people do who know they are part of a superior culture: we mustn't let ourselves go, mustn't descend to the level of the ... jungle, street, bush, bog, hills, outback (take your pick). For if you start dancing on tables, fanning yourself, feeling sleepy when you pick up a book, developing a sense of rhythm, making love whenever you feel like it -- then you know. The south has got you.” - Susan Sontag

32. “In the South, there was a gentle tradition of 'it's only a crime if you get caught doing it.' Sometimes it was known as the Eleventh Commandment. Thou shall not get caught.” - C. L. Bevill

33. “Nobody used the minute hand. And Southerners were suspicious of Yankees who did.” - D. D. Scott

34. “His voice had this thick, Charleston accent, where every word had more syllables than ever intended, yet each word seemed as if it had been carefully chosen and presented in a way that only a man born and raised in the heart of the South could–distinguished and from a different time.” - Laura Miller, Butterfly Weeds

35. “Here, Fridays were dedicated to the two Bs–Beach and Boats.” - Laura Miller, Butterfly Weeds

36. “The way he talked about moving south reminded us of the Joads in Grapes of Wrath. He was a smart kid, but all he was thinking about was peaches.-Only Shot At A Good Tombstone, page 24” - Robert R. Mitchell

37. “we got out of the car for air and suddenly both of us were stoned with joy to realize that in the darkness all around us was fragrant green grass and the smell of fresh manure and warm waters. 'We're in the South! We've left the winter!' Faint daybreak illuminated green shoots by the side of the road. I took a deep breath; a locomotive howled across the darkness, mobile-bound. So were we. I took off my shirt and exulted” - Jack Kerouac