67 Inspiring Winter Quotes

As the world transforms into a winter wonderland, the chilly air and sparkling snow invite reflection and inspiration. Winter, with its serene landscapes and cozy evenings, often brings a unique opportunity to pause and appreciate life's quieter moments. Whether you find comfort in wrapping up with a warm blanket and a cup of hot cocoa, or enjoy the crisp air of a winter walk, these 67 inspiring winter quotes are designed to encapsulate the season’s magic and wonder. Let these words warm your heart and inspire you to embrace the beauty and stillness that winter so generously offers.

1. “Winter is not a season, it's an occupation.” - Sinclair Lewis

2. “I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.” - T.S. Eliot

3. “Surely everyone is aware of the divine pleasures which attend a wintry fireside; candles at four o'clock, warm hearthrugs, tea, a fair tea-maker, shutters closed, curtains flowing in ample draperies to the floor, whilst the wind and rain are raging audibly without.” - Thomas De Quincey

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

5. “That time of year thou mayst in me beholdWhen yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hangUpon those boughs which shake against the cold,Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.In me thou seest the twilight of such dayAs after sunset fadeth in the west,Which by and by black night doth take away,Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.In me thou see'st the glowing of such fireThat on the ashes of his youth doth lie,As the death-bed whereon it must expireConsumed with that which it was nourish'd by.This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,To love that well which thou must leave ere long.” - William Shakespeare

6. “A man says a lot of things in summer he doesn't mean in winter.” - Patricia Briggs

7. “Melancholy were the sounds on a winter's night.” - Virginia Woolf

8. “In honor of October, really just hours away now.....Brew me a cup for a winter's night.For the wind howls loud and the furies fight;Spice it with love and stir it with care,And I'll toast our bright eyes,my sweetheart fair.” - Minna Thomas Antrim

9. “People say the beach is the great equaliserWho are they kidding?Sit at Bondi and watch the boys flexAnd the girls walk bolt uprightIt looks like a nightmare episode of Baywatch.The true equaliser is the mountain coldAnd stacks of cold flung togetherMaybe then we’d listen to what each other is sayingInstead of checking out the best bods.And as I wrap another layerAround my Size 10I think of Jack’s favourite saying:“today’s tan is tomorrow’s cancer”I walk outsideAnd whistle at the wind.” - Steven Herrick

10. “Summer will end soon enough, and childhood as well.” - George R.R. Martin

11. “Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home.” - Edith Sitwell

12. “Hair is gray and the firers are burning. So many dreams on the shelf. You say I wanted you to be proud of me. I always wanted that myself.” - Tori Amos

13. “What was that you gave me to eat?" Winter panicked.A Filler Crisp," Clover said, his eyes seventy percent concerned and thirty percent mischievous.” - Obert Skye

14. “[Clover] secretly hitched a ride with a nice German couple and their new baby...Clover appeared to the baby, so as to be a delightful, soothing surprise. Well, the child did like Clover. In fact, she held him and cooed. When the parents turned around to look at her and saw their child holding a furry, living creature, they needlessly panicked.” - Obert Skye

15. “If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome."[Meditations Divine and Moral]” - Anne Bradstreet

16. “October extinguished itself in a rush of howling winds and driving rain and November arrived, cold as frozen iron, with hard frosts every morning and icy drafts that bit at exposed hands and faces.” - J.K. Rowling

17. “I gave three quiet cheers for Minnesota. In Seattle a dusty inch of anything white and chilly means the city lapses into full-on panic mode, as if each falling flake crashes to earth with its own individual baggie of used hypodermic needles. It’s ridiculous.” - Cherie Priest

18. “June suns, you cannot store themTo warm the winter's cold,The lad that hopes for heavenShall fill his mouth with mould.” - A.E. Housman

19. “There are adventures of the spirit and one can travel in books and interest oneself in people and affairs. One need never be dull as long as one has friends to help, gardens to enjoy and books in the long winter evenings.” - D. E. Stevenson

20. “Snow flurries began to fall and they swirled around people's legs like house cats. It was magical, this snow globe world.” - Sarah Addison Allen

21. “She went to the window. A fine sheen of sugary frost covered everything in sight, and white smoke rose from chimneys in the valley below the resort town. The window opened to a rush of sharp early November air that would have the town in a flurry of activity, anticipating the tourists the colder weather always brought to the high mountains of North Carolina. She stuck her head out and took a deep breath. If she could eat the cold air, she would. She thought cold snaps were like cookies, like gingersnaps. In her mind they were made with white chocolate chunks and had a cool, brittle vanilla frosting. They melted like snow in her mouth, turning creamy and warm.” - Sarah Addison Allen

22. “March came in that winter like the meekest and mildest of lambs, bringing days that were crisp and golden and tingling, each followed by a frosty pink twilight which gradually lost itself in an elfland of moonshine.” - L.M. Montgomery

23. “Although it was only six o'clock, the night was already dark. The fog, made thicker by its proximity to the Seine, blurred every detail with its ragged veils, punctured at various distances by the reddish glow of lanterns and bars of light escaping from illuminated windows. The road was soaked with rain and glittered under the street-lamps, like a lake reflecting strings of lights. A bitter wind, heavy with icy particles, whipped at my face, its howling forming the high notes of a symphony whose bass was played by swollen waves crashing into the piers of the bridges below. The evening lacked none of winter's rough poetry.” - Théophile Gautier

24. “Like some winter animal the moon licks the salt of your hand,Yet still your hair foams violet as a lilac treeFrom which a small wood-owl calls.” - Johannes Bobrowski

25. “Every Autumn now my thoughts return to snow. Snow is something I identify myself with. Like my father, I am a snow person.” - Charlie English

26. “The season was waning fastOur nights were growing cold at lastI took her to bed with silk and song,'Lay still, my love, I won’t be long;I must prepare my body for passion.''O, your body you give, but all else you ration.''It is because of these dreams of a sylvan scene:A bleeding nymph to leave me serene...I have dreams of a trembling wench.''You have dreams,' she said, 'that cannot be quenched.''Our passion,' said I, 'should never be feared;As our longing for love can never be cured.Our want is our way and our way is our will,We have the love, my love, that no one can kill.''If night is your love, then in dreams you’ll fulfill...This love, our love, that no one can kill.'Yet want is my way, and my way is my will,Thus I killed my love with a sleeping pill.” - Roman Payne

27. “Perhpas if I call out to Rat he might hear," said the Mole to himself, but without much hope.Rat! Ratty! O Rat, please hear me!" he called out as loudly as he could, holding up his lantern as he did so, waving it about/ But the wind rushed and roared around him even more, and snatched his weak words away the moment they were they were uttered, and scattered them wildly and uselessly as if they were flakes of snow,Even worse, the light of the lantern began to gutter, and then, quiet suddenly, an extra strong gust of wind blew it out.Well then," said the daunted but resolute Mole, putting the spent lantern on the ground, "there's nothing else for it! Frozen rivers are dangerous thinngs, no doubt, but I must try to cross, despite the dangers."--The Willows in the Winter” - William Horwood

28. “It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.” - Charles Dickens

29. “A cold wind was blowing from the north, and it made the trees rustle like living things.” - George R.R. Martin

30. “...as the slow sea sucked at the shore and then withdrew, leaving the strip of seaweed bare and the shingle churned, the sea birds raced and ran upon the beaches. Then that same impulse to flight seized upon them too. Crying, whistling, calling, they skimmed the placid sea and left the shore. Make haste, make speed, hurry and begone; yet where, and to what purpose? The restless urge of autumn, unsatisfying, sad, had put a spell upon them and they must flock, and wheel, and cry; they must spill themselves of motion before winter came.” - Daphne du Maurier

31. “This twinned twinkle was delightful but not completely satisfying; or rather it only sharpened my appetite for other tidbits of light and shade, and I walked on in a state of raw awareness that seemed to transform the whole of my being into one big eyeball rolling in the world's socket.Through peacocked lashes I saw the dazzling diamond reflection of the low sun on the round back of a parked automobile. To all kinds of things a vivid pictorial sense had been restored by the sponge of the thaw. Water in overlapping festoons flowed down one sloping street and turned gracefully into another. With ever so slight a note of meretricious appeal, narrow passages between buildings revealed treasures of brick and purple. I remarked for the first time the humble fluting - last echoes of grooves on the shafts of columns - ornamenting a garbage can, and I also saw the rippling upon its lid - circles diverging from a fantastically ancient center. Erect, dark-headed shapes of dead snow (left by the blades of a bulldozer last Friday) were lined up like rudimentary penguins along the curbs, above the brilliant vibration of live gutters. I walked up, and I walked down, and I walked straight into a delicately dying sky, and finally the sequence of observed and observant things brought me, at my usual eating time, to a street so distant from my usual eating place that I decided to try a restaurant which stood on the fringe of the town. Night had fallen without sound or ceremony when I came out again. ("The Vane Sisters")” - Vladimir Nabokov

32. “He brewed his tea in a blue china pot, poured it into a chipped white cup with forget-me-nots on the handle, and dropped in a dollop of honey and cream. He sat by the window, cup in hand, watching the first snow fall. "I am," he sighed deeply, "contented as a clam. I am a most happy man.” - Ethel Pochocki

33. “She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, a tiny, bloody angel in the snow, and they were going to destroy her.” - Maggie Stiefvater

34. “He'd shoved his toque and mitts into the sleeve of his parka when he'd come in the night before, and now, thrusting his right arm into the armhole, he hit the blockage. At a practiced shove the pompom of the toque crowned the cuff followed by his mitts, like a tiny birth.” - Louise Penny

35. “On that walk around the building, two sets of cops coming out stopped to tell our guys to hustle us inside so they could head back out on the road. Accidents everywhere. A pileup oneach of two major roads. “Welcome to winter,” one said. “When fifty percent of drivers should have their licenses temporarily suspended.” - Kelley Armstrong

36. “Winter came in days that were gray and still. They were the kind of days in which people locked in their animals and themselves and nothing seemed to stir but the smoke curling upwards from clay chimneys and an occasional red-winged blackbird which refused to be grounded. And it was cold. Not the windy cold like Uncle Hammer said swept the northern winter, but a frosty, idle cold that seeped across a hot land ever lookung toward the days of green and ripening fields, a cold thay lay uneasy during during its short stay as it crept through the cracks of poorly constucted houses and forced the people inside huddled around ever-burning fires to wish it gone.” - Mildred D. Taylor

37. “My old grandmother always used to say, Summer friends will melt away like summer snows, but winter friends are friends forever.” - George R.R. Martin

38. “L.A. kills people.' Jacaranda said. 'You're lucky you're leaving. You'll be able to write.'She looked paler, going through another depression, smoking in bed in her lilac room. The walls were the color of her veins. She was getting too thin, even for the modeling. . .Jacaranda died last winter when the flowering trees were bare. You couldn't even tell which ones once cried the purple blossoms she named herself after.” - Francesca Lia Block

39. “I love to watch the fine mist of the night come on, The windows and the stars illumined, one by one, The rivers of dark smoke pour upward lazily, And the moon rise and turn them silver. I shall see The springs, the summers, and the autumns slowly pass; And when old Winter puts his blank face to the glass, I shall close all my shutters, pull the curtains tight, And build me stately palaces by candlelight.” - Charles Baudelaire

40. “still other winters average their rain months into a long, cold season of relentless sog and little color. At such times, looking out through the spattered glass, I feel, deep in some spongy, unignorable organ, that we will have floods, and damage, and losses; we will have gray till the cows come home, and there will be no more cows--they'll all just rot, drown, or simply wash away. We will have rain until the very hills dissolve. And when the dirty cotton swaddling of fog finally falls away, we will all be desperate for vital signs.” - Robert Michael Pyle

41. “The boys were going to a place that none had ever been before, to serve an order that had been the enemy of their kith and kin for thousands of years, yet Jon saw no tears, heard no wailing mothers. These are winter's people, [...] tears freeze upon your cheeks where they come from.” - George R.R. Martin

42. “It hardly mattered. She was tired of waiting for him to acknowledge who he was. Tired of donning a false mask of gaiety when she was so much more—felt so much more—beneath. No one had ever noticed her mask. No one but him. If he couldn’t or wouldn’t make the first move, then damn it, she would.” - Elizabeth Hoyt

43. “And the cobwebs of timewould surrender,dormant, so that the rainbowsof new eras can emergeDespite the hollownessof you.” - Nema Al-Araby

44. “Then she smiles, like it'sthe first time she's seen sunafter a decade of winters.” - Emma Cameron

45. “Ree Dolly stood at the break of day on her cold front steps and smelled coming flurries and saw meat. Meat hung from trees across the creek. Carcasses hung pale of flesh with fatty gleam from low limbs of saplings in the side yards. Three halt haggard houses formed a kneeling rank on the far creekside and each had two or more skinned torsos dangling by rope from sagged limbs, venison left to the weather for two nights and three days so the early blossoming of decay might round the flavor, sweeten that meat to the bone.” - Daniel Woodrell

46. “He shoved his hips against her, reminding her of what they had just done, and said, “I had never bedded a woman before you. I made that plain. Did you think I let you seduce me lightly? No, I did not. You made a deal with me the moment you gave me entry into your body.”“I made no such deal!” Her eyes were angry—and frightened—but he would not let her make him back down.“Precious Isabel,” he whispered. “You made a deal with your heart, your soul, and your body, and you sealed it with the wash of your climax on my c*ck.”She blinked, looking dazed. He’d never used such words before, especially not with her, but their bluntness was necessary.” - Elizabeth Hoyt

47. “I knew by the signs it would be a hard winter. The hollies bore a heavy crop of berries and birds stripped them bare. Crows quarreled in reaped fields and owls cried in the mountains, mournful as widows. Fur and moss grew thicker than usual. Cold rains came, driven sideways through the trees by north winds, and snows followed.” - Sarah Micklem

48. “Over the wintry forest, winds howl in rage with no leaves to blow.” - Natsume Soseki

49. “You can only look forward to a South Dakota winter if, as with childbirth, remodeling a house, or writing a novel, you're able to forget how bad it was the last time.” - Dan O'Brien

50. “Deep in Decemberit's nice to remember without a hurt the heart is hollow.” - Tom Jones

51. “I would do violence for one glimpse of your naked breasts. Bleed for one taste of your nipple on my tongue. (Winter Makepeace)” - Elizabeth Hoyt

52. “I'll never look at you in any way but complete admiration.” He stroked her hair soothingly. “You will never be a millstone about my neck. Rather you're the sunshine that brightens my day.” He swallowed. “Don't you see? You brought me into the daylight. You've embraced parts of me that I was never able to let see light. Don't make me retreat again into the night. (Winter Makepeace)” - Elizabeth Hoyt

53. “But he place a gentle palm under her chin and turned her face back to him. “I'm privileged to see you like this,” he said, his eyes fierce. “Wear you social mask at your balls and parties and when you visit your friends out there, but when we are alone, just the two of us in here, promise me this: that you'll show me only your real face, no matter how ugly you might think it. That's our true intimacy, not sex, but the ability to be ourselves when we are together. (Winter Makepeace)” - Elizabeth Hoyt

54. “It is growing cold. Winter is putting footsteps in the meadow. What whiteness boasts that sun that comes into this wood! One would say milk-colored maidens are dancing on the petals of orchids. How coldly burns our sun! One would say its rays of light are shards of snow, one imagines the sun lives upon a snow crested peak on this day. One would say she is a woman who wears a gown of winter frost that blinds the eyes. Helplessness has weakened me. Wandering has wearied my legs.” - Roman Payne

55. “He lived with his mother, father and sister; had a room of his own, with the fourth-floor windows staring on seas of rooftops and the glitter of winter nights when home lights brownly wave beneath the heater whiter blaze of stars--those stars that in the North, in the clear nights, all hang frozen tears by the billions, with January Milky Ways like silver taffy, veils of frost in the stillness, huge blinked, throbbing to the slow beat of time and universal blood.” - Jack Kerouac

56. “We feel cold, but we don't mind it, because we will not come to harm. And if we wrapped up against the cold, we wouldn't feel other things, like the bright tingle of the stars, or the music of the aurora, or best of all the silky feeling of moonlight on our skin. It's worth being cold for that.” - Philip Pullman

57. “...all winter the acorns and red Maple leaf moldered in silence - in the same way grief is gnawing at me - slowly, imperceptibly... consuming...” - John Geddes

58. “Maybe eventually winter will finish our job for us and end the world in ice instead of blood.” - Isaac Marion

59. “...summer softens lines that winter cruelly shows...” - John Geddes A Familiar Rain

60. “...I pray this winter be gentle and kind - a season of rest from the wheel of the mind...” - John Geddes A Familiar Rain

61. “...the winter is kind and leaves red berries on the boughs for hungry sparrows...” - John Geddes

62. “It was an amazing garden like nothing Will had ever seen. Everything was covered in snow and glittering ice, the winding paths, the clusters of trees and what looked like mazes. And here and there blue fountains splashed and a river meandered between them, though the water didn’t look like water at all but like a stream of sapphires. And strangest of all was how see-through everything looked, trees showing through trees, the river showing through heaps of snow. It was all like a daydream, half imagination, half reality. But Will knew that it was real.” - Dew Pellucid

63. “Don't judge me. Ethics and morality no longer exist in our world. It's a luxury of the past, afforded only to those who had a future.” - T.M. Williams

64. “Spiders evidently as surprised by the weather as the rest of us: their webs were still everywhere - little silken laundry lines with perfect snowflakes hung out in rows to dry.” - Leslie Land

65. “I'm falling apart, one part after another. Falling down on the world like snow. Half of me is already on the ground, watching from below.” - Ashly Lorenzana

66. “I'm pretty lost in becoming all this frost. Bitter, like Winter. Strung-out like a string of pearls.” - Ashly Lorenzana

67. “The seasonal urge is strong in poets. Milton wrote chiefly in winter. Keats looked for spring to wake him up (as it did in the miraculous months of April and May, 1819). Burns chose autumn. Longfellow liked the month of September. Shelley flourished in the hot months. Some poets, like Wordsworth, have gone outdoors to work. Others, like Auden, keep to the curtained room. Schiller needed the smell of rotten apples about him to make a poem. Tennyson and Walter de la Mare had to smoke. Auden drinks lots of tea, Spender coffee; Hart Crane drank alcohol. Pope, Byron, and William Morris were creative late at night. And so it goes.” - Helen Bevington