It was no summer progress. A cold coming they had of it, at this time of the year; just, the worst time of the year, to take a journey, and specially a long journey, in. The ways deep, the weather sharp, the days short, the sun farthest off in solstitio brumali, the very dead of winter. See Eliot 306:73.

-Andrewes, Lancelot
  Of the Nativity, sermon15.

Sumer is icumen in, Lhude sing cuccu! Groweth sed, and bleweth med, And springth the wude nu. See also Pound 664:27.

-Anonymous
c.1250  'Sumer is icumen in', l.1^4.

Human good turns out to be activity of soul exhibiting excellence, and if there is more than one sort of excellence, in accordance with the best and most complete.Foroneswallowdoesnot makea summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy.

-Aristotle
Nicomachean Ethics, bk.1, ch.7,1098 (translated by Sir David Ross).

The Master: records prove the title good: Yet figures fail you, for they cannot say How many men whose names you never knew Are proud to tell their sons they saw you play. They share the sunlight of your summer day Of thirty years; and they, with you, recall How, through those well-wrought centuries, your hand Reshaped the history of bat and ball.

-Aristotle
  'To  John Berry Hobbs on his Seventieth Birthday'.

All the live murmur of a summer's day.

-Arnold, Matthew
  Poems:  A New Edition,'The Scholar-Gipsy', l.20.

Still I enjoy The long sweetness of the simultaneity, yours and mine, ours and mine, The mosquitoey summer night light.

-Ashbery,John Lawrence
Shadow Train,'Here Everything Is Still Floating'.

The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.

-Bible (Old Testament)
Jeremiah 8:20.

O thou who passest through our valleys in Thy strength, curb thy fierce steeds, ally the heat That flames from their large nostrils! thou,O Summer, Beneath our oaks hast slept while we beheld With joy thy ruddy limbs and flourishing hair.

-Blake,William
  Poetical Sketches,'To Summer'.

Summer has set in with its usual severity.

-Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
  Letter to Vincent Novello, 9 May.

While Spring shall pour his showers, as oft he wont, And bathe thy breathing tresses, meekest Eve! While Summer loves to sport Beneath thy lingering light; While sallow Autumn fills thy lap with leaves, Or Winter, yelling through the troublous air, Affrights thy shrinking train, And rudely rends thy robes.

-Collins,William
  Odes on Several Descriptive and  Allegoric Subjects,'Ode to Evening', l.41^8.

Wellcome, all Wonders in one sight! Eternity shut in a span. Summer in Winter, Day in Night. Heaven in Earth and God in Man.

-Crashaw, Richard
  'Hymn of the Nativity' (published1652), l.79.

You that love England, who have an ear for her music, The slow movement of clouds in benediction, Clear arias of light thrilling over her uplands, Over the chords of summer sustained peacefully.

-Day-Lewis, Cecil
  The Magnetic Mountain, pt.4, no.32.

Inebriate of Airöam Iö And Debauchee of Dewö Reelingöthro endless summer daysö From inns of Molten Blueö

-Dickinson, Emily Elizabeth
c.1860  Complete Poems, no.214 (first published1861).

He brought light out of darkness, not out of a lesser light; he canbring thysummerout of winter, though thou have no spring† God comes to thee, not as in the dawning of the day, not as in the bud of the spring, but as the sun at noontoillustrateall shadows,asthesheavesinharvestto fill all penuries. All occasions invite his mercies, and all times are his seasons.

-Donne,John
  Sermons,'Christmas Day,1624'.

I purpose to fight it out on this line, if it takes all summer.

-Grant, Ulysses S(impson)
  Despatch to Washington from Spottsylvania,11 May. Quoted in P C Headley The Life and Campaigns of General U  . S. Grant (1869), ch.23.

Pity the poor creatures in warmer countries where the seasons never change.Where summer is eternal and they never know the pain of waiting and the joy at last when summer comes.

-Guy, Ray
  That Far Greater Bay,'Catching Conners'.

My life was a strange one that summer, the last summer of its kind there was ever to be. I was riding high on sex and self-esteemöit was my time, my belle e¤  poqueö but allthewhilewith a faintflickerofcalamity, likeflames around a photograph, something seen out of the corner of the eye.

-Hollinghurst, Alan
  The Swimming Pool Library, ch.1.

Summer afternoonösummer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.

-James, Henry
Quoted in Edith Wharton  A Backward Glance (1934), ch.10, section 6.

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: 'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, But being too happy in thine happiness That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees, In some melodious plot Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

-Keats,John
  Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St.  Agnes and Other Poems,'Ode to a Nightingale', stanza1.

And the case of butterflies so rich it looks As if all summer settled there and died.

-Larkin, Philip Arthur
  'Autumn'.