Its July Quotes

#1. I remember, I remember how my childhood fleeted by. The mirth of its December, and the warmth of its July.

Winthrop Mackworth Praed

#2. Look out into the July night, and see the broad belt of silver flame which flashes up the half of heaven, fresh and delicate as the bonfires of the meadow-flies. Yet the powers of numbers cannot compute its enormous age, - lasting as space and time, - embosomed in time and space.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#3. The linden, in the fervors of July,
Hums with a louder concert. When the wind
Sweeps the broad forest in its summer prime,
As when some master-hand exulting sweeps
The keys of some great organ, ye give forth
The music of the woodland depths, a hymn
Of gladness and of thanks.

William C. Bryant

#4. 309Knee-high by the Fourth of July. So it must be June. Every farmhouse in its cloud of trees. There is a way trees stir before a rain, as if they already felt the heaviness. It all just went on and on, the United States of America. It was so easy to forget that most of the world was cornfields.

Marilynne Robinson

#5. Every empire, however, tells itself and the world that it is unlike all other empires, that its mission is not to plunder and control but to educate and liberate.
(Los Angeles Times, July 20, 2003)

Edward W. Said

#6. Silence gradually spread its great, fragile butterfly wings across the ward. The sun had disappeared, replaced by grey and rain. This particular month of July was reading the script for March.

Martin Page

#7. The Fourth of July-memorable in the history of our nation as the great day of independence to its countrymen-had no claim upon our sympathies. They made a flag and threw it to the heavens and bid it float forever; but every star in it was against us.

Henry McNeal Turner

#8. The consolations of space are nameless things.
It was after the neurosis of winter. It was
In the genius of summer that they blew up
The statue of Jove among the boomy clouds.
It took all day to quieten the sky
And then to refill its emptiness again ...

Wallace Stevens

#9. I play the radio and moon about ... and dream of Utopias where its always July the 24th 1935, in the middle of summer forever.

Zelda Fitzgerald

#10. Enjoy the peace your valor won. Let independence be our boast, Ever mindful what it cost; Ever grateful for the prize, Let its altar reach the skies!

Joseph Hopkinson

#11. From April 1775 to July 1776, the undeclared war between England and its American colonies smoldered, flared up, appeared to sputter out ... It was hardly, ever, a mass rebellion.

Gore Vidal

#12. My countrymen, we hold a rich deposit in trust for ourselves and for all our brethren of mankind. It is the fire of liberty. If it becomes extinguished, our darkened land will cast a mournful shadow over the nations. If it lives, its blaze will enlighten and gladden the whole earth.

Francis Scott Key

#13. Along the river's summer walk,
The withered tufts of asters nod;
And trembles on its arid stalk
the hoar plum of the golden-rod.

John Greenleaf Whittier

#14. The suicide bombers who struck London on 7 July 2005 killed 52 innocent people and wounded hundreds more. All of them must live with their memories. And the rest of us will always remember where we were when we heard that London had been hit by the worst terrorist attack in its history.

Pauline Neville-Jones

#15. Eight grown Americans out of ten dread the coming of the Fourth, with its pandemonium and its perils, and they rejoice when it is gone-if still alive.

Mark Twain

#16. A bookshelf is as particular to its owner as are his or her clothes; a personality is stamped on a library just as a shoe is shaped by the foot.
[Baffled at a Bookcase (London Review of Books, Vol. 33 No. 15, 28 July 2011)]

Alan Bennett

#17. Modern Architecture died in St. Louis, Missouri, on July 15, 1972, at 3.32 p.m. (or thereabouts), when the infamous Pruitt Igoe scheme, or rather several of its slab blocks, were given the final coup de grace by dynamite.

Charles Jencks

#18. On July 2, 1964, President Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act. Its enactment, following the longest continuous debate in the history of the U.S. Senate, enshrined into law the basic principle upon which our country was founded - that all people are created equal.

Thomas Perez

#19. Our great modern Republic. May those who seek the blessings of its institutions and the protection of its flag remember the obligations they impose.

Ulysses S. Grant

#20. In fact, July felt he had reached a point in his life where virtually nothing was known.

Larry McMurtry

#21. At noon, on the Fourth of July, 1826, while the Liberty Bell was again sounding its old message to the people of Philadelphia, the soul of Thomas Jefferson passed on; and a few hours later John Adams entered into rest, with the name of his old friend upon his lips.

Allen Johnson

#22. This was a troublesome supplication, because at the dawn of July, Ukraine was to celebrate the first birthday of its ultramodern constitution, which makes
us feel very nationalistic, and so many people would be on vacation in foreign places.

Jonathan Safran Foer

#23. July 2. A beautiful day for Labrador. Went ashore and killed nothing, but was pleased with what I saw. The country is so grandly wild and desolate that I am charmed by its wonderful dreariness.

John James Audubon

#24. If you take advantage of everything that America has to offer, there's nothing you can't accomplish.

Geraldine Ferraro

#25. If we were still English we'd be drinking more and driving on the wrong side of the road - pretty much what people do on the Fourth of July anyway.

Lorrie Moore

#26. The measure of its nobility and its continuity is its depth of feeling and its sincerity. And if it has that quality, it stands.
"Toward a New architecture" July 14, 1957

Frank Lloyd Wright

#27. Now, 75 years [after To Kill a Mockingbird], in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books.
[Open Letter, O Magazine, July 2006]

Harper Lee