If you’ve ever yearned for sunshine on a dreary day, you’re in good company. Gloomy weather doesn’t just cloud the sky — it can often cast a shadow over our mood as well. This effect is particularly pronounced in the fall and winter months, when the days become shorter and cooler, offering less of the sunshine we crave.
In fact, for roughly 5% of adults in the U.S., seasonal weather changes can trigger a form of depression known as seasonal affective disorder (SAD), which can manifest with symptoms ranging from mild to severe. Thankfully, there are a number of tried-and-true methods that can help alleviate SAD until it naturally improves with the increasing sunlight in spring and summer.
When it seems as if everyone around us is lamenting the cold, gray weather, it can be challenging to see beyond the bleakness — even if we happen to enjoy those cooler, shorter days. For those of us who find ourselves missing the sun and seeking a little mood boost, the warmth of these 13 quotes can help keep our spirits lifted until we’re able to bask in the sunshine once more.
Give me the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling.Walt Whitman
The sun — the bright sun, that brings back, not light alone, but new life, and hope, and freshness to man — burst upon the crowded city in clear and radiant glory. Through costly-coloured glass and paper-mended window, through cathedral dome and rotten crevice, it shed its equal ray.Charles Dickens
I’m waitin’, waitin’ on a sunny day / Gonna chase the clouds away / Waitin’ on a sunny day / … / Your smile, girl, brings the mornin’ light to my eyes / Lifts away the blues when I rise / I hope that you’re coming to stay.Bruce Springsteen
She told me once that the year she went to England she painted all her buttons yellow so she would remember what the sun felt like.Brian Andreas
Part of being optimistic is keeping one’s head pointed towards the sun, one’s feet moving forward.Nelson Mandela
Have you ever felt for anything / such wild love — / do you think there is anywhere, in any language, / a word billowing enough / for the pleasure / that fills you, / as the sun / reaches out, / as it warms you / as you stand there, / empty-handed.Mary Oliver
A jaunty pop music song was playing and I realized what I felt … happy. It was such a strange, unusual feeling — light, calm, as though I’d swallowed sunshine.Gail Honeyman
Laughter is sunshine; it chases winter from the human face.Victor Hugo
Now I’m walking on sunshine, whoa / … / And don’t it feel good?Katrina and the Waves
Never underestimate the effect one person can have on another … One person can rekindle a flame long thought dead and bring life where only cynicism formerly lived. To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides.David Viscott
I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days, and spent them lavishly.Henry David Thoreau
You are the sunshine of my life / That’s why I’ll always stay around / You are the apple of my eye / Forever you’ll stay in my heart.Stevie Wonder
It’s a glorious afternoon — the sky is blue and warm — the wind blows just enough to keep the clouds sailing, and the sunshine — oh such sunshine! It isn’t like gold, for gold is dim beside it; it isn’t like anything which you or I have seen!Emily Dickinson
Featured image credit: exopixel/ Shutterstock
