May is here — blooming with the full splendor of spring and radiating an uplifting energy that encourages us to relish every blossoming tree and bright, sunny day! It’s a month of colorful renewal, continued growth, and the heartwarming promise of sunny days ahead.
To help you indulge in the charm of May, we’ve curated a selection of positive and inspiring quotes (and poems) about the fifth month of the year.
And because we’re Good Good Good — we’ve also spotlighted the best quotes around May’s awareness days and national celebrations — like AAPI Heritage Month, Mental Health Awareness Month, Jewish American Heritage Month, Teacher Appreciation Week, 143 Day, and Mother’s Day.
Plus, quotes from inspirational celebrities and leaders with May birthdays.
Whether you’re reveling in the beauty of spring’s peak, celebrating a May birthday, or just seeking a dose of positivity and inspiration to brighten your month, these quotes are for you. Scroll all the way through to find some enchanting gems.
Here’s to making the most of May!
Explore more monthly quotes: January | February | March | April | May | June | July | August | September | October | November | December
The Best May Quotes
Famous Quotes About May
“May is the month of expectation, the month of wishes, the month of hope.”
— Emily Brontë
“As full of spirit as the month of May, and as gorgeous as the sun in Midsummer.”
— William Shakespeare
“Another May new buds and flowers shall bring: Ah! why has happiness no second Spring?”
— Charlotte Smith
“The month of May has come, when every lusty heart beginneth to blossom, and to bring forth fruit.”
— Thomas Malory
“My heart is light with May!
The sky is soft; the coming birds
Are silent on their way.”
— Mary Mapes Dodge
“Sweet May hath come to love us. Flowers, trees, their blossoms don.”
— Heinrich Heine
“May is the most beautiful month of the year, a month alive with warm color. The flowers and trees are in full bloom, and even the sun joins this rhapsody be emitting warmer rays.”
— Lillian Berliner, And The Month Was May: A Memoir
“Among the changing months, May stands confest the sweetest, and in fairest colors dressed.”
— James Thomson
Inspirational May Quotes
“Then you have to remember to be thankful; but in May one simply can’t help being thankful that they are alive, if for nothing else.”
— L. M. Montgomery
“I thought that spring must last forevermore; For I was young and loved, and it was May.”
— Vera Brittain
“Ah, in those earliest days of love how naturally the kisses spring into life! So closely, in their profusion, do they crowd together that lovers would find it as hard to count the kisses exchanged in an hour as to count the flowers in a meadow in May.”
— Marcel Proust
“The month of May is the pleasant time; its face is beautiful; the blackbird sings his full song, the living wood is his holding, the cuckoos are singing and ever singing; there is a welcome before the brightness of the summer.”
— Lady Gregory
“May has come in, young May the beautiful, weaving the sweetest chaplet of the year. Along the eastern corridors, she walks. What time the clover rocks the earliest bee. Her feet are flush with sunrise, and her veil floating in breezy odors o’er her hair.”
— Thomas Buchanan Read
“At last came the golden month of the wild folk — honey-sweet May, when the birds come back, and the flowers come out, and the air is full of the sunrise scents and songs of the dawning year.”
— Samuel Scoville Jr.
Quotes for Awareness Holidays in May
A collection of quotes to celebrate March’s awareness months and national days.
→ Explore more of this month’s awareness days in our May calendar
AAPI Heritage Month
May 1 - May 31
“The power of visibility can never be underestimated.”
— Margaret Cho
“[Being raised by Korean immigrants] gave me grit, cultivated independence, and showed me the power of resilience and hard work — but more importantly, [it gave me] the opportunity to redefine the narrative of a first-generation Asian woman.”
— Haejin Chun
“We have to build things that we want to see accomplished, in life and in our country, based on our own personal experiences to make sure that others do not have to suffer the same discrimination.”
— Patsy Takemoto Mink
→ Read about how to celebrate AAPI Heritage Month
Mental Health Awareness Month
May 1 - May 31
“Your mental health is everything — prioritize it. Make the time like your life depends on it, because it does.”
— Mel Robbins
“Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they’re never weakness.”
— Brené Brown
“Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary.”
— Fred Rogers
→ Explore more mental health quotes
→ Read about how to celebrate Mental Health Awareness Month
Jewish American Heritage Month
May 1 - May 31
“Our task is not to erase differences, but to build unity in diversity.”
— Ruth Bader Ginsburg
“I grew up in a tradition where having ideas and contributing to the community and creating art that had an impact on the world mattered. That’s part of the Jewish tradition.”
— Eve Ensler
“This is one of the goals of the Jewish way of living: to experience commonplace deeds as spiritual adventures, to feel the hidden love and wisdom in all things.”
— Abraham Joshua Heschel
→ Read about how to celebrate Jewish American Heritage Month
Teacher Appreciation Week
First full week of May
“Teacher appreciation makes the world of education go around.”
— Helen Peters
“Everyone who remembers his own education remembers teachers, not methods and techniques. The teacher is the heart of the educational system.”
— Sidney Hook
“Teaching is more than imparting knowledge; it is inspiring change. Learning is more than absorbing facts; it is acquiring understanding.”
— William Arthur Ward
→ Explore more teacher appreciation quotes
→ Read about how to celebrate Teacher Appreciation Week
Mother’s Day
Second Sunday of May
“If love is as sweet as a flower, then my mother is that sweet flower of love.”
— Stevie Wonder
“Only mothers can think of the future — because they give birth to it in their children.”
— Maxim Gorky
“My Mother: She is beautiful, softened at the edges and tempered with a spine of steel. I want to grow old and be like her. ”
— Jodi Picoult
143 Day
May 23
“Real strength has to do with helping others.”
— Fred Rogers
“Love isn’t a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.”
— Fred Rogers
“I have tried to encourage children to love and care for themselves and to love the parents who care for them. That’s the way true neighborliness grows — loving others as we first loved ourselves.”
— Fred Rogers
→ Read about how to celebrate 143 Day
→ Explore more Fred Rogers quotes
Quotes from Inspiring People with May Birthdays
Dwayne Johnson
May 2
“The single most powerful thing I can be is to be myself.”
— Dwayne Johnson
All success begins with self-discipline. It starts with you.”
— Dwayne Johnson
“Check your ego at the door. The ego can be the great success inhibitor. It can kill opportunities, and it can kill success.”
— Dwayne Johnson
Hank Green
May 5
“We are the superhero. None of us, individually, but all of us together.”
— Hank Green
“Humanity is good. Some people are terrible and broken, but humanity is good. I believe that.”
— Hank Green
“Worrying isn’t a disease, it’s a symptom of caring.”
— Hank Green
→ Explore more Hank Green quotes
Bono
May 10
“I can’t change the world but I can change the world in me.”
— Bono
“Where you live should not determine whether you live, or whether you die.”
— Bono
“Dream up the kind of world you want to live in. Dream out loud.”
— Bono
→ Explore more Bono quotes
Madeleine Albright
May 15
“What people have the capacity to choose, they have the ability to change.”
— Madeleine Albright
“Our collective experience has shown that when women have the power to make their own choices, good things happen.”
— Madeleine Albright
“You’ve got the guts to find your own purpose.”
— Madeleine Albright
→ Explore more Madeleine Albright quotes
Harvey Milk
May 22
“Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.”
— Harvey Milk
“Rights are won only by those who make their voices heard.”
— Harvey Milk
“All young people, regardless of sexual orientation or identity, deserve a safe and supportive environment in which to achieve their full potential.”
— Harvey Milk
→ Explore more Harvey Milk quotes
Funny May Quotes
“May, more than any other month of the year, wants us to feel most alive.”
— Fennel Hudson
“When the sun is out and the wind is still, You’re one month on in the middle of May.”
— Robert Frost
“May is a pious fraud of the almanac,
A ghastly parody of real spring.”
— James Russell Lowell
“It’s May, the lusty month of May
That darling month when everyone throws self-control away.”
— Alan Jay Lerner
“Horticulturally, the month of May is opening night, Homecoming, and Graduation Day all rolled into one.”
— Tam Mossman
“The last days of May are among the longest of the year.”
— Alice Munro
May Poems
“Oh! gladly do we welcome thee,
Fair pleasant month of May;
Month which we’ve eager longed to see,
Through many a wintry day.”
— Rosana Eleanor Leprohon
“When purple finches sing and soar
when vernal gladness runnin o’er —
when joys like these salute the sense
then waiting long hath recompense
and all the world is glad with May.”
— Jonh Burroughs
“There is but one May in the year,
And sometimes May is wet and cold;
There is but one May in the year
Before the year grows old.”
— Christina Georgina Rossetti
“How tender is the touch of May
While gentle winds are blowing,
And in a sweet yet silent way,
All sylvan things are growing.”
— William Hamilton Hayne
“Winds of May, that dance on the sea,
Dancing a ring-around in glee
From furrow to furrow, while overhead
The foam flies up to be garlanded.”
— James Joyce
“When April steps aside for May,
Like diamonds all the rain drops glisten;
Fresh violets open every day:
To some new bird each hour we listen.”
— Lucy Larcom
“May, queen of blossoms, And fulfilling flowers, With what pretty music Shall we charm the hours?”
— Edward Thurlow
“The flowers that should bloom in the month of May
Every one of them came on an April day!
And they looked for April showers in vain,
But all through May it did nothing but rain!”
— Carolyn Well
“That I may reach that happy time
The kindly gods I pray,
For are not ducks and pease in prime
Upon the last of May?”
— William Makepeace Thackeray
“We roamed the fields and river sides,
when we are young and gay;
we chased the bees and plucked the flowers,
in the merry, merry month of May.”
— Stephen Foster
Short May Quotes
“But winter lingering chills the lap of May.”
— Oliver Goldsmith
“It is the month, the jolly month. It is the jolly month of May.”
— Francis Thompson
“May is a month of rebirth, of renewed vitality and energy.”
— Lailah Gifty Akita
“It was outdoor detail — and May is one fine month to be working outdoors.”
— Stephen King
“What potent blood hath modest May.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The month of May is the gateway to summer.”
— Jean Hersey
→ Explore more short quotes
More May Quotes
“Prose and drama are well enough for winter, but when nature swells the darling buds of May, my spirit craves three things: poetry, painting, and love.”
— Joan Smith
“Queer things happen in the garden in May. Little faces forgotten appear, and plants thought to be dead suddenly wave a green hand to confound you.”
— W. E. Johns
“The month of May comes differently in cities: not for us white blossom on the hedgerows, bluebells in the woods — instead the sun’s rays burnish bricks and mellow pavements; seeds burst into flower in the cracks between the stones; speedwell and bindweed bloom among the rubble.”
— Heidi Thomas
“May means long walks in the evenings, eating outside in the garden (whenever possible) and lots of healthy, fresh salads to use up all the lovely summer veg that’s available.”
— Sophie Morris
“What is so sweet and dear
As a prosperous morn in May,
The confident prime of the day”
— William Watson
“Step aside to a brand new day, in the month of May I feel, I can start again. Life is feeling new, This is hope, this is love, this is where we all won, if you call, I will hear, I will listen for you.”
— Mychal Simka
