March: Bridge between Winter and Spring
The month of March gets its name from Martius, the first month of the ancient Roman calendar. Martius was named after Mars, the Roman god associated with war and believed to be an ancestor of the Roman people through his twin sons Romulus and Remus. According to legend, Romulus founded the city of Rome and the Roman Kingdom. Mars’s month Martius was considered the start of the season for warfare, and the festivals held in his honor during the month were paralleled by other activities held in October when the season ended.
Until around 153 BC Martius was also the start of the Roman calendar year, and several religious observances in the first part of the month began as New Year’s celebrations. March is the first month of spring in the Northern Hemisphere, which includes Europe, North America, Asia, and a section of Africa, and it is the first month of fall in the Southern Hemisphere, which encompasses South America part of Africa, and Oceania.
One of the most iconic quotes about March says that the month “comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb,” meaning that the wintry weather at the start of March gives way to balmy spring-like days at the end. Over the centuries, this idea has been reiterated in various forms by writers and poets, some of whom are represented below, along with other thoughts and feelings about March that may inspire you or make you laugh as you look forward to the official start of spring on the 20th. Regularly posting one or more of these quotes on your dry erase wall may uplift your mood, provide you with a touch of fun, or offer some encouragement as you go through your daily routine.
Just like March weather, these quotes are variable — different writers have widely differing experiences and memories of March. One thinks only of the month’s seemingly boundless mud and late-season snow, while another looks forward to its warmth and happiness. What do you anticipate experiencing in the month of March?
Thoughts and Feelings about March
1. March: Its motto, “Courage and strength in times of danger.”
― William Morris (British textile designer, poet, artist, novelist, and printer)
2. “Only those with tenacity can march forward in March.”
― Ernest Agyemang Yeboah (Ghanaian author and teacher)
3. “March is the month God created to show people who don’t drink what a hangover is like.”
― Garrison Keillor (US author, humorist, and radio personality)
4. “Poor March, it is the homeliest month of the year. Most of it is mud, every imaginable form of mud, and what isn’t mud in March is ugly late-season snow falling onto the ground in filthy muddy heaps that look like piles of dirty laundry.”
― Vivian Swift (US author and blogger), When Wanderers Cease to Roam: A Traveler’s Journal of Staying Put
5. “March comes in with an adder’s head and goes out with a peacock’s tail.”
― Richard Lawson Gales (British priest, poet, and folklorist)
6. “Winds of March, we welcome you; there is work for you to do. Work and play and blow all day, blow the winter wind away.”
― Anonymous
7. “One Christmas, my father kept our tree up till March. He hated to see it go. I loved that.”
― Mo Rocca (US journalist, humorist, and actor)
8. “March will come, and so will happiness. Hold on. Life will get warmer.” ― Anita Krizzan (US author)
9. “Every cold and dark phase ends and hence begins a beautiful phase of warmth and vibrance. Don’t believe? Just notice March.”
― Anamika Mishra (Indian author, travel blogger, and entrepreneur)
10. “How terrible a time is the beginning of March! In a month, there will be daffodils and the sudden blossoming of orchards, but you wouldn’t know it now. You have to take spring on blind faith.”
― Beatriz Williams (US author)
11. “March bustles in on windy feet, and sweeps my doorstep and my street.”
― Susan Reiner (US actress and producer)
12. “Match the right things in March.”
― Ernest Agyemang Yeboah (Ghanaian author and teacher)
13. “March is an example of how beautiful new beginnings can be.”
― Anamika Mishra (Indian author, travel blogger, and entrepreneur)
14. “March is here. It reminds me of sports day at school, 3rd March, full day on the field.”
― Faraz (Pakistani poet and scriptwriter)
15. “I’m a huge college basketball fan. I could sit and watch every game of March Madness and be happy. That could be a vacation.”
― Lewis Black (US actor and comedian)
16. “When March goes on forever, and April’s twice as long, who gives a damn if spring has come, as long as winter’s gone.”
― R.L. Ruzicka (US writer)
17. “As it rains in March, so it rains in June.”
― Anonymous
18. “Flowers and colors everywhere; I am so glad that March is here.”
― Anamika Mishra (Indian author, travel blogger, and entrepreneur)
19. “Spring officially starts this month, but unfortunately, Mother Nature tends to March to the beat of her own drum.”
― Anonymous
Impressions of Nature in March
20. “Daffodils, That come before the swallow dares, and take The winds of March with beauty.”
― William Shakespeare, (World-renowned English playwright and poet), The Winter’s Tale
21. “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 elf land of moonshine.”
― L. M. Montgomery (Canadian author)
22. “By March, the worst of the winter would be over. The snow would thaw, the rivers begin to run, and the world would wake into itself again.”
― Neil Gaiman (English author and screenwriter)
23. “Now when the primrose makes a splendid show, And lilies face the March winds in full blow, And humbler growths as moved with one desire; Put on, to welcome spring, their best attire.”
― William Wordsworth (English romantic poet)
24. “To welcome her the spring breathes forth Elysian sweets; March strews the Earth With violets and posies.”
― Edmund Waller (English poet and politician)
25. “A cloud comes over the sunlit arch, a wind comes off a frozen peak, and you’re two months back in the middle of March.”
― Robert Frost (world-renowned US poet)
26. “March brings breezes loud and shrill, stirs the dancing daffodil.”
― Sara Coleridge (English author and translator)
27. “Where did Gabriel get a lily, in the month of March, when the green is hardly seen on the early larch?”
― Grace James (English writer of children’s literature and folklorist)
28. “March winds, and April showers bring forth May flowers.”
― English Proverb
29. “March’s birth flower is the daffodil. It’s all too appropriate that cheerful yellow flowers represent the first month of spring.”
― FTD (US floral delivery service)
30. “One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of March thaw, is the spring.”
― Aldo Leopold (US author, naturalist, and environmentalist)
31. “Despite March’s windy reputation, winter isn’t really blown away; it is washed away. It flows down all the hills, goes swirling down the valleys, and spills out to sea. Like so many of this earth’s elements, winter itself is soluble in water.”
― The New York Times (US newspaper)
32. “As through the poplar’s gusty spire, the March wind sweeps and sings, I sit beside the hollow fire, and dream familiar things; old memories wake, faint echoes make a murmur of dead springs.”
― Chambers’s Journal of Popular Literature, Science and Art
33. “There is great pleasure in watching the ways in which different plants come through the ground, and February and March are the months in which that can best be seen.”
― Henry N. Ellacombe (British plantsman and author on gardening)