Contents
This is the sixth installment in our twelve-part A Year Outstanding series, where we share quotes, affirmations, and interesting facts to inspire your outstanding inner self every month of the year.
June is here! In many ways, June is a month of freedom and new beginnings. It marks the end of spring and the official transition into summer. It’s the month when schools end and summer camps begin. It’s the month it finally becomes warm enough for shorts and skirts to replace jeans and slacks.
Juneteenth, the 19th of June, is widely celebrated as marking the end of slavery in the US and the new beginning of a nation.
June is the month of the rose and the honeysuckle, two of our favorite plants for their restorative, healing properties. No matter where you are on your journey of self discovery, we hope that these quotes, poems, and facts about June can help inspire and guide your path forward.
June Quotes about Summer
Spring being a tough act to follow, God created June. — Al Bernstein
No price is set on the lavish summer; June may be had by the poorest comer. — James Russell Lowell
June is the gateway to summer. — Jean Hersey
What is one to say about June—the time of perfect young summer, the fulfillment of the promise of earlier months, and with as yet no sign to remind one that its fresh young beauty will ever fade? — Gertrude Jekyll
Not till June can the grass be said to be waving in the fields. When the frogs dream, and the grass waves, and the buttercups toss their heads, and the heat disposes to bathe in the ponds and streams, then is summer begun. — Henry David Thoreau
Summer is not obligatory. We can start an infernally hard jigsaw puzzle in June with the knowledge that, if there are enough rainy days, we may just finish it by Labor Day, but if not, there’s no harm, no penalty. We may have better things to do. — Nancy Gibbs
Summer is a promissory note signed in June, its long days spent and gone before you know it, and due to be repaid next January. — Hal Borland
There are two seasons in Scotland: June and Winter. — Billy Connolly
I know April, May and June are a few unbearable months, and working out in a gym and sweating in such dirty hot, sticky, humid weather puts me off. The best way is to swim. I feel so fresh and rejuvenated after swimming, and I believe it’s one of the best mode to fitness during summers. — Ashish Sharma
There’s something I love about how stark the contrast is between January and June in Sweden. In a way, I feel that time doesn’t exist in LA. Sometimes I don’t know if it’s February or April or October, because you’re always sitting outside on the same patio, and it’s 70 degrees. — Alexander Skarsgard
June Quotes about Nature
It was June, and the world smelled of roses. The sunshine was like powdered gold over the grassy hillside. — Maud Hart Lovelace
On this June day the buds in my garden are almost as enchanting as the open flowers. Things in bud bring, in the heat of a June noontide, the recollection of the loveliest days of the year, those days of May when all is suggested, nothing yet fulfilled. — Francis King
It’s so god damn cold it’s gonna snow until June. — Jimmy Buffett
It is dry, hazy June weather. We are more of the earth, farther from heaven these days. — Henry David Thoreau
In early June the world of leaf and blade and flowers explodes, and every sunset is different. — John Steinbeck
In June as many as a dozen species may burst their buds on a single day. No man can heed all of these anniversaries; no man can ignore all of them. — Aldo Leopold
What a strange thing it is to wake up to a milk-white overcast June morning! The sun is hidden by a thick cotton blanket of clouds, and the air is vapor-filled and hazy with a concentration of blooming scent. The world is somnolent and cool, in a temporary reprieve from the normal heat and radiance. But the sensation of illusion is strong. Because the sun can break through the clouds at any moment… What a soft thoughtful time. In this illusory gloom, like a night-blooming flower, let your imagination bloom in a riot of color. — Vera Nazarian
Do not the bright June roses blow To meet thy kiss at morning hours? — William C. Bryant
All June I bound the rose in sheaves, Now, rose by rose, I strip the leaves. — Robert Browning
And since all this loveliness cannot be Heaven, I know in my heart it is June. — Abba Woolson
There are two seasons when the leaves are in their glory, their green and perfect youth in June and this their ripe old age. — Henry David Thoreau
June Quotes about Rain
Green was the silence, wet was the light, the month of June trembled like a butterfly. — Pablo Neruda
I know well that the June rains just fall. — Onitsura
Do it now and avoid the June rush! Fear death by water! — Diane Duane
I have laughed more than daffodils and cried more than June. — Sanober Khan
June Quotes about Life
A cold in the head in June is an immoral thing. — L.M. Montgomery
It is better to be a young June bug than an old bird of paradise. — Mark Twain
I wonder what it would be like to live in a world where it was always June. — L. M. Montgomery
To read a poem in January is as lovely as to go for a walk in June. — Jean Paul Sartre
June will break your heart. I can see it already. She’ll shatter you into a million pieces. — Marie Lu
It is June. I am tired of being brave. — Anne Sexton
You always feel like your 18-year-old self in some sense. And that’s what walking through New York on a June evening feels like—you feel like it’s Friday, and you’re 17 years old. — John Darnielle
In my college years, I would retreat to our summer house for two weeks in June to read a novel a day. How exciting it was, after pouring my coffee and making myself comfortable on the porch, to open the next book on the roster, read the first sentences, and find myself on the platform of a train station. — Amor Towles
If you could not do much in the month of April with five letters, think of what really you can do with the month of May with three letters before you open the door of the month of June with four letters. Which is the break time for the entire twelve months of the year. Until you clearly understand how you are spending the year, you shall finish spending it and ponder over how you spent it, year after year! No one is absolutely free from excuses and the challenges of life. You just have to do something great with each day in the year! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
If you represent the Earth’s lifetime by a single year, say from January when it was made to December, the 21st-century would be a quarter of a second in June – a tiny fraction of the year. But even in this concertinaed cosmic perspective, our century is very, very special: the first when humans can change themselves and their home planet. — Martin Rees
My life, I realize suddenly, is July. Childhood is June, and old age is August, but here it is, July, and my life, this year, is July inside of July. — Rick Bass
Quotes about June Nights
If a June night could talk, it would probably boast it invented romance. — Bernard Williams
There are moments, above all on June evenings, when the lakes that hold our moons are sucked into the earth, and nothing is left but wine and the touch of a hand. — Charles Morgan
At midnight, in the month of June, I stand beneath the mystic moon. — Edgar Allan Poe
The brightest light, the light of Italy, the purest sky of Scandinavia in the month of June is only a half-light when one compares it to the light of childhood. Even the nights were blue. — Eugene Ionesco
Wine and cheese are ageless companions, like aspirin and aches, or June and moon, or good people and noble ventures. — M. F. K. Fisher
What do I miss about the UK? Sadly, almost nothing. Maybe the midnight sun, in June in the north. That’s all. — Lee Child
Poems about June
How did it get so late so soon?
It’s night before it’s afternoon.
December is here before its June.
My goodness how the time has flewn.
How did it get so late so soon?
— Dr. Seuss
June falls asleep upon her bier of flowers;
In vain are dewdrops sprinkled o’er her,
In vain would fond winds fan her back to life,
Her hours are numbered on the floral dial.
— Lucy Larcom
It is the month of June,
The month of leaves and roses,
When pleasant sights salute the eyes and pleasant scents the noses.
— Nathaniel Parker Willis
I have never been so full—
it spills from my eyes, pushes out from my belly
day by day hour by hour, I am larger.
Though I can never catch that moment
of motion and expansion,
any more than I could witness
the first cells dividing,
or the hands of the great-grandfather clock moving,
the moon arcing across the sky,
or the peony bush starting from green stubs
in my backyard, then flourishing into June
with wild pink happiness.
— Andrea Potos
Today winter clouds gather in towers of white
reaching toward the wide horizon.
But the rain is far off and will not come
today or even tomorrow when perhaps random drops
will foreshadow the deluge of June.
— Michael Hogan
And what is so rare as a day in June?
Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then heaven tries the earth if it be tune,
And over it softly her warm ear lays:
Whether we look, or whether we listen,
We hear life murmur, or see it glisten;
Every clod feels a stir of might,
An instinct within it that reaches and towers,
And, grasping blindly above it for light,
Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers…
— James Russell Lowell
Oh for boyhood’s time of June,
Crowding years in one brief moon,
When all things I heard or saw,
Me, their master, waited for.
— John Greenleaf Whittier
The end has come, as come it must
To all things; in these sweet June days
The teacher and the scholar trust
Their parting feet to separate ways.
— John Greenleaf Whittier
June comes in with roses in her
hand, but very often with a thick
shawl on her shoulders, and a bad
cold in her head.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes
Too young for love?
Ah, say not so,
While daisies bloom and tulips glow!
June soon will come with lengthened day
To practise all love learned in May.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes
June the month of months
Flowers and fruitage brings too,
When green trees spread shadiest boughs,
When each wild bird sings too.
— Christina Rossetti
How the wind howls this morn
About the end of May,
And drives June on apace
To mock the world forlorn
And the world’s joy passed away.
— William Morris
Ah! how sweet to seem, love,
Drugged and half aswoon
With this luscious dream, love,
In the heart of June.
— James Whitcomb Riley
O month of flowerings, month of metamorphoses,
May without cloud and June that was stabbed,
I shall never forget the lilac and the roses
Nor those whom spring has kept in its folds.
— Louis Aragon
June was not over
Though past the fall,
And the best of her roses
Had yet to blow,
When a man I know
(But shall not discover,
Since ears are dull,
And time discloses)
Turned him and said with a man’s true air,
Half sighing a smile in a yawn, as ’twere,—
‘If I tire of your June, will she greatly care?’
— Robert Browning
I gazed upon the glorious sky
And the green mountains round,
And thought that when I came to lie
At rest within the ground,
“Twere pleasant, that in flowery June,
When brooks send up a cheerful tune,
And groves a joyous sound,
The sexton’s hand, my grave to make,
The rich, green mountain-turf should break.
— William Cullent Bryant
June is bright with roses gay,
Harebells bloom around her feet.
— Dora Goodale
Under the snowdrift the blossoms are sleeping,
Dreaming their dreams of sunshine and June,
Down in the hush of their quiet they’re keeping
Thrills from the throstle’s wild summer-swung tune.
— Harriet Prescott Spofford
June is bustin’ out all over
All over the meader and the hill
Flowers bustin’ out on bushes
And the roughen river pushes
Ev’ry little wheel that wheels beside the mill
June is bustin’ out all over
The ocean is full of Jacks and Jills
With the little tail is swishing’
Ev’ry lady fish is wishin’ that a male would come
And grab ‘er by the gills
Because it’s June, June, June, June
Just because it’s June, June, June!
— Oscar II Hammerstein
Bye June
I’m going to the moon
It better be by June
‘Cause I’m going to the moon
So June
You’d better make it soon
I hope you make it June
‘Cause I’m going to the moon.
— William Patrick Corgan
In the long, sad time, when the sky was grey,
And the keen blast blew through the city drear,
When delight had fled from the night and the day,
My chill heart whispered, “June will be here!”
“June with its roses a-sway in the sun,
Its glory of green on mead and tree.”
Lo, now the sweet June-tide is nearly done,
June-tide, and never a joy for me.
— Amy Levy
Tell you what I like the best —
‘Long about knee-deep in June,
‘Bout the time strawberries melts
On the vine, — some afternoon
Like to jes’ git out and rest,
And not work at nothin’ else!
— James Whitcomb Riley
Last June I saw your face three times;
Three times I touched your hand;
Now, as before, May month is o’er,
And June is in the land.
O many Junes shall come and go,
Flow’r-footed o’er the mead;
O many Junes for me, to whom
Is length of days decreed.
There shall be sunlight, scent of rose;
Warm mist of summer rain;
Only this change—I shall not look
Upon your face again.
— Amy Levy
Ten o’clock: the broken moon
Hangs not yet a half hour high,
Yellow as a shield of brass,
In the dewy air of June,
Poised between the vaulted sky
And the ocean’s liquid glass.
— Emma Lazarus
This is our love in early June,
Fed with the sun and the dew,
Moonlight and roses hid in a tune,
The roses are music through and through,
The moonlight falls in the breath of the rose,
Light and cadence, honey and hue,
Mingle, and murmur, and flow to the close,
I love you, I love you, I love you.
— Duncan Campbell Scott
It’s June ag’in, an’ in my soul I feel the fillin’ joy
That’s sure to come this time o’ year to every little boy;
For, every June, the Sunday-schools at picnics may be seen,
Where “fields beyont the swellin’ floods stand dressed in livin’ green”;
Where little girls are skeered to death with spiders, bugs, and ants,
An’ little boys get grass-stains on their go-to meetin’ pants.
It’s June ag’in, an’ with it all what happiness is mine —
There’s goin’ to be a picnic, an’ I’m goin’ to jine!
— Eugene Field
Far up in the deep blue sky,
Great white clouds are floating by;
All the world is dressed in green;
Many happy birds are seen,
Roses bright and sunshine clear
Show that lovely June is here.
— F. G. Sanders
I realized
June had never been
just a month
music…
never just a tremble
on my lips
warmth was never
merely a blanket.
— Sanober Khan
Interesting Facts about June
June is the first month of the summer season in the Northern Hemisphere.
June is the month with the longest daylight hours of the year in the Northern Hemisphere and the shortest in the Southern Hemisphere.
June’s birthstones are Pearl, Alexandrite, and Moonstone.
June’s birth flowers are Rose and Honeysuckle.
The longest day of the year typically occurs on June 21 or 22.
Wimbledon, the famous British tennis tournament, is typically played in June.
In both common and leap years, no other month begins on the same day of the week as June.
Historical Moments in June
June 4, 1989 — The Chinese government orders troops to open fire on unarmed protesters in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. (Wikipedia)
June 6, 1944 — D-Day. Allied forces storm the beaches of Normandy in the largest seaborne invasion in history, turning the tides of victory in World War II toward the Allied powers. (Wikipedia)
June 13, 1971 — The New York Times begins to publish the Pentagon Papers, a collection of documents that exposed US strategy in the Vietnam War. (Wikipedia)
June 17, 1972 — Five men are arrested at the DNC Headquarters in the Watergate Complex in Washington DC, eventually leading to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. (Wikipedia)
June 19, 1865 — Juneteenth. In Galveston, TX, General Gordon Granger announces Lincoln’s executive order finally emancipating the last remaining American slaves. (Wikipedia)
June 25, 1950 — The Korean War begins as North Korean troops cross the 38th parallel, launching a full-scale invasion of South Korea. (Wikipedia)
June 26, 1945 — The United Nations is formed with the official signing of the UN Charter in San Francisco. (Wikipedia)
June 28, 1914 — Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife are assassinated, sparking the conflict that escalated to become World War I. (Wikipedia)
June 28, 1919 — World War I ends with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. (Wikipedia)
Holidays in June
June 14 — Flag Day
Flag Day in the United States celebrates the day the American flag was adopted as the official flag of the Union. The resolution, passed June 14, 1777, read: “Resolved, That the flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation.”
June 19 — Juneteenth
In the United States, Juneteenth is celebrated to honor the day all American slaves were finally emancipated. On June 19, 1865, General Granger of the Union Army proclaimed freedom from slavery in Galveston, TX—more than years after the emancipation proclamation.
June 20 — Father’s Day
Father’s Day is a global holiday. In most countries, it is celebrated on the third Sunday of June each year. Father’s Day honors fathers and the influence they have upon society. If you have a father or father figure important in your life, Father’s Day is a time to show that person how much you appreciate all they’ve done for you.
Famous Birthdays in June
Brigham Young — June 1, 1801
Andy Griffith — June 1, 1926
Marilyn Monroe — June 1, 1926
Morgan Freeman — June 1, 1937
Heidi Klum — June 1, 1973
Alanis Morisette — June 1, 1974
Martha Washington — June 2, 1731=
John Maynard Keynes — June 5, 1883
The Dalai Lama — June 6, 1935
Paul Gauguin — June 7, 1848
Dean Martin — June 7, 1917
Liam Neeson — June 7, 1952
Prince — June 7, 1958
Frank Lloyd Wright — June 8, 1867
Barbara Bush — June 8, 1925
Michael J. Fox — June 9, 1961
Johnny Depp — June 9, 1963
Natalie Portman — June 9, 1981
Judy Garland — June 10, 1922
Jacques Cousteau — June 11, 1910
George H. W. Bush — June 12, 1924
Anne Frank — June 12, 1929
Tim Allen — June 13, 1953
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen — June 13, 1986
Harriet Beecher Stowe — June 14, 1811
Ice Cube — June 15, 1969
Neil Patrick Harris — June 15, 1974
Newt Gingrich — June 17, 1943
Venus Williams — June 17, 1980
Roger Ebert — June 18, 1942
Paul McCartney — June 18, 1942
Lou Gehrig — June 19, 1903
Paula Abdul — June 19, 1962
Boris Johnson — June 19, 1964
Bob Vila — June 20, 1946
Lionel Richie — June 20, 1950
John Goodman — June 20, 1952
Cyndi Lauper — June 20, 1953
Nicole Kidman — June 20, 1967
Meryl Streep — June 22, 1949
Clarence Thomas — June 23, 1948
George Pataki — June 24, 1945
George Orwell — June 25, 1903
Clint Eastwood — June 25, 1930
Helen Keller — June 27, 1880
Ariana Grande — June 27, 1993
King Henry VIII — June 28, 1491
Jean-Jacques Rousseau — June 28, 1712
Elon Musk — June 28, 1971
Mike Tyson — June 30, 1966
Michael Phelps — June 30, 1985