Peggy Toney Horton:
West Virginia, USA
American journalist, author and blogger.
Whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul, I shall recall the memory of warm, sunny, late summer afternoons like this one, and be comforted greatly.
What could be more exciting than an October day? It’s your birthday, Fourth of July, and Christmas all rolled into one.
This is October for me. Withdrawing into my own world, blocking out everything except the beauty of the season, my reflections, and my relationship with God, I find that this is enough to sustain me through the long cold winter, and beyond.
Ah, lovely October, as you usher in the season that awakens my soul, your awesome beauty compels my spirit to soar like a leaf caught in an autumn breeze and my heart to sing like a heavenly choir.
My beloved October has returned—with its brilliant colors, cool temperatures, and sunny, cloudless, azure skies, and I must enjoy it before it escapes for another year.
The sentence is a short tribute to October.
The writer greets the month as a beloved friend who has come back, and names what she loves about it: the brilliant autumn foliage, the cool air after summer heat, and the clear, sunny, deep-blue skies. The last clause gives it a bittersweet edge. October is brief, so she feels she must enjoy it fully before it “escapes for another year.” It is a seasonal version of ‘carpe diem’:
‘Appreciate a fleeting, lovely time while you have it.’
Origin:
The sentence is attributed to the book “Somewhere in Heaven My Mother Is Smiling”. It is a 124-page paperback, published by Xlibris on February 10, 2011 (ISBN-10 1456856111; ISBN-13 978-1456856113). The personal, nostalgic tone suggests it comes from a short essay or reflection about October rather than a poem or a standalone saying. I haven’t seen it on the page itself, and I couldn’t find the book through my own searches. The source is a quote roundup that cites the book, plus the publication details supplied, so the exact chapter and page number are unconfirmed.
Author:
Peggy Toney Horton. Quote Ambition and other roundups credit her with this sentence. She is a West Virginia writer who was the daughter of a coal miner, and she writes about family, faith and Appalachian life. The attribution is well supported, but it rests on secondary sources, not on the book itself.
Ah, September! You are the doorway to the season that awakens my soul, but I must confess that I love you only because you are a prelude to my beloved October.
The line personifies September as a “doorway” — a threshold rather than a destination in itself. The speaker’s love for September isn’t really about September’s own qualities; it’s anticipatory. September matters because of what it promises: October. The “confession” is the emotional turn — an admission that this isn’t pure appreciation of the present moment but excitement for what’s coming next. It’s a common move in autumn writing: treating the early transitional month as valuable mainly as a herald of the “real” payoff, October, with its fuller fall color, cooler air, and cultural associations (Halloween, harvest, peak foliage).
Origin:
The trail runs cold here. The quote circulates widely across quote-aggregator sites, greeting-card content, and seasonal listicles — Goodreads lists it under tags like October, prelude, season, September, soul, and a Yahoo roundup of September quotes includes it alongside lines from Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Faith Baldwin — but none of these trace it back to an original book, poem, essay, or publication. That’s typical of “inspirational quote” material: it gets endlessly recirculated online with an attributed name, but the original source was either never indexed or has been lost in the copying.
Author:
Peggy Toney Horton ‘is credited everywhere this quote appears’, but she isn’t a documented literary figure in the usual sense — no Wikipedia page, no traceable bibliography. Several other September/autumn quotes are attributed to her in similar quote collections (e.g., “As the alluring song of September begins to whisper in my ear, my passionate spirit yearns for the splendor of its promise”), suggesting she may have written a body of seasonal/inspirational quotes, possibly self-published, greeting-card material, or blog content, but I can’t confirm more than that from available sources.
As the alluring song of September begins to whisper in my ear, my passionate spirit yearns for the splendor of its promise.
The line personifies September as a seductive, musical presence — its “alluring song” — that stirs something in the speaker. “Passionate spirit” and “yearns” frame the arrival of the season not just as a shift in weather, but as an emotional pull: a longing or anticipation for what’s coming. “Splendor of its promise” suggests the focus is on anticipation — the beauty September is about to unfold — rather than beauty it already holds. It fits Horton’s broader style: warm, nostalgic, faith-inflected reflections on the seasons, memory, and family (she has a companion line about October calling it “the season that awakens my soul”).
Origin:
The quote isn’t tied to one specific famous published work with a clear citation. It circulates on quote-aggregator sites (Goodreads, IZ Quotes, Quote Garden, The Guardian, and various “September quotes” roundups) with identical wording and consistent attribution to her, and a couple of her other quotes have been picked up in published quote-collection books (“She Said What? Quotable Women Talk Aging” by Dr. Kathleen Cannon; “Quotes to Live Your Life By!” by Emma Careford). Given her body of work — personal essays and seasonal reflections published in “The Charleston Gazette” and blogs like “Peggy’s Ponderings” — this line most likely comes from one of those essays or blog posts rather than from a poem or book chapter, but no specific original source is cited anywhere I found.
Author:
Peggy Toney Horton is a real, documented personal-essay writer and columnist who lives in a small town near Charleston, West Virginia. She’s a long-time contributor to the “Charleston Gazette-Mail” (notably its “Essays on Faith” column), and her work has also appeared in “USA Deep South”, “All Things Girl,” “Midlife Collage”, “Bewildering Stories”, “Front Porch Magazine”, “Page & Spine”, “Memoirabilia”, and “A Quiet Courage.” She’s the author of several books, including “Somewhere in Heaven My Mother Is Smiling” (2011) — which was among the top 100 imported books in China in 2011–2012 — along with “Unseen Angels”, “Sweet Whispers of Youth”, “Stop the World and Get Off”, “Does God Want Us to Be Happy”, “Cries of a Broken Spirit”, “Sunshine Hollow”, ‘Dancing With Sugarplums”, and “She Did It Her Way”. She lost her son to cancer in 2020, and some of her more recent essays reflect on that grief.
