Everyday Quotes

“The optimist waits for midnight so the new year can begin, while the pessimist waits to ensure the old year has passed.”

– Bill Vaughan

“Time itself has no divisions, no thunderclap or trumpet signals the start of a new month or a new year, not even the turn of a century. It is only we humans who ring bells and fire guns to mark the passage.”

-Thomas Mann

“It’s hard to resist the temptation to sweep last year’s problems under the rug at the start of something new. (…) Who decides when the old ends and the new begins? It’s not marked on a calendar, it’s not a birthday, and it’s not even New Year’s Day. It’s an event. Big or small? Something that changes us. Ideally, it brings hope, or a new lifestyle and worldview. We let go of old habits and memories. The key is to never give up hope for a fresh start.”

-Grey’s Anatomy

“I’m not much of a drinker. On New Year’s Eve, after two martinis, I tried to hijack an elevator to Cuba.”

-Woody Allen

“For the next 365 days, I’ll look at everything and everyone as if it’s the first time – especially the small things.”

-Paulo Coelho

“I’ll see this new year as if it’s the first time I’m watching the next 365 days unfold – with wonder and surprise, marveling at the people around me and sharing something called love, which we talk about a lot but understand so little.”

-Paulo Coelho

“With every passing yesterday, life diminishes; with every tomorrow, it grows. Yet, in your eyes, it’s always today’s face that emerges.
(…)
So when this year too fades away,
dissolving into the past,
your soul will forever hold the treasure
that it once contained.”

-Mihai Eminescu

“We open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called “Opportunity,” and its first chapter is “New Year.””

-Edith Lovejoy Pierce

“Some say all beauty has disappeared from our lives. So how is it that on New Year’s Eve, the whole world celebrates together? Everywhere, we welcome the new year with a party.”

-New Year’s Eve (film)

“Let’s pause and reflect on the year that has passed! Let’s remember our successes and failures, the promises we broke and kept. Let’s recall the greatest adventures we had and the times we hid away to avoid disappointment. That’s what New Year’s Eve is really about. It’s another chance to forgive, to be better, to give more, to love more, and to live. Don’t dwell on what could have been. Rejoice in what’s coming. Let’s promise to pay more attention to one another, to give kindness, not just tonight, but all year long.”

-New Year’s Eve (film)

“There are so many things in this world we cannot control: earthquakes, floods, reality shows. But many decisions are still in our hands, whether about forgiveness, selflessness, or starting over. Because only one thing can drive loneliness out of our lives: love, in all its forms. It gives us hope to trust in the new year. That’s what New Year’s Eve is about to me – hope, and of course, partying.”

-New Year’s Eve (film)

“Soon, the first morning of the new year will dawn, and people will wake up wondering what the future holds, what they expect, what they want to achieve, what they hope for. But this morning, I want to tell them not to wish for romantic happiness, success, wealth, power, long life, or good health. Instead, I’d like them to clasp their hands together and silently offer one prayer: God, before it is time for the harvest, let my soul ripen.”

-Selma Lagerlöf

“New Year. A time for resolutions, when we believe that tomorrow morning, something better and happier begins. It’s enough to let ourselves feel the magic of this astronomically defined beginning, reset the counter, and compile a list of resolutions and vows we probably won’t keep. By the time we finish the New Year’s lunch, we’ll light up the first cigarette, by mid-January we’ll stop believing we’ll be fluent in English by the end of the year, and we’ll postpone the diet for ‘better times,’ probably summer vacation. But on this exceptional New Year’s Eve, we still feel that not only is a new year starting, but everything is beginning anew.”

-Janusz Leon Wiśniewski

“Here comes the new year, and I’m still the same old me.
I’ll either fight or perish in this year.”

-Sam B. Finn

“What are we all planning to do next Saturday? Certainly not make New Year’s resolutions, if we’re at least halfway sane. We break them so embarrassingly soon after New Year’s that few of us would want to compound our inferiority complexes by making millennium resolutions, only to break them a thousand times faster.”

-Douglas Adams

“Why is New Year’s Eve always a little sad? Because letting go is harder than holding on.”

-The Girl with Nine Wigs (film)

“Hope steps over the threshold of the new year, smiling as it whispers: “This year will be happier.””

-Alfred Tennyson

“Every new year must bring something new to people.”

-Vladimir Osinsky

“The past year will never return. A completely new one is beginning. Every hopeful new day will soon sink into the sea of eternity.”

-Erika Traude

“New Year’s Eve is a concentrated year, 364 days condensed into one, tightly packed. Throw out the trash, the year, into the bin, into the coffin.”

-Hallgrímur Helgason

“New Year’s resolutions are overly ambitious. Our goals aim for the stars: I’ll be straight-A, go to the gym three times a week, and so on. These are positive decisions in theory, but the path to achieving them is missing, not even faintly sketched before us. To succeed, we’d need to make hundreds of small changes, but there’s no manual to guide us step by step.”

-Amy Cuddy

“The new year is always about new beginnings.”

-The Sweetest Thing (film)

“The reward for surviving the holidays is the new year.”

-Grey’s Anatomy (film)

“Only the dates of the past and future years change every New Year’s Day because years are always counted backward and forward from the present.”

-Ursula K. Le Guin

“Write it on your heart that every day is the best day of the year. No one has truly learned anything until they understand that every day is Judgment Day.”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Happy new,
happy we’ll be,
but may we never be fully happy!
May we cope with the happy and the unhappy,
and wish wildly abundant happiness!”

-Ara Rauch

“New year, new me – sounds simple, right? But let’s not be too hard on ourselves if the New Year’s Eve tunes are still ringing in our ears while we’ve already broken one or two resolutions. It doesn’t matter. Set another date to start fresh. For me, February 1 works just as well as January 1. The worst thing we can do is lose heart and abandon our life-improving dreams, ideals, and plans because we feel we’ve failed. Any positive change is worth it, no matter how small it may seem at first. Good luck!”

-Sarah Ivens

“New Year’s Day is the perfectly placed summit from which we can look back at what we didn’t like about the past year, what made us feel bad, and then dive headfirst into a sea of refreshing new ideas and thoughts.”

-Sarah Ivens

“For those who cherish traditions, there’s only one day to consciously look back, then ahead, to better oneself – January 1. For many of us, New Year’s resolutions represent key points of commitment to physical and mental health that we can follow for the next 12 months.”

-Sarah Ivens

“I’m not in the mood to make resolutions for the coming year. Instead, I’ll try to focus on what truly matters. To care for those I love.”

-Josie Silver

“It’s New Year’s Day –
the dirt from last year’s garden
still clings to my overalls.”

-Margaret Chula

“Now it’s quiet. Dusk is approaching. The air is cold and clear. In the distance, you can hear the occasional burst of fireworks, even though the new year is still hours away. People are impatiently waiting to leave the old behind and welcome the new.”

-Hans Rath

“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.”
– Albert Einstein

“Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right.”
– Oprah Winfrey

“The magic in new beginnings is truly the most powerful of them all.”
– Josiyah Martin

“New Year’s Day is every man’s birthday.”
– Charles Lamb

“Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language, and next year’s words await another voice.”
– T.S. Eliot

“It is never too late to be what you might have been.”
– George Eliot

“The beginning is the most important part of the work.”
– Plato

“We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.”
– Edith Lovejoy Pierce

“Your present circumstances don’t determine where you can go; they merely determine where you start.”
– Nido Qubein

“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.”
– C.S. Lewis

“Approach the New Year with resolve to find the opportunities hidden in each new day.”
– Michael Josephson

“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”
– Seneca

“What the new year brings to you will depend a great deal on what you bring to the new year.”
– Vern McLellan

“Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man.”
– Benjamin Franklin

“Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow: The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true.”
– Alfred Lord Tennyson

“Tomorrow is the first blank page of a 365-page book. Write a good one.”
– Brad Paisley

“New Year’s most glorious light is sweet hope!”
– Mehmet Murat İldan