Seasons of the Soul

May all your troubles last as long as your New Year’s resolutions.

—Joey Adams

New Year’s Resolution: To tolerate fools more gladly,
provided this does not encourage them to take up more of my time.

—James Agate

Drop the last year into the silent limbo of the past.
Let it go, for it was imperfect, and thank God that it can go.

—Brooks Atkinson

Every man should be born again on the first day of January.
Start with a fresh page.
Take up one hole more in the buckle if necessary,
or let down one, according to circumstances;
but on the first of January let every man gird himself once more,
with his face to the front,
and take no interest in the things that were and are past.

—Henry Ward Beecher

From New Year’s on the outlook brightens; good humor lost in a mood of failure returns.
I resolve to stop complaining.

—Leonard Bernstein

Year’s end is neither an end nor a beginning, but a going on,
with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us.

—Hal Borland

One resolution I have made, and try always to keep, is this: To rise above the little things.

—John Burroughs

The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year.
It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes.
Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions.
Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.

—G. K. Chesterton

The merry year is born like the bright berry from the naked thorn.

—Hartley Coleridge

Happiness is too many things these days for anyone to wish it on anyone lightly.
So let’s just wish each other a biteless New Year and leave it at that.

—Judith Crist

The new year begins in a snow-storm of white vows.

—George William Curtis

If you asked me for my New Year resolution, it would be to find out who I am.

—Cyril Cusack

For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.

—T. S. Eliot

I do think New Year’s resolutions can’t technically be expected to begin on New Year’s Day, don’t you?
Since, because it’s an extension of New Year’s Eve, smokers are already on a smoking roll
and cannot be expected to stop abruptly on the stroke of midnight with so much nicotine in the system.
Also dieting on New Year’s Day isn’t a good idea as you can’t eat rationally;
but really need to be free to consume whatever is necessary, moment by moment,
in order to ease your hangover.
I think it would be much more sensible if resolutions began generally on January the second.

—Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones’s Diary

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

—Benjamin Franklin

But can one still make resolutions when one is over forty?
I live according to twenty-year-old habits.

—Andre Gide

We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room,
drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched.
Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives . . .
not looking for flaws, but for potential.

—Ellen Goodman

New year, same goal.

—Joe King

He who breaks a resolution is a weakling;
he who makes one is a fool.

—F. M. Knowles

I spent 18 years in a tiny studio apartment just a few short blocks from Times Square,
and I’m here to tell you I saw things—ugly, hard-partying, throw-uppy things—
that never made it onto any Dick Clark special.

—Lisa Kogan

New Year’s Day is every man’s birthday.

—Charles Lamb

No one ever regarded the first of January with indifference.
It is that from which all date their time, and count upon what is left.
It is the nativity of our common Adam.

—Charles Lamb

Of all sounds of all bells . . . most solemn and touching is the peal which rings out the Old Year.

—Charles Lamb

New Year’s Eve is like every other night;
there is no pause in the march of the universe,
no breathless moment of silence among created things
that the passage of another twelve months may be noted;
and yet, no man has quite the same thoughts this evening
that come with the coming of darkness on other nights.

—Hamilton Wright Mabie

Time has no divisions to mark its passage,
there is never a thunder-storm or blare of trumpets
to announce the beginning of a new month or year.
Even when a new century begins,it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols.

—Thomas Mann

I think in terms of the day’s resolutions, not the year’s.

—Henry Moore

I made no resolutions for the New Year.
The habit of making plans, of criticizing, sanctioning and molding my life,
is too much of a daily event for me.

—Anaïs Nin

I’m a little bit older, a little bit wiser, a little bit rounder, but still none the wiser.

—Robert Paul

Let our New Year’s resolution be this:
We will be there for one another as fellow members of humanity, in the finest sense of the word.

—Göran Persson

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

The Old Year has gone. Let the dead past bury its own dead.
The New Year has taken possession of the clock of time.
All hail the duties and possibilities of the coming twelve months!

—Edward Payson Powell

It is, then it’s gone;
present, turns to memories; a future begins . . . today, tomorrow,
all the same again this year; beginning then ending.

—Peter S. Quinn

Every man regards his own life as the New Year’s Eve of time.

—Jean Paul Richter

Each age has deemed the new-born year the fittest time for festal cheer.

—Sir Walter Scott

Never tell your resolution beforehand, or it’s twice as onerous a duty.

—John Selden

There is nothing better that you can offer yourself on this New Year’s Day
than the gift of truth and the promise that you will live free.

—Dr. Robin Smith

It wouldn’t be New Year’s if I didn’t have regrets.

—William Thomas

New Year’s Day: Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions.
Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.

—Mark Twain

Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink and swore his last oath.
Today, we are a pious and exemplary community.
Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds
and gone to cutting our ancient shortcomings considerably shorter than ever.

—Mark Twain

A new oath holds pretty well;
but . . . when it is become old, and frayed out, and damaged
by a dozen annual retryings of its remains, it ceases to be serviceable;
any little strain will snap it.

—Mark Twain

New Year’s is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody
save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks,
and friendly calls and humbug resolutions.

—Mark Twain

Youth is when you’re allowed to stay up late on New Year’s Eve.
Middle age is when you’re forced to.

—Bill Vaughn

An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in.
A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves.

—Bill Vaughan

Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account.

—Oscar Wilde

Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right.

—Oprah Winfrey

It depends on us . . .
Another year lies before us like an unwritten page, an unspent coin, an unwalked road.
How the pages will read, what treasures will be gained in exchange for time,
or what we find alone the way, will largely depend on us.

—Esther Baldwin York

Making resolutions is a cleansing ritual of self assessment and repentance
that demands personal honesty and, ultimately, reinforces humility.
Breaking them is part of the cycle.

—Eric Zorn

Many people look forward to the New Year for a new start on old habits.

—Author Unknown

A New Year’s resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other.

—Author Unknown

People are so worried about what they eat between Christmas and the New Year,
but they really should be worried about what they eat between the New Year and Christmas.

—Author Unknown

A new year is unfolding—like a blossom with petals curled tightly concealing the beauty within.

—Author Unknown