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.
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.
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.
Be at War with your Vices, at Peace with your Neighbours,
and let every New-Year find you a better Man.
Year's end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us.
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.
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.
And ye, who have met with Adversity's blast,
Ellen Goodman
Anaïs Nin
Hamilton Wright Mabie
Benjamin Franklin
Hal Borland
Edith Lovejoy Pierce
Mark Twain
And been bow'd to the earth by its fury;
To whom the Twelve Months, that have recently pass'd
Were as harsh as a prejudiced jury -
Still, fill to the Future! and join in our chime,
The regrets of remembrance to cozen,
And having obtained a New Trial of Time,
Shout in hopes of a kindlier dozen.
Thomas Hood
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