New Year Quotes
Edmund Burke, in 1791, gave the most useful advice for the occasion: you can never plan the future by the past. The page is built from the pages on change, hope, the future and time, with Shakespeare, T. S. Eliot, Horace and Byron supplying most of the entries. It has no New Year collection behind it.
If you want something about resolutions, the Change page has better material. The famous line about a small group of citizens changing the world, credited to Margaret Mead, is marked disputed. Nobody has found where it comes from.
Most quoted on new year:
The "good old times" — all times when old are good —
Are gone.
But how carve way i' the life that lies before,
If bent on groaning ever for the past?
A hopeful sinner is closer to the mercy of Allah than a hopeless worshipper.
Whan the sunne shinth make hay, whiche is to say,
Take time whan time comth, lest time steale away.
I laugh, for hope hath happy place with me;
If my bark sinks, 'tis to another sea.
For the next inn he spurs amain,
In haste alights, and skuds away,
But time and tide for no man stay.
In the factory, we make cosmetics; in the store we sell hope.
The vibrancy of change permeates the air around all of our nations, human and more-than-human.
The end crowns all;
And that old common arbitrator, Time,
Will one day end it.
As we speak cruel time is fleeing. Seize the day, believing as little as possible in the morrow.