Happy New Year!

I was looking for some interesting quotes about the new year, resolutions and how it has been celebrated and came upon these from The Quote Garden:

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


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


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


Never tell your resolution beforehand, or it's twice as onerous a duty. ~John Selden


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


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


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, 1850


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


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, "Little Gidding"


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


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


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


And ye, who have met with Adversity's blast,
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


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


Each age has deemed the new-born year
The fittest time for festal cheer.
~Walter Scott


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


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


It wouldn't be New Year's if I didn't have regrets. ~William Thomas


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


May all your troubles last as long as your New Year's resolutions. ~Joey Adams


He who breaks a resolution is a weakling;
He who makes one is a fool.
~F.M. Knowles


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


I think in terms of the day's resolutions, not the year's. ~Henry Moore

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I haven't made any resolutions in several years. I do like the idea of a fresh start though. I like that about each new day, new week, new month... I think it's nice to think about starting over and leaving the past behind. I guess that's why I don't do resolutions anymore. They seem always to tie you to whatever failures you believe you've had in the past. Goals are a more positive statement I suppose.

How about you? Do you make resolutions each year? Are you good about keeping them? What's your favorite thing about the the new year?