The new year has a certain cleanliness to it in resetting the calendar, though it may take three months of writing the wrong year on forms before it finally sinks in: It's 2025.
With a calendar reset, our thoughts turn toward the future we want see, and the future we want to be. But any day is a fine day to make a resolution and try to be better. With that thought, here are some reflections, gathered from a variety of sources, on New Year's resolutions and change in general:
"Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man." -- Benjamin Franklin, American statesman and inventor
"Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson, American essayist and philosopher
"Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right." -- Oprah Winfrey, talk show host and producer
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"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." -- Gilbert K. Chesterton, English author
“The first step toward getting somewhere is to decide you’re not going to stay where you are.” -- J.P. Morgan, American financier and investment banker
“With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.” -- Eleanor Roosevelt, American diplomat, activist and former first lady
“Tomorrow is the first blank page of a 365-page book. Write a good one.” -- Brad Paisley, American singer and songwriter
“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” — C.S. Lewis, English author
"For there is always light, if only we are brave enough to see it, if only we're brave enough to be it." -- Amanda Gorman, American poet
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started.” — Mark Twain, American author
“It always seems impossible until it’s done.” — Nelson Mandela, former president of South Africa and human rights activist
“If you want something you’ve never had, you must be willing to do something you’ve never done.” — Thomas Jefferson, former U.S. president
“No matter how hard the past, you can always begin again.” — Buddha, religious teacher
"Youth is when you're allowed to stay up late on New Year's Eve. Middle age is when you're forced to." — Bill Vaughan, American columnist and author
"Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account." — Oscar Wilde, Irish poet and playwright
"Too much of anything is bad, but too much Champagne is just right." — F. Scott Fitzgerald, American author
"Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow." — Albert Einstein, theoretical physicist
"The best is yet to come." -- Frank Sinatra, American entertainer
“We are all one, and if we don't know it, we will learn it the hard way.” -- Bayard Rustin, American civil rights and social activist
"The best way to predict the future is to create it." -- Abraham Lincoln, former U.S. president
