Quotes
New Year Quotes
These are real New Year quotes with their actual authors, from poets, novelists and humorists, so you can use them in a card, caption or toast for 2027 without worrying about a fake attribution.
We left out the dozens of lines that float around the internet with a famous name attached but no real source. What's left is a mix of hopeful, reflective and funny quotes that have stood the test of time.
Classic New Year quotes
- "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, In Memoriam A.H.H.
- "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
- "Should auld acquaintance be forgot, / And never brought to mind?" Robert Burns, Auld Lang Syne
- "Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbours, and let each new year find you a better man." Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack
- "Each age has deem'd the new-born year / The fittest time for festal cheer." Sir Walter Scott, Marmion
- "No one ever regarded the first of January with indifference." Charles Lamb, New Year's Eve (Essays of Elia)
- "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." G.K. Chesterton
Hopeful and inspiring quotes
- "Isn't it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?" L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
- "Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year." Ralph Waldo Emerson
- "Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could." Ralph Waldo Emerson
- "Tomorrow is the first blank page of a 365 page book. Write a good one." Brad Paisley
- "And now we welcome the new year, full of things that have never been." Rainer Maria Rilke
- "'Hope' is the thing with feathers / That perches in the soul." Emily Dickinson
- "Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?" Mary Oliver, The Summer Day
- "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
Reflective quotes about time and change
- "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
- "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
- "If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours." Henry David Thoreau, Walden
- "Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunderstorm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year." Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain
- "I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer." F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
- "May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness." Neil Gaiman
Funny New Year quotes
- "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
- "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
- "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
- "Good resolutions are simply cheques that men draw on a bank where they have no account." Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
- "Never tell your resolution beforehand, or it's twice as onerous a duty." John Selden, Table Talk
- "We spend January 1st walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched." Ellen Goodman
When you use a quote in a card or caption, keep the author's name with it, and add one line of your own underneath so it feels personal. Shorter quotes, like Montgomery's or Paisley's, fit best on social posts, while Tennyson and Eliot work beautifully read aloud at a New Year's toast.
Frequently asked questions
What is the most famous New Year quote?
One of the most famous is Tennyson's "Ring out the old, ring in the new," from his 1850 poem In Memoriam A.H.H. The opening of Robert Burns' Auld Lang Syne is just as widely known because it's sung at midnight.
What is a good short New Year quote?
L.M. Montgomery's "Isn't it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?" is short and hopeful. Brad Paisley's "Tomorrow is the first blank page of a 365 page book" is another popular choice.
What did Mark Twain say about New Year's resolutions?
Mark Twain joked that New Year's Day is "the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual." The line comes from an 1863 newspaper piece.
Who said 'to make an end is to make a beginning'?
T.S. Eliot wrote it in Little Gidding, the final poem of Four Quartets, published in 1942. The full passage begins "For last year's words belong to last year's language."