New Year's quotes

Ring in the new year with these thoughtful, humorous and sardonic quotes.

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Wed, Dec 22 2010 at 11:23 AM

Break out the bubbly and watch the ball drop — it's that time of year again. Toast your friends, laugh, get inspired, make promises or throw resolutions out the window with the help of some words of wisdom from Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain, John Wayne and eight more notable, quotable people. These thoughtful, humorous and sardonic New Year's quotes will put you in the mood to send off the old and ring in the new.

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

Benjamin Franklin, Founding Father, author, inventor. Written in a 1755 almanac.

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

John Selden, English jurist and scholar

"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, Poet

"Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink and swore his last oath. To-day, 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, American author and humorist. Written in a Virginia newspaper, 1863.

"Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account."

Oscar Wilde, Irish writer and poet.

"Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunder-storm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when a new century begins it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols."

Thomas Mann, German writer and Nobel Prize laureate. Written in his 1924 novel, "The Magic Mountain."

"In the New Year, may your right hand always be stretched out in friendship, but never in want."

Irish Proverb

"Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing."

Abraham Lincoln, 16th president of the United States. Written in an 1855 letter to his friend, Isham Reavis.

"No one ever regarded the First of January with indifference. It is that from which all date their time, and count upon what is left. It is the nativity of our common Adam."

Charles Lamb, English essayist. Written in Harper's Magazine, 1869.

"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, American author and humorist. Written in a Virginia newspaper, 1864.

"Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday."

John Wayne, American film actor. Stated in a 1971 interview with Playboy.