It is glaring to the blind and deafening to those who can’t hear that 2020 was a rough year. Filled with death and terror, pandemic and disasters, dirty politics and bad governance, assaults and abuses, to mention just a few.
The last 366 days showed almost everyone how rough and unfair life can be. While it was a year of endless possibilities for some people, we’d all rather put it behind us, literally and metaphorically.
But with the dawn of a new year, now isn’t the time to cry over spilled milk. It’s the time for hope, healing, change, and endless growth.
And as we all adjust to the tide of the new year, below are some new year’s quotes from famous authors to help start the year with positivities:
- “For last year’s words belong to last year’s language And next year’s words await another voice.” — T.S. Eliot, ‘Four Quartets’
- “I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re Doing Something. So that’s my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before. Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that it isn’t good enough, or it isn’t perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life. Whatever it is you’re scared of doing, Do it. Make your mistakes, next year and forever.” ― Neil Gaiman, Neil Gaiman’s Journal
- “And now we welcome the new year, full of things that have never been” ― Rainer Maria Rilke
- “The object of a new year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul.” — G.K Chesterton
- “The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.” ― Maya Angelou - “Not knowing when the dawn will come / I open every door.”
― Emily Dickinson, Not Knowing When the Dawn Will Come - “Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need / For this bright morning dawning for you / … The horizon leans forward / Offering you space to place new steps of change.”
― Maya Angelou, On the Pulse of Morning, a poem written for President Bill Clinton’s inauguration in January 1993 - “The year is done. I spread the past three hundred sixty-five days before me on the living room carpet… I fold the good days up and place them in my back pocket for safekeeping. Draw the match. Cremate the unnecessary. The light of the fire warms my toes. I pour myself a glass of warm water to cleanse myself for January. Here I go. Stronger and wiser into the new.”
― Rupi Kaur, The Sun and Her Flowers - “Don’t worry. Just when you think your life is over, a new storyline falls from the sky and lands right in your lap.”
- ― Rebekah Crane, The Upside of Falling Down
- The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot.
― Michael Altshuler
Written by Samiah Olabimpe