45 Best New Year’s Quotes To Inspire You

A new year is going to be rung in soon. Change may be difficult but good planning can be positively meaningful.

This past year, our family experienced changes as our children approach their college years. We visited colleges with Tyler, and plan to do the same with Alex this coming year.  Tyler had a phenomenal time playing football with his winning high school team.

A few years ago, we moved out of the city, to a small town. The change was most challenging for me, but both kids made new friends and flourished academically.

With the new year comes a clean slate. Take time to think about the purpose of life, making changes, finding more independence, setting goals, and reaching your potential. Use your time as the precious resource it is. We found 45  New Year’s quotes to inspire and motivate you into the new year and reap all of the benefits that life has to order.

Our best wishes to you and your families for a happy, healthy, and productive year.

On The Purpose Of Life

1. Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.”
― Joseph Campbell

2. “You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”― Albert Camus

3. “If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering.”  – Viktor Frankl

4. “Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”   – Rumi

5. “There is not one big cosmic meaning for all; there is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person.” ― Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anais Nin, vol. 1: 1931-1934

6. “In the beginning, God created the earth, and he looked upon it in His cosmic loneliness.”

7. And God said, “Let Us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud can see what We have done.” And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was man. Mud as man alone could speak. God leaned close to mud as man sat up, looked around, and spoke. Man blinked. “What is the purpose of all this?” he asked politely.

“Everything must have a purpose?” asked God.

“Certainly,” said man.

“Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this,” said God.

And He went away.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

On New Beginnings

8. “You’ve got a chance to start out all over again. A new place, new people, new sights. A clean slate. See, you can be anything you want with a fresh start.”― Annie Proulx, The Shipping News

9. “The beginning is always today.”― Mary Shelley

10. “That morning he feels fresh-scrubbed and cleansed, as if he is being given yet another opportunity to live his life correctly.”― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

11. “New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings.”  — Lao Tzu

12. “No matter how hard the past, you can always begin again.” –  Buddha

A Scientific Viewpoint Of Life

13. “As far as we can tell from a purely scientific viewpoint, human life has absolutely no meaning. Humans are the outcome of blind evolutionary processes that operate without goal or purpose. Our actions are not part of some divine cosmic plan, and if planet earth were to blow up tomorrow morning, the universe would probably keep going about its business as usual. As far as we can tell at this point, human subjectivity would not be missed. Hence any meaning that people inscribe to their lives is just a delusion.” ― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

14. “I don’t know the meaning of life. I don’t know why we are here. I think life is full of anxieties and fears and tears. It has a lot of grief in it, and it can be very grim. And I do not want to be the one who tries to tell somebody else what life is all about. To me it’s a complete mystery.”  ― Charles M. Schulz: Conversations

15. “A life of short duration…could be so rich in joy and love that it could contain more meaning than a life lasting eighty years.” ― Victor Frankl

16. “Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.” — Albert Einstein

Life Is Doing More Than Just Existing

17. “True glory consists in doing what deserves to be written, in writing what deserves to be read, and in so living as to make the world happier and better for our living in it.”

― Pliny the Elder

18. “That’s what I think a meaningful life is. One lives not just for one’s self but for one’s community.” – Ruth Bader Ginsberg

19. “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people just exist.”  — Oscar Wilde

19. “We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.”  –Toni Morrison

20. “Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”   – Mark Twain

21. “I have loved books all my life. There is nothing more beautiful in our material world than the book.”   – Patti Smith

22. “Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough.” ― Emily Dickinson

23. “Do anything, but let it produce joy.”― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

Time Is A Precious Resource

24. “I’m stronger because I had to be, I’m smarter because of my mistakes, happier because of the sadness I’ve known, and now wiser because I learned.  – Unknown

25. “One day you will wake up and there won’t be any more time to do the things you’ve always wanted. Do it now.”  — Paulo Coelho

26. “Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light.”  — Madeline L’Engle

27. “Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.”   — Dr. Seuss

28. “Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that’s the stuff life is made of.”― Benjamin Franklin

29. “There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.” —C.S. Lewis

30 “If you don’t like the road you’re walking on, start paving another one.” – Dolly Parton

Finding Your Independence

31. “Independence I have long considered as the grand blessing of life, the basis of every virtue; and independence I will ever secure by contracting my wants, though I were to live on a barren heath.”― Mary Wollstonecraft

32. “I think the girl who is able to earn her own living and pay her own way should be as happy as anybody on earth. The sense of independence and security is very sweet.” —    Susan B. Anthony

33. “The Ultimate Answer to Life, The Universe and Everything is…42!”― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

34. “Your time as a caterpillar has expired. Your wings are ready.” — Unknown

Changes Can Be Life-Affirming

35. “The secret of changes is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”  –  Socrates

36. “It’s never too late to become who you want to be. I hope you live a life that you’re proud of, and if you find that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start over.”— F. Scott Fitzgerald

37. “If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.”  –  Maya Angelou

38. “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.”   –  C.S. Lewis

Setting Goals For The Upcoming Year

39. “If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy and inspires your hopes.” – Andrew Carnegie

40. “I learned to always take on things I’d never done before. Growth and comfort do not coexist.”  –  Ginni Rometti, former CEO, IBM

41. “The only limit to the height of your achievements is reach of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.”  –  Michelle Obama

Reaching Your Potential

42. “The will to win, the desire to succeed. The urge to reach your full potential — these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence.”  – Confucius

43. “We know what we are, but know not what we may be.”  –  William Shakespeare, Hamlet

44. “Don’t set limits on your unlimited potential.”  — Anonymous

45. “There is no paycheck that can equal the feeling of contentment that comes from being the person you are meant to be.”  –  Oprah Winfrey

Final Thoughts

Take steps to fulfill your dreams and make them realities. Be realistic when planning financial goals and pair them with better habits. Make changes for better achievement of your goals. Change may be difficult but can be meaningful in the long term. You can reach financial success based on proper goal-setting. By being financially comfortable, you can strive to be the person you can be. Yes, money can buy happiness.

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Have a great winter holiday!

What quotes were most inspiring? Any others that are among your favorites?