Happy New Year!

“Another fresh new year is here . . .
Another year to live!
To banish worry, doubt, and fear,
To love and laugh and give!

This bright new year is given me
To live each day with zest . . .
To daily grow and try to be
My highest and my best!

I have the opportunity
Once more to right some wrongs,
To pray for peace, to plant a tree,
And sing more joyful songs!”

— William Arthur Ward

“An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves.”
— Bill Vaughn

“Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.”
— Benjamin Franklin

“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

“There exists only the present instant… a Now which always and without end is itself new. There is no yesterday nor any tomorrow, but only Now, as it was a thousand years ago and as it will be a thousand years hence.”
— Meister Eckhart

“A weasel comes to say “Happy New Year” to the chickens”
— Chinese Proverb

“What can be said in New Year rhymes,
That’s not been said a thousand times?
The new years come, the old years go,
We know we dream, we dream we know.

We rise up laughing with the light,
We lie down weeping with the night.
We hug the world until it stings,
We curse it then and sigh for wings.

We live, we love, we woo, we wed,
We wreathe our prides, we sheet our dead.
We laugh, we weep, we hope, we fear,
And that’s the burden of a year.”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

“We turn not older with years, but newer every day.”
— Emily Dickinson

“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

So what are you planning for the New Year? I’m starting my art journaling, which I hope will be fun and interesting. There are new watercolors, new toys to play with including my new digital camera, and the year begins with our first Winter storms coming in.

May you all have a happy and joyful New Year!