New Year's Day:

The New Year's holiday is all about reflecting on the year that's ending and planning for the year ahead. We gather with new and old friends alike, and make resolutions that may or may not last through January. One great way mankind has found to commemorate New Year's Eve is by writing about the annual holiday, producing quotes like the ones listed below.

QUOTES ABOUT NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS

The most popular tradition of New Year's in the United States is that of making resolutions for the year ahead, promising oneself to eat fewer desserts or exercise regularly, only to break that promise a few months later as famously expressed by Helen Fielding in "Bridget Jones's Diary":

"I do think New Year's resolutions can't technically be expected to begin on New Year's Day, don't you? Since, because it's an extension of New Year's Eve, smokers are already on a smoking roll and cannot be expected to stop abruptly on the stroke of midnight with so much nicotine in the system. Also dieting on New Year's Day isn't a good idea as you can't eat rationally but really need to be free to consume whatever is necessary, moment by moment, in order to ease your hangover. I think it would be much more sensible if resolutions began generally on January the second."

Some, like Andre Gide, also address the idea of resolutions with humor: "But can one still make resolutions when one is over forty? I live according to twenty-year-old habits." Others like Ellen Goodman approach it with a quiet optimism for real change:

"We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives... not looking for flaws, but for potential."

Mark Twain described these resolutions with an air of contempt multiple times throughout his writing and public speaking career. He once famously wrote, "New Year's is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls and humbug resolutions."

Another time, Twain wrote: "Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink and swore his last oath. Today, 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."

Oscar Wilde, on the other hand, took the concept with a grain of salt and wrote about it with humor, "Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account."