53 Quotes for Military Spouses in the New Year

Maybe you’ve found yourself wondering when this godforsaken year was going to end. Or maybe it’s been the best one yet for you and you’re sad to see it go. Perhaps this year, you’re leaving behind difficult career choices or an ugly PCS. Maybe you’re looking forward to a new job and a new installation.

No matter how you’re feeling about this past year and the one ahead, one thing is certain: the year will change whether you want it to or not. So how will you greet this new chapter?

Use these quotes as light posts along the way. I think you’ll find at least one that resonates with you.

1. “The first step towards getting somewhere is to decide you’re not going to stay where you are.” -J.P. Morgan
2. “I don’t know where I’m going from here, but I promise it won’t be boring.” -David Bowie
3. “Never underestimate the power you have to take your life in a new direction.” -Germany Kent
4. “No matter how hard the past, you can always begin again.” -Buddah
5. “Celebrate endings—for they precede new beginnings.”  -Jonathan Lockwood Huie
6. “Your present circumstances don’t determine where you can go. They merely determine where you start.” -Nido Qubein
7. “To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.” -Winston Churchill
8. “You can get excited about the future. The past won’t mind.” -Hillary DePiano
9. “The magic in new beginnings is truly the most powerful of them all.” -Josiyah Martin
10. “Be so busy loving your life that you have no time for hate, regret or fear.” -Anonymous
11. “Don’t live the same year 75 times and call it a life.” -Robin Sharma
12. “Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson
13. “Sometimes a year has been so disastrous and so terrible that entering a new year will automatically mean entering a wonderful year!” -Mehmet Murat Ildan
14. “Every single year, we’re a different person. I don’t think we’re the same person all of our lives.” -Steven Spielberg
15. “What the new years brings to you will depend a great deal on what you bring to the new year.” -Vern McLellan
16. “I hope you realize that every day is a fresh start for you. That every sunrise is a new chapter in your life waiting to be written.” -Juansen Dizon
17. “You are never too old to reinvent yourself.” -Steve Harvey
18. “I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.” -Thomas Jefferson
19. “For last year’s words belong to last year’s language. And next year’s words await another voice.” -T.S. Eliot
20. “Packaged inside of every mistake there lays a great lesson.” -Craig D. Lounsbrough
21. “It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.” -William Shakespeare
22. “Enter this new year with a gratitude for this new chance to create your dreams.” -Alvina Celeste
23. “Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right.” -Oprah Winfrey
24. “Each year’s regret are envelopes in which messages of hope are found for the new year.” -John Dallas
25. “Kindness, kindness, kindness. I want to make a New year’s prayer, not a resolution. I’m praying for courage.” -Susan Sontag
26. “An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves.” -William Vaughan
27. “Take a leap of faith and begin this wondrous new year by believing.” -Sarah Ban Breathnach
28. “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
29. “You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” -Martin Luther King, Jr.
30. “The beginning is the most important part of the work.” -Plato
31. “There are far better things ahead than any we leave behind.” -C.S. Lewis
32. “What a wonderful thought it is that some of the best days of our lives haven’t even happened yet.” -Anne Frank
33. “Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.” -Abraham Lincoln
34. “You do not find the happy life. You make it.” -Camilla Eyring Kimball
35. “The best way to predict the future is to create it.” -Abraham Lincoln
36. “Celebrate what you want to see more of.” -Tom Peters
37. “Strength shows not only the ability to persist, but the ability to start over.” -F. Scott Fitzgerald
38. “Every time you tear a leaf off a calendar, you present a new place for new ideas.” -Charles Kettering
39. “The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson
40. “Whatever it is you’re scared of doing, do it. Make your mistakes, next year and forever.” -Neil Gaiman
41. “With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.” -Eleanor Roosevelt
42. “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” -C.S. Lewis
43. “Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come, whispering, ‘It will be happier.'” -Alfred Lord Tennyson
44. “If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.” -Maya Angelou
45. “Listen. I wish I could tell you it gets better. But, it doesn’t get better. You get better.” -Joan Rivers
46. “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams.” -Henry David Thoreau
47. “As long as I am breathing, in my eyes, I am just beginning.” -Criss Jami
48. “Character is the ability to carry out a good resolution long after the excitement of the moment has passed.” -Cavett Robert
49. “Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.” -Benjamin Franklin
50. “New beginnings are in order, and you are bound to feel some level of excitement as new chances come your way.” -Auliq Ice
51. “Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.” -Helen Keller
52. “If you’re brave enough to say goodbye, life will reward you with a new hello.” —Paulo Coehlo
53. “New year — a new chapter, new verse, or just the same old story? Ultimately we write it. The choice is ours.” -Alex Moritt