45 of Our Favorite New Year’s Toasts

This article originally appeared on Next Avenue.

Ring in the new year with these delightful, thoughtful and funny toasts

To a Bright Future

• In the new year, may your right hand always be stretched out in friendship, but never in want. (Unknown)
• May all your troubles last as long as your new year’s resolutions. (Unknown)
• Here’s a toast to the future, a toast to the past, and a toast to our friends, far and near. (Unknown)
• May the future be pleasant, the past a bright dream, and may our friends remain faithful and dear. (Unknown)
• May the best day of your past be the worst day of your future. (Unknown)
• May your troubles be less, and your blessings be more. And nothing but happiness come through your door. (Unknown)
• Here’s to a bright New Year, and a fond farewell to the old; here’s to the things that are yet to come, and to the memories that we hold. (Unknown)
• The past is always tense, the future perfect. (Zadie Smith)
• Never regret. If it’s good, it’s wonderful. If it’s bad, it’s experience. (Eleanor Hibbert)

To Big Dreams

• The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. (Eleanor Roosevelt)
• You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream. (C.S. Lewis)

To Being Better People

• Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man. (Benjamin Franklin)
• For last year’s words belong to last year’s language. And next year’s words await another voice. And to make an end is to make a beginning. (T.S. Eliot)
• 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)
• Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing. (Abraham Lincoln)
• Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. (Søren)
• May your giving hand never fail you. (Unknown)
• The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion. (Albert Einstein)

To a Long Life

• May we all be alive at this same time next year. (Unknown)
• May the Lord keep you in the palm of His hand, and never close His fist too tight! (Unknown)
• May you live as long as you want and never want as long as you live. (Unknown)
• May the new year help to make us old. (Unknown)

To a Happy Life

• May your neighbors respect you, trouble neglect you, the angels protect you, and heaven accept you .(Unknown)
• Here’s to a long life and a merry one. A quick death and an easy one. A pretty girl and an honest one. A cold beer — and another one! (Unknown)
• With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come. (William Shakespeare)

To Love and Friendship

• May the hinges of friendship never rust, nor the wings of love lose a feather. (Unknown)
• Here’s health to those I love and wealth to those who love me. (Unknown)
• May our friends remain faithful and clear. (Unknown)
• Here’s champagne to our real friends, and real pain to our sham friends. (Unknown)
• In the new year, may your right hand always be stretched out in friendship, but never in want. (Unknown)
• Merry met and merry part, I drink to thee with all my heart. (Unknown)
• Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much. (Oscar Wilde)
• Another year is dawning! Let it be for better or for worse, another year with thee. (Unknown)
• It’s the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter. (Marlene Dietrich)

To Being in the Moment

• Youth is when you’re allowed to stay up late on New Year’s Eve. Middle age is when you’re forced to. (Bill Vaughn)
• Welcome be ye that are here. Welcome all, and make good cheer. Welcome all, another year. (Unknown)

To Making Merry

• Here’s to alcohol: the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems. (Homer Simpson)
• Stir the eggnog. Lift the toddy. Happy new year, everybody. (Unknown)
• Each age has deemed the new-born year the fittest time for festal cheer. (Sir Walter Scott)
• Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we diet. (Unknown)
  
• Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter, sermons and soda-water the day after. (Lord Byron)
• In victory, you deserve Champagne, in defeat, you need it. (Napoleon Bonaparte)
• Alcohol may be man’s worst enemy, but the Bible says love your enemy. (Frank Sinatra)
• One swallow doesn’t make a summer, but it breaks a new year’s resolution. (Unknown)
• Come let us drink! (Rabelais)

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