New Year's Eve quotations

“And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been, full of work that has never been done, full of tasks, claims, and demands; and let us see that we learn to take it without letting fall too much of what it has to bestow upon those who demand of it necessary, serious, and great things.”
Rainer Maria Rilke in a letter

"It is far better to be alone than to be in bad company." George Washington. I wish we had hanged him but he was right about this.


“The Great Pandemic… showed us that if we stop going out for leisure activities, dining out, travelling, taking vacations, then the city becomes empty, culture sleeps, love is predictable and citizenship doesn’t exist.” French sociologist Jean Viard in Le Monde

"People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character." Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Inaction is also a decision.” Sir Anthony Blair in his memoirs.





"A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition." Rudyard Kipling





"This principle runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up yourself and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and the death of your whole body in the end; submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will ever be yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in." C.S. Lewis