Happy New Year 2021: 21 Quotes and Instagram Captions to Ring in the New Year

Happy New Year! It’s safe to say that many of us were looking forward to 2021 after the unpredictable year 2020 was. From the coronavirus pandemic drastically changing our everyday life to an unprecedented presidential election, there’s a lot to leave behind and look forward to in the coming days, weeks, and months.

This year, we won’t be ringing in the new year the same way we have in the past. There won’t be big parties and celebrations. Crowds won’t be packed shoulder-to-shoulder in Times Square to see the ball drop in Midtown (it’s worth noting that there is a virtual option for folks to take part in). A winter vacation to ring in the new year will be postponed to sometime in 2021, when travel is safe again. Instead, you’ll likely be spending it at home, keeping things more low key than usual.

Whether you’re cooking savory comfort food to celebrate the end of the year, or having a small gathering with those in your household, you’ll want to capture and share the memories of your farewell to 2020. These quotes and words of wisdom are great to share as well for ushering in the year.

Two couples celebrate New Year’s with confetti, streamers, party hats, smoking and accordion music on their living room sofa. Newsweek offers a few low-key inspirational suggestions. Hulton Archive/Getty Images

“The best is yet to come.” —Frank Sinatra (and many others), from Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh’s song of the same name, 1959

“The beginning is the most important part of the work.” —Plato, The Republic, 375 B.C.

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“No matter how far away from yourself you may have strayed, there is always a path back. You already know who you are and how to fulfill your destiny.” —Oprah Winfrey, The Path Made Clear: Discovering Your Life’s Direction and Purpose, 2019

“You see things; you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‘Why not?'” —George Bernard Shaw, Back to Methuselah, 1921

“I don’t know where I’m going from here, but I promise it won’t be boring.” —David Bowie, 1997 at Madison Square Garden

“A very wise man once told me that you can’t look back—you just have to put the past behind you and find something better in your future.” —Jodi Picoult, Salem Falls, 2001

“It wouldn’t be New Year’s without a resolution. I’ve resolved to take a moment every day for the rest of my life to appreciate what I have.” —Susan Beth Pfeffer, Life as We Knew It, 2006

“Real courage is when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.” —Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, 1960

“Tomorrow is the first blank page of a 365-page book. Write a good one.” —Brad Paisley, Twitter, 2010

“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” —Helen Keller, Let Us Have Faith, 1940

“People are capable, at any time in their lives, of doing what they dream of.” —Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist, 1988

“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.” —Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, 1999

“What a wonderful thought it is that some of the best days of our lives haven’t even happened yet.” —Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl, 1947

“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, Ring Out, Wild Bells, 1850

“Let us eat, drink, and love for tomorrow we die, would be in fact the language of reason, the morality of life; and who but a fool would part with a reality for a fleeting shadow?” —Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 1792

“Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists… it is real… it is possible… it’s yours.” —Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, 1957

“There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.” —William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1599

“Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.” —Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, circa AD 171–175

“There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.” —C.S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady, 1967

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day.” —Albert Einstein, interview with Life magazine, 1955

“You just have to keep moving forward. You just have to keep doing something, seizing the next opportunity, staying open to trying something new. It doesn’t have to fit your vision of the perfect job or the perfect life. Perfect is boring, and dreams are not real. Just…DO.” —Shonda Rhimes, Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand in the Sun and Be Your Own Person, 2015