Quotes & Sayings About Last Day Of Year

How rude of me, we haven't even introduced ourselves. We're the Andersons. I'm Evan, the lovely size-zero lass in the floppy sun hat is my wife Amy, and these are our best friends/children, Evan and Amy Jr. As you can see, we're very fit and active. You know what our family's average percentage of body fat is? Three. Yes, really. We got it tested last year when we all became organ donors.
You may have noticed that I'm carrying Amy on my back. We do that a lot. At least once a day, and not just when we're in fields like this; we do it on beaches and in urban environments as well. That's what happens when your love is deep and playful like ours. You should also know that we also dab frosting on each other's noses every single time we eat cupcakes, which is both mischievous and very us. Do you guys even eat cupcakes? — Colin Nissan

You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, so all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last. You have all the fears of mortals and all the desires of immortals ... What foolish forgetfulness of mortality to defer wise resolutions to the fiftieth or sixtieth year, and to intend to begin life at a point to which few have attained. — Denis Diderot

Reports of missing persons have increased sixfold in the last twenty-five years, from roughly 150,000 in 1980 to 900,000 this year . . . More than 2,000 a day. — Craig Johnson

Robert Kennedy, whose summer home is eight miles from the home I live in all year round, was shot two nights ago. He died last night. So it goes. Martin Luther King was shot a month ago. He died, too. So it goes. And every day my Government gives me a count of corpses created by military science in Vietnam. So it goes. My father died many years ago now - of natural causes. So it goes. He was a sweet man. He was a gun nut, too. He left me his guns. They rust. — Kurt Vonnegut

My dad, who was a teacher, used to tell me that a teacher's goal should be for every one of their students to get an A. If that's your goal every day - to make every student or player learn - then it doesn't matter if you won last year or didn't win. When next year's team shows up, I try to help every player become as good as they can be. — Tony Dungy

Maj Thapa rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and served till he retired. He continued to attend almost all the Republic Day parades from 1964 to 2004. Sick and undergoing dialysis for kidney failure in Delhi, Lt Col Thapa would slip in and out of consciousness in his last year. Poornima, who was taking care of him, pleaded with him to not attend the parade that year, but he refused gently yet firmly. 'When I wear my uniform and go for the parade, I represent my soldiers; those men who fought a war with me. I cannot let them down,' he told her. Though he could hardly stand for long or even stay alert, he put on his uniform, pinned on his PVC, tilted his Gorkha hat at the perfect angle and went for the parade, remembers Poornima. Through sheer willpower, he managed to stand in the jeep till he had saluted the President. After that, he sat down. That would be the last Republic Day parade he would attend. On 5 September 2005, Lt Col Thapa died of kidney failure. He was 77 years old. — Rachna Bisht

Once upon a time, this moment - this last light of the evening the day before the race - was the best moment of the year for me. The anticipation of the game to come. But that was when all I had to lose was my life. — Maggie Stiefvater

Open your eyes, Charlie love,' Mum whispers. 'You'll miss out on the day.' Not a lot to miss out on, really. My days have been sort of shakey lately. Like a voice running out of breath. Like a hand playing the blues. Like a girl losing her bikini top in the pool at Jeremy Magden's final party for Year 10 last week, if we're getting specific. Mum says look on the bright side. Okay. I guess I was only half naked. — Cath Crowley

From my first year on the faculty, there was always so much more I wanted to impart to the students. I decided that, rather than waste the last day of class summarizing the semester, I'd spend my time talking about what I'd learned in life that was useful. — Clayton M Christensen

The bleeding, dying, rising Saviour, is the only star of hope to a sinner. Oh for grace to come now and drink, ere the sun sets upon the year's last day! — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

On this perfect day, when everything is ripening and not only the grape turns brown, the eye of the sun just fell upon my life: I looked back, I looked forward, and never saw so many and such good things at once. It was not for nothing that I buried my forty-fourth year today; I had the right to bury it; whatever was life in it has been saved, is immortal. The first book of the Revaluation of All Values, the Songs of Zarathustra, the Twilight of the Idols, my attempt to philosophize with a hammer - all presents of this year, indeed of its last quarter! How could I fail to be grateful to my whole life? - and so I tell my life to myself. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Richard would freak if I smoked in the apartment. He kind of thinks I quit last year. I did quit last year, I just still occasionally need a cigarette. Like a few times a day. — Jessica Martinez

Christmas Day itself is always bittersweet, because it's the last day of that beautiful magick that's been building up like a tidal wave for the past month. In just a week it will be hard to even remember what it's like. I'll be brokenhearted at the thought of it being gone again for an entire year. — Damien Echols

On the last day of January 1915, under the sign of the Water Bearer, in a year of a great war, and down in the shadow of some French mountains on the borders of Spain, I came into the world. Free by nature, in the image of God, I was nevertheless the prisoner of my own violence and my own selfishness, in the image of the world into which I was born. That world was the picture of Hell, full of men like myself, loving God and yet hating Him; born to love Him, living instead in fear and hopeless self-contradictory hungers. — Thomas Merton

I can't recall a day this year or last when I did not hear the name of Babe Ruth. — Hank Aaron

It had been two weeks since her first real boyfriend, Jason, had broken
up with her on the eve of the first day of school. His exact words had been "Babe, you know I think you're
the best and all, but it's my senior year and I can't have the baggage of a relationship. I gotta live it up,
play the field. You get it, right?" Uh, not exactly. So Michele had to begin her junior year with a broken
heart, which grew all the more painful last week, when word spread that Jason was hooking up with a
sophomore, Carly Marsh — Alexandra Monir

Watch this, Larry. The seeds I saved from last year bring forth plants this year. It's a death, burial, and resurrection. It's this way with the sun also. It comes up in the morning and brings us light all the day long. But in the evening it goes down. Is that the end of the sun? No... It comes up the very next day. Death, burial, and resurrection."
"I never saw it like that, Charlie. Tell me more."
"See Larry, let's go deeper with that. Just for instance, something must die for something to live. You and I eat live substance--whether it is corn or beans, it's a life. That life dies to give us life. Now watch this, Larry. If that works with the physical; then it also works in the spiritual. Jesus Christ had to die to give us life... — Jerrel C. Thomas

Christmas is the perfect time to celebrate the love of God and family and to create memories that will last forever. Jesus is God's perfect, indescribable gift. The amazing thing is that not only are we able to receive this gift, but we are able to share it with others on Christmas and every other day of the year. — Joel Osteen

It took Lucy forty hours to die and we hardly left her side ... We spent those last hours kissing her frequently and telling her how deeply we loved her. Then I began to read Leah's children's books out loud to her. She had lived a storyless childhood, so I read in the last day of her life the books she had missed. I told her about Winnie the Pooh and Yertle the Turtle, took her Where the Wild Things Are, introduced her to Peter Rabbit and Alice in Wonderland. Each of us took turns reading to her out of Grimm's Fairy Tales, and, at the very last, Leah insisted that I tell all the Great Dog Chippie stories I had told her during our year of exile from the family in Rome. — Pat Conroy

For Tahitians there is nothing more desirable than love, being loved and making love. They are in love with the idea of love even more than they are with a real person.
Love is free, passion unrestrained and wild, and all love stories, no matter how long they last, one day, a year or forever, are equally beautiful. — Carol Vorvain

The office Halloween party was at the Royalton last week and I went as a mass murderer, complete with a sign painted on my back that read MASS MURDERER (which was decidedly lighter than the sandwich board I had constructed earlier that day that read DRILLER KILLER), and beneath those two words I had written in blood Yep, that's me and the suit was also covered with blood, some of it fake, most of it real. In one fist I clenched a hank of Victoria Bell's hair, and pinned next to my boutonniere (a small white rose) was a finger bone I'd boiled the flesh off of. As elaborate as my costume was, Craig McDermott still managed to win first place in the competition. He came as Ivan Boesky, which I thought was unfair since a lot of people thought I'd gone as Michael Milken last year. The Patty Winters Show this morning was about Home Abortion Kits. — Bret Easton Ellis

It was a nightmare. Have you ever thrown a party and tried to get EXACTLY three dozen specifically qualified people to attend? Even if they RSVP, half of them never show up, right? And if enough people don't show up, you can't throw the party. So you have to recruit random people at the last minute who you've never met before to fill up the roster. And they turn out to be greedy eleven-year-olds from Estonia, who you're FORCED to keep around in order to limp through the evening's festivities, and . . . yeah. Just typing all that out gave me stress flashbacks. — Felicia Day

When the author is not traveling, he works at an L-shaped desk, which affords a view north through a large sunny window. He writes everything on an electric typewriter because "it has to be a book from the first day," he explains. He has no daily routine because of all the traveling he does, but follows a very disciplined writing process. He writes each page six times, then places it in a three-ring binder with a DePauw University cover ("a talisman," he calls this memento from his alma mater). When he feels that he has gotten a page just right, he takes out another 20 words. "After a year, I've come to the end. Then I'll take this first chapter, and without rereading it, I'll throw it away and write the chapter that goes at the beginning. Because the first chapter is the last chapter in disguise." He always hands in a completed manuscript, and his editor is his first reader. — Jennifer M. Brown

Sometimes kindness doesn't beget anything but misery. My mother didn't have to learn that until she was in her thirties; I've known it nearly all my life. I'm not sure which of us is better off. — Jessica Warman

To my shame, the name he gave was not one that conjured any feeling in me: not fear, nor revulsion, nor horror at a man who carried ill-luck with him wherever he went. On that bright summer
day at the height of the world, I heard Aquila say 'Lucius Caesennius Paetus', and I shrugged and said, 'He who was consul in Rome last year? — M.C. Scott

When it got to be time to design the week - a period of time, unlike the day, month, and year, with no intrinsic astronomical significance - it was assigned seven days, each named after one of the seven anomalous lights in the night sky. We can readily make out the remnants of this convention. In English, Saturday is Saturn's day. Sunday and Mo[o]nday are clear enough. Tuesday through Friday are named after the gods of the Saxon and kindred Teutonic invaders of Celtic/Roman Britain: Wednesday, for example, is Odin's (or Wodin's) day, which would be more apparent if we pronounced it as it's spelled, "Wedn's Day"; Thursday is Thor's day; Friday is the day of Freya, goddess of love. The last day of the week stayed Roman, the rest of it became German. — Carl Sagan

Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever. That surrender, even the smallest act of giving up, stays with me. So when I feel like quitting, I ask myself, which would I rather live with? — Lance Armstrong

Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it
tantalising glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest
if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself
you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say Here at last is the thing I was made for. — C.S. Lewis

Goodbye Syn.

That man at the end of the bar; that was the kind of man that lured you to his bed at night and fucked you senseless, but then beat the shit out of you the next morning, because in the harsh light of day, he wasn't gay. Furi knew that type of man all too well. As he walked the half-block to the bus stop, his blood cooled at the horrific memories of the last year as he lit a Marlboro and waited for the next bus. He didn't need to dredge up old horror stories, he had to get his mind right ... he had an early shoot in the morning. — A.E. Via

Since, O sweet Lord Jesus, Thou art the present portion of Thy people, favour us this year with such a sense of Thy preciousness, that from its first to its last day we may be glad and rejoice in Thee. Let — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

I was not a good scholar, and during my last year at school I made little effort. This was not due to laziness ... , but to a state of youthful day-dreaming and indifference ... that was only ... pierced when creative desire enveloped me like ether. — Hermann Hesse

Curran was looking at her. Not in the same way he looked at me, but he was looking. An odd feeling flared in me, hot and angry, prickling my throat from the inside with hot sharp needles, and I realized it was jealousy. I guess there was a first time for everything. "Have you seen my father?" Lorelei asked. "How is he?" "I saw him last year," Curran said. "He's the same as always: tough and ornery." I came to stand next to him. Lorelei raised her eyebrows. Her eyes widened, and a sheen of pale green rolled over her irises. "You must be the human Consort." Yes, that's me, the human invalid. "My name is Kate." "Kate," she repeated, as if tasting the word. "It is an honor to meet you." Curran was smiling at her, that handsome hot smile that usually made my day better. Pushing Lorelei into the ocean wouldn't be diplomatic, even if I really wanted to do it. "Likewise. — Ilona Andrews

The other day I read that last year 58 million tourists came to New York ... where a puny eight million people are trying to live. Unless they own a hotel chain, I don't think a single one of these eight million people are happy about this. — Fran Lebowitz

Mrs. Clinton, speaking to a black church audience on Martin Luther King Day last year, did describe President George W. Bush as treating the Congress of the United States like 'a plantation,' adding in a significant tone of voice that 'you know what I mean ... '
She did not repeat this trope, for some reason, when addressing the electors of Iowa or New Hampshire. She's willing to ring the other bell, though, if it suits her. But when an actual African-American challenger comes along, she rather tends to pout and wince at his presumption (or did until recently). — Christopher Hitchens

In Le Mans, despite increasingly cold days, Wilbur, having switched to wearing a black leather motorcycle jacket, was busy practicing takeoffs without the use of a catapult. He had decided to compete for the Michelin Cup, a prize newly established by the French tire company, and in the competition such launching devices were not allowed. On the day of the event, December 31, the last day of the year and Wilbur's last big event at Camp d'Auvours, in spite of rain and cold he was barely able to endure, he put on his most astonishing performance yet, flying longer and farther than anyone ever had - 2 hours, 20 minutes, and 23 and one fifth seconds during which he covered a distance of 77 miles. He won the Cup. — David McCullough

The true husbandman will cease from anxiety, as the squirrels manifest no concern whether the woods will bear chestnuts this year or not, and finish his labor with every day, relinquishing all claim to the produce of his fields, and sacrificing in his mind not only his first but his last fruits also. — Henry David Thoreau

Nira Park, who is my longtime producer and friend - I've know her since we did Spaced, the TV show - she gave me this script the last day of filming The World's End. She said, "Take a look at this. It's filming in London next year, and you might like to look at Jack." I trust Nira implicitly. — Simon Pegg

I spent the nights before the Jets' two biggest games last year-for the AFL championship and the Super Bowl-with girls. But I don't consider that bad or foolish of me ... The night before a game, I prepare myself both mentally and physically for the next day. I think a ballplayer has to be relaxed to play well; and if that involves being with a girl that night, he should do it. — Joe Namath

"The making of peace is a continuing process that must go on from day to day, from year to year, so long as our civilization shall last." — J. William Fulbright

Easter occurs on different dates each year because, like the Jewish Passover, it is based upon the vernal equinox, that dramatic moment when the hours of the day-light and the hours of darkness at last draw parallel and then the light finally and triumphantly wins out. Thus Easter is always fixed as the first Sunday after the first full moon following the spring equinox. It's a cosmic, solar, and lunar event as deeply rooted in religious traditions originating from sun-god worship as one could conceivably imagine. — Tom Harpur

Last year the National Sorry Day Committee consulted with stolen generations people in every State and Territory, and concluded that programmes set up in response to the Bringing Them Home Report are reaching only a small fraction of those they are intended to help. — Malcolm Fraser

When I turned 59, I looked at that as the first day of my 60th year, so I've been 60 for the last 365 days, in my opinion. So I've been thinking all this year, I'm 60 - this is the time when I need to get some stuff done. — Walter Mosley

In my world, people are always plotting. You
have no idea of all the crimes people in business commit every
day. Like it was nothing. Or there's a set of special rules for them.
Remember when Bush made that whole speech about 'corporate
ethics' last year? What a fraud. You think stuff like Enron or
WorldCom is an aberration? It's only the tip. Business is a religion.
Probably the only one practiced all over the world. — Andrew Vachss

I am convinced that 1941 will be the crucial year of a great New Order in Europe. The world shall open up for everyone. Privileges for individuals, the tyranny of certain nations and their financial rulers shall fall. And last of all this year will help to provide the foundations of a real understanding among peoples, and with it the certainty of conciliation among nations ... Those nations who are still opposed to us will some day recognize the greater enemy within. Then they will join us in a combined front, a front against Jewish exploitation and racial degeneration. — Adolf Hitler

MURRY: It's not that, it's just ... I don't really get it. I usually find myself staring at the midnight deadline filled with regrets both for opportunities and loved ones missed. It's another day closer to the end. The last thing I feel like doing is counting down to some wild celebration. It just seems so sad to say goodbye to a year and know that it's gone forever and you can't go back to it. Not to relive, not to correct.
NOEL: I've never thought about it that way.
MURRY: There's something so final about it. It's the period at the end of the sentence.
NOEL: The New Year's resolution. — Hillary DePiano

Snoopy: So this is the last day of the year. Another complete year gone by and what have I accomplished this year that I haven't accomplished every other year? Nothing! (He smiles.) How consistent can you get? — Charles M. Schulz

She was tired in her bones, but she rallied her energy one last time and told him of they years in Rifthold, of stealing Asterion horses and racing across the desert, of dancing until dawn with the courtesans and thieves and all the beautiful, wicked creatures in the world. And then she told him about losing Sam, and of that first whipping in Endovier, when she'd spat blood in the Chief Overseer's face, and what she had seen and endured in the following year. She spoke of the day she had snapped and sprinted for her own death. Her heart grew heavy when at last she got to the evening when the Captain of the Royal Guard prowled into her life, and a tyrant's son had offered her a shot at freedom. She told him what she could about the competition and how she'd won it, until her words slurred and her eyelids drooped. — Sarah J. Maas

And when the spring breezes blow up the valley; when the spring sun shines on last year's withered grass on the river banks; and on the lake; and on the lake's two white swans; and coaxes the new grass out of the spongy soil in the marshes - who could believe on such a day that this peaceful, grassy valley brooded over the story of our past; and over its spectres? — Halldor Laxness

Musashi wondered how many people there were who on this night could say: "I was right. I did what I should have done. I have no regrets." For him, each resounding knell evoked a tremor of remorse. He could conjure up nothing but the things he had done wrong during the last year. Nor was it only the last year - the year before, and the year before that, all the years that had gone by had brought regrets. There had not been a single year devoid of them. Indeed, there had hardly been one day. — Eiji Yoshikawa

I tell lies sometimes. The last time I lied was a year ago. I absolutely detest lying. You could say that lying and silence are the two greatest sins of present day society. Actually, I lie a lot, and I'm always clamming up. — Haruki Murakami

Advent is a season that is a borderland. A new year is coming. We're waiting for the coming of Jesus, both for his birth on Christmas Day and for his coming again on the Last Day. — Heidi Haverkamp

You can't help wondering if this is the year that you'd be getting a good story again. It was the same thing you wondered last year, and the year before that, and the year before that. In light of everything and in spite of everything, it seems foolish to expect and demand for anything. It seems foolish to even hope. Yet, you still do. — Marla Miniano

There was a time we laughed at the old guys up on the hill. The ones who graduated a couple of years before us, and who would hang around the school and the ballpark still, and would sit on the hoods of their cars and tell us how when they were seniors they did it better, faster, and further. We laughed, because we were still doing it, and all they could do was talk. If our goals were not met, there was next year, but it never occurred to us that one day there would not be a next year, and that the guys sitting on the hoods of their cars at the top of the hill, wishing they could have one more year, willing to settle for one last game, could one day be us. — Tucker Elliot

The stranger came early in February, one wintry day, through a biting wind and a driving snow, the last snowfall of the year, over the down, walking as it seemed from Bramblehurst railway station, and carrying a little black portmanteau in his thickly gloved hand. He was wrapped up from head to foot, and the brim of his soft felt hat hid every inch of his face but the shiny tip of his nose; the snow had piled itself against his shoulders and chest, and added a white crest to the burden he carried. He staggered into the Coarch and Horses, more dead than alive as it seemed, and flung his portmanteau down. "A fire," he cried, "in the name of human charity! A room and a fire!" He stamped and shook the snow from off himself in the bar, and followed Mrs. Hall into her guest parlour to strike his bargain. And with that much introduction, that and a ready acquiescence to terms and a couple of sovereigns flung upon the table, he took up his quarters in the inn. — H.G.Wells

You'll write to me, won't you?" Albus asked his parents immediately, capitalizing on the momentary absence of his brother.
"Every day, if you want us to," said Ginny.
"Not every day," said Albus quickly. "James says most people only get letters from home about once a month."
"We wrote to James three times a week last year," said Ginny.
"And you don't want to believe everything he tells you about Hogwarts," Harry put in. "He likes a laugh, your brother. — J.K. Rowling

I think I am at that stage of Life now where Success or Failure, nothing Bothers me. If I get little success then I get lots of rejections and failures on a regular basis too. But none of that bothers me at all. I can take failure as sportingly without getting bothered as I take success. And this is how my life has drastically changed in last one year or something. I don't do things anymore to please people around me and all I care about is If I am happy being where I am and I am enjoying doing what I am doing or not. I may not be where I want to be yet but I am Happy.This is what matters in Life. Isn't it? Find what you love. Sooner or Later but you need to find one day, and once you find, give your everything to it. There may be many failures and rejections on the way but you will reach where you want to be some day and most importantly, you will be happy and in Peace with where you are. — Shivam Singh

The way we react to the Indian will always remain this nation's unique moral headache. It may seem a smaller problem than our Negro one, and less important, but many other sections of the world have had to grapple with slavery and its consequences. There's no parallel for our treatment of the Indian. In Tasmania the English settlers solved the matter neatly by killing off every single Tasmanian, bagging the last one as late as 1910. Australia had tried to keep its aborigines permanently debased - much crueler than anything we did with our Indians. Brazil, about the same. Only in America did we show total confusion. One day we treated Indians as sovereign nations. Did you know that my relative Lost Eagle and Lincoln were photographed together as two heads of state? The next year we treated him as an uncivilized brute to be exterminated. And this dreadful dichotomy continues. — James A. Michener

It's the strangest feeling at the end of pregnancy: you look down at this huge belly and try to imagine how some little person, whom you haven't even met, is going to emerge from it any day and completely change your lives. First, you wonder how this pregnancy, to which you've grown so accustomed over much of the last year, can, with barely any notice, come to an abrupt end. Then you try to fathom how this baby is ever going to come out; your bowling ball stomach seems misproportioned for what lies between it and the outside world. And only then do you realize what it all means-that the easy part, pregnancy, is almost over, and it's time to gear up for the tough stuff: childbirth! — Lise Eliot

Traveling is a way to reverse time, to a small extent, and make a day last a year - or at least forty-five hours - and traveling is an easy way of surrounding ourselves, as in childhood, with what we cannot understand. — Pico Iyer

On February 8, 1928, known as Lindbergh day since it was the day he crossed the Atlantic Ocean the year before, Charles A. Lindbergh landed at the Campo Columbia airfield near Havana. Lindbergh had visited many countries in his plane, and he had the national flags of each country painted in the fuselage. Having flown from Haiti, on a Goodwill Tour of the Caribbean in his "Spirit of St. Louis," he had the Cuban flag painted on his a single-engine Ryan monoplane. It was the last country he visited before he donated the "Spirit of St. Louis" to the Smithsonian Institution, where it is still exhibited at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. — Hank Bracker

Most of the stuff that people look at on Quora today was not written in the last month. You write something really good, and maybe it's the definitive answer on the Internet for the next 10 years. Maybe it's only a year, but not like a tweet, where it's only relevant for a day or a week. — Adam D'Angelo

Several times that day, the name or thought of Papa had come up. And each time, Francie had felt a flash of tenderness instead of the old stab of pain. "Am I forgetting him?" she thought. "In time to come, will it be hard to remember anything about him? I guess it's like Granma Mary Rommely says: 'With time, passes all.' The first year was hard because we could say last 'lection he voted. Last Thanksgiving he ate with us. But next year it will be two years ago that he ... and as time passes it will be harder and harder to remember and keep track. — Betty Smith

Linnaeus's last lesson, of which he himself was unaware, was that professorships kill philosophers. Oh, I'm vain enough to want my burgeoning Flora Japonica to be published one day
as a votive offering to human knowledge
but a seat at Uppsala, or Leiden, or Cambridge, holds no allure. My heart is the East's in this lifetime. This is my third year in Nagasaki, and I have work enough for another three, or six. During the court embassy I can see landscapes no European botanist ever saw. My seminarians are keen young men
with one young woman
and visiting scholars bring me specimens from all over the empire. — David Mitchell

In the year of Christ 1571, at the age of thirty-eight, on the last day of February, anniversary of his birth, Michel de Montaigne, lon weary of the servitude of the court and of public employments, while still entire, retired to the bosom of the learned Virgins [Muses], where in calm and freedom from all cares he will spend what little remains of his life now more than half run out. If the fates permit, he will completethis abode, this sweet ancestral retreat; and he has consecrated it to his freedom, tranquility, and leisure. — Michel De Montaigne

It is not growing like a tree
In bulk, doth make Man better be;
Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere:
A lily of a day
Is fairer far in May
Although it fall and die that night;
It was the plant and flower of Light.
In small proportions we just beauties see;
And in short measures life may perfect be (Ben Jonson) — Aidan Chambers

Someone asked me when is my birthday?
The poet inside me replied,
My birthday is on the last day of the year,
It's 31st December my dear! — Anamika Mishra

Last year was the best Father's Day ever, 1,000th win for Ford and to have my daughter there for her first victory lane. I'm not sure how to top that, but hopefully something spectacular will happen. Michigan is one of my favorite tracks; it's a big fast place and has lots of room to race. There is always a lot of strategy going on. Fuel mileage and pit stops are very important. — Greg Biffle

Finn is God: So much for Earth Day. I totally screwed things up and started celebrating the wrong planet. Now I have to collect all these stupid trademarked dog figurines that I distributed all of the yard. At least it's better than last year's mistake when I had butt statues everywhere. — Jessica Park

The other day I went to a tourist information booth and asked, 'Tell me about some of the people who were here last year. — Steven Wright

voice bringing my defenses down. I'd never have expected it a year ago, but now . . . after seeing him lose everything to follow his heart, I could. I could accept his comfort, show my vulnerability - even if it might not last. The undeniable truth was, he was meant for better things than me. One day Ellasbeth would have him, and I'd be left with the memory of who he had wanted to be. "Rachel?" But I'd be damned if I didn't take what I could of the time we had. Catching my tears, I wiped my face, giving Trent a thankful smile as I pulled back and looked for Bis. The little gargoyle had his wings draped around him, looking like a devil himself. "Bis? Can you jump her to Trent's? — Kim Harrison

Are not lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. — C.S. Lewis

Global warming. every day i leave my house and think, "was it this hot last year?" the heat this summer here in LA and in most of the US has been unbearable. i can't remember another time when it was 105 degrees fahrenheit out here (40.5 celsius), and that's the kind of weather we've been having pretty much every day. — Mike Shinoda

I will never forget, one day [when I] was six years old and I was playing beside the road and this plantation owner drove up to me and stopped and asked me, could I pick cotton.' I told him I didn't know and he said, Yes, you can. I will give you things that you want from the commissary store,' and he named things like crackerjacks and sardines--and it was a huge list that he called off. So I picked the 30 pounds of cotton that week, but I found out what actually happened was he was trapping me into beginning the work I was to keep doing and I never did get out of his debt again. My parents tried so hard to do what they could to keep us in school, but school didn't last four months out of the year and most of the time we didn't have clothes to wear. — Fannie Lou Hamer

I had a stalker while filming a movie in Spain last year. She stood outside of my apartment I used every day for weeks, all day, every day. I was so bored and lonely that I went out and had dinner with her. I just complained about everything in my life and she never came back. — Robert Pattinson

One of us hadn't finished, why did the other one go? And why without warning? Even death after long illness is without warning. The moment you had prepared for so carefully took you by storm. The troops broke through the window and snatched the body and the body is gone. The day before the Wednesday last, this time a year ago, you were here and now you're not. Why not? Death reduces us to the baffled logic of a small child. If yesterday why not today? And where are you? — Jeanette Winterson

My life's long radiant Summer halts at last, And lo! beside my path way I behold Pursuing Autumn glide: nor frost nor cold Has heralded her presence; but a vast Sweet calm that comes not till the year has passed Its fevered solstice, and a tinge of gold Subdues the vivid colouring of bold And passion-hued emotions. I will cast My August days behind me with my May, Nor strive to drag them into Autumn's place, Nor swear I hope when I do but remember. Now violet and rose have had their day, I'll pluck the soberer asters with good grace And call September nothing but September. — Ella Wheeler Wilcox

But now isn't simply now. Now is also a cold reminder: one whole day later than yesterday, one year later than last year. Every now is labeled with its date, rendering all past nows obsolete, until - later of sooner - perhaps - no, not perhaps - quite certainly: it will come. — Christopher Isherwood

Every one is special. Especially after the disappointment of last year, losing out on the last day, it is a great achievement by the lads. — Ryan Giggs

In the US and Europe over the last year we've been focused on the prices of gasoline at the pump. While many worry about filling their gas tanks, many others around the world are struggling to fill their stomachs. And it's getting more and more difficult every day. — Robert Zoellick

A new year is upon us, with new duties, new conflicts, new trials, and new opportunities. Start on the journey with Jesus
to walk with Him, to work for Him, and to win souls to Him. The last year of the century, it may be the last of our lives! A happy year will it be to those who, through every path of trial, or up every hill of difficulty, or over every sunny height,, march on in closest fellowship with Jesus, and who will determine that, come what may, they have Christ every day. — Theodore L. Cuyler

And it came to pass that in the hour of defeat Aragorn came up from the sea and unfurled the standard of Arwen in the battle of the fields of Pelennor, and in that day he was first hailed as king. And at last when all was done he entered into the inheritance of his fathers and received the crown of Gondor and the Sceptre of Arnor; and at midsummer in the year of the Fall of Sauron he took the hand of Arwen Undomiel, and they were wedded in the city of the kings. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Why one day in the country Is worth a month in town; Is worth a day and a year Of the dusty, musty, lag-last fashion That days drone elsewhere. — Christina Rossetti

I lost it in the bathroom. Sitting on the toilet, I started to panic when I noticed the graveyard of empty toilet paper rolls. The brown cylinders had ostensibly been placed vertically to form a half oval on top of the flat shiny surface of the stainless steel toilet paper holder. It was like some sort of miniature-recycled Stonehenge in the women's bathroom, a monument to the bowel movements of days past. Actually, it was sometime around 2:30 p.m. when my day exited the realm of country song bad and entered the neighboring territory of Aunt Ethel's annual Christmas letter bad. Last year Aunt Ethel wrote with steady, stalwart sincerity of Uncle Joe's gout and her one - no, make that two - car accidents, the new sinkhole in their backyard, their impending eviction from the trailer park, and Cousin Serena's divorce. To be fair, Cousin Serena got divorced every year, so that didn't really count toward the calamitous computation of yearly catastrophes. I — Penny Reid

To start this diary rightly, it should begin on the last day of the old year, when, at breakfast, I received a letter from Mrs Hallett. She said that she had had to dismiss Lily at a moments notice, owing to her misbehaviour. We naturally supposed that a certain kind of misbehaviour was meant; a married gardener, I hazarded. Our — Virginia Woolf

My biggest objection to Fox News, I say, is not the scaremongering, it's the way it's reshaped the Republican party. It will misrepresent social and economic issues, and promote the more extreme elements of the party, politicians such as Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee, in a way that is hugely detrimental to American politics. (For the record, Rupert Murdoch disagrees, and last year claimed that Fox News "absolutely saved" the Republican party.) "Watching these channels all day is incredibly depressing," says Stewart. "I live in a constant state of depression. I think of us as turd miners. I put on my helmet, I go and mine turds, hopefully I don't get turd lung disease. — Anonymous

On a timeline that shows the 15 billion years of the universe as one year, the first human appears only at 10:30p on December 31 (about 3 million years ago). Stonehenge is built and Egyptian civilization arises at 11:50:54p (about 3,000 years ago). The Buddha appears on the timeline at 11:59:55p (2,500 years ago), and Christ shows up at 11:59:55p (2,000 years ago). The European Renaissance occurs at 11:59:59p (450 years ago), on the last day of the year. — Matthieu Ricard

I want you to begin keeping a calendar of who you see and when: the first day each year you see buttercups, the first day frogs start singing, the last day you see robins in the fall, the first day for grasshoppers. In short, I want you to pay attention. — Derrick Jensen

Isn't it so weird how the number of dead people is increasing even though the earth stays the same size, so that one day there isn't going to be room to bury anyone anymore? For my ninth birthday last year, Grandma gave me a subscription to National Geographic, which she calls "the National Geographic." She also gave me a white blazer, because I only wear white clothes, and it's too big to wear so it will last me a long time. She also gave me Grandpa's camera, which I loved for two reasons. I asked why he didn't take it with him when he left her. She said, "Maybe he wanted you to have it."
I said, "But I was negative-thirty years old." She said, "Still." Anyway, the fascinating thing was that I read in National Geographic that there are more people alive now than have died in all of human history. In other words, if everyone wanted to play Hamlet at once, they couldn't, because there aren't enough skulls! — Jonathan Safran Foer

Annie, last year ... That day in the yard ... I made a mistake not strapping on a gun the minute I found you, and it wasn't that I was against marrying you, it was that I was against letting them make me do anything. So they almost killed Foxface and threatened to shoot the horses, and I gave in. But they could have shot everything in five miles to pieces and couldn't have made me crawl."
A tremor passed through her, but he continued. "That was last year. Now if somebody pointed a gun at you, really could hurt you, I'd crawl on my belly or my knees or do anything else. Maybe that's part of why loving is frightening. I'd rather pay the price and have you than be invincible because I have nothing. — Ellen O'Connell

His hand closed automatically around the fake Horcrux but in spite of everything, in spite of the dark and twisting path he saw stretching ahead for himself, in spite of the final meeting with Voldemort he knew must come whether in a month in a year or in ten, he felt his heart lift at the thought that there was still one last golden day of peace left to enjoy with Ron and Hermione. — J.K. Rowling

Welcome to We Day! Since last year, WE have volunteered over 1.7 million hours of our time! — Craig Kielburger

Wow, it really snowed last night! Isn't it wonderful? Everything familiar has disappeared! The world looks brand new!
A new year ... a fresh, clean start! It's like having a big white sheet of paper to draw on! A day full of possibilities! It's a magical world, Hobbes, ol' buddy ... let's go exploring! — Bill Watterson

What is your personal carrying capacity for grief, rage, despair? We are living in a period of mass extinction. The numbers stand at 200 species a day. That's 73,000 a year. This culture is oblivious to their passing, feels entitled to their every last niche, and there is no roll call on the nightly news. — Lierre Keith

She never opened her mail in the middle of the day. Sometimes she forgot about it for a week or more until people rang to complain. Nor did she check her answering machine messages. In fact, it had only been in the last year that she had finally bought an answering machine, and she steadfastly refused to have a mobile, to the incredulity of all those around her, who didn't believe that people could actually function without one. But Frieda wanted to be able to escape from incessant communications and demands. She didn't want to be at anyone's beck and call, and she liked cutting herself off from the urgent inanities of the world. When she was on her own, she liked to be truly alone. Out of contact and adrift. — Nicci French

Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn
that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness
that season which has drawn from every poet worthy of being read some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling. — Jane Austen

Block of Death. Just inside the door on the left is the room where they held the proceedings. Jarek remarks that the SS officer who sentenced five thousand Poles here to die was still alive last year, living in Germany, age ninety-two. We ask why. He shrugs. At the far end on the corridor, on the left, looking out into the courtyard, is the room where the condemned were stripped and held. An illustration depicts a naked girl holding on to her mother's legs as the SS guard comes for them. High on the wall, a prisoner scratched graffiti, a name and the date and the words, "Sentenced to die." Beneath that is the date of the next day and the words, "I'm still here. — Christopher Buckley

Principal Brill, those costumes were made by my mother. My mother, who has stage four small-cell lung cancer. My mother, who will never watch her little boy celebrate another Halloween again. My mother, who will more than likely experience a year of 'lasts'. Last Christmas. Last birthday. Last Easter. And if God is willing, her last Mother's Day. My mother, who when asked by her nine-year-old son if he could be her cancer for Halloween, had no choice but to make him the best cancerous tumor-riden lung costume she could. So if you think it's so offensive, I suggest you drive them home yourself and tell my mother to her face. Do you need my address? — Colleen Hoover

sensational adventure of Mr Malcolm Guthrie of Braemore took the pages of many newspapers by storm. Even The Daily Mail of London devoted several lines to it in its column 'Bizarre'. However, because very few of our readers read the press south of the Tweed, and if they do, then only newspapers more serious than The Daily Mail, let us remind you what happened. On the day of the 10th March last year Mr Malcolm Guthrie went fishing to Loch Glascarnoch. While there Mr Guthrie happened upon a young woman with an ugly scar on her face (sic!), riding a black mare (sic) in the company of a white unicorn (sic), who were emerging from the fog and darknes (sic). — Andrzej Sapkowski

Our exertions generally find no enduring physical correlatives. We are diluted in gigantic intangible collective projects, which leave us wondering what we did last year and, more profoundly, where we have gone and quite what we have amounted to ...
How different everything is for the craftsman who ... can step back at the end of a day or lifetime and point to an object
whether a square of canvas, a chair or a clay jug
and see it as a stable repository of his skills and an accurate record of his years, and hence feel collected together in one place, rather than strung out across projects which long ago evaporated into nothing one could hold or see. — Alain De Botton

O sweet Lord Jesus, thou art the present portion of thy people, favour us this year with such a sense of thy preciousness, that from its first to its last day we may be glad and rejoice in thee. Let January open with joy in the Lord, and December close with gladness in Jesus. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon