New Year's Eve celebrations might look different for everybody, but there's no mistaking the fact that everyone enjoys counting down those final seconds until the clock officially strikes January 1st and we welcome in a new year. Whether you're planning on spending your last hours of 2024 on the couch, curled up with the family in matching pajamas watching holiday movies, or will be out on the town, dressed to the nines for a night of dinner and lots of dancing, everyone can relate to the exciting but nerve-wracking moment when you're grabbing your drink of choice to raise a glass and cheer to the New Year, trying to find the perfect words to say before you welcome in a fresh 365 days.

Worry no more about finding something short and sweet to raise your champagne flute to before planting a kiss on your partner and saying hello to 2025 thanks to our favorite inspiring and funny New Year's toasts that perfectly capture exactly what you want to say. With a mix of deeply thoughtful quotes from famous authors, writers and poets to hilarious phrases and jokes folks have come up with over the years, you will have plenty of inspiration for well-wishes that officially welcomes in a new year full of possibilities.

Inspirational New Year's Toasts

hands of couple clinking with flutes of champagne and their friends holding sparkers behind them
shironosov
  • "The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new." — Dan Millman
  • May the hinges of friendship never rust, nor the wings of love lose a feather.” — Edward Ramsay
  • "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
  • "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
  • "Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards." — Søren Kierkegaard
  • "Each age has deemed the new-born year the fittest time for festal cheer." — Sir Walter Scott
  • "Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow." — Albert Einstein
  • "Don't live the same year 75 times and call it a life." — Robin Sharma
  • "Welcome all, another year."
  • "I never look back, darling. It distracts from the now." — The Incredibles
  • "Don't think there are no second chances. Life always offers you a second chance... It's called tomorrow." —Nicholas Sparks
  • "The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams." — Eleanor Roosevelt
  • "Tomorrow is the first page of a new book. Choose your words wisely."
  • "New year — a new chapter, new verse, or just the same old story? Ultimately we write it. The choice is ours." — Alex Morritt
  • "Whatever it is you’re scared of doing, do it. Make your mistakes, next year and forever." — Neil Gaiman
  • "What a wonderful thought it is that some of the best days of our lives haven’t even happened yet." — Anne Frank
  • "Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin." — Mother Teresa
  • "Be the change you wish to see in the world." — Mahatma Gandhi
  • "May you live as long as you want and never want as long as you live." — Irish Proverb
  • "May our friends remain faithful and clear."
  • "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
  • "As we start the New Year, let's get down on our knees to thank God we're on our feet."
  • "New Year's Day is every man's birthday." — Charles Lamb
  • "May your neighbors respect you, trouble neglect you, the angels protect you and heaven accept you." — Irish Blessing
  • "In the year ahead, May we treat our friends with kindness and our enemies with generosity."
  • "Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing." — Abraham Lincoln
  • "Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man." — Benjamin Franklin
  • "You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream." — C.S. Lewis
  • "Celebrate endings — for they precede new beginnings."— Jonathan Lockwood Huie
  • "Accentuate the positive, not the negative. It sounds so trite, but a lot of people will pick out something to complain about, rather than say, 'Hey, that was great!' It’s not hard to find great stuff if you look." — Betty White
  • "Remember that life’s most valuable antiques are dear old friends." — H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
  • "The first step towards getting somewhere is to decide you’re not going to stay where you are." — J.P. Morgan
  • "I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past." — Thomas Jefferson
  • "Life is about change, sometimes it’s painful, sometimes it’s beautiful, but most of the time it’s both." — Kristin Kreuk
  • "The new year stands before us, like a chapter in a book, waiting to be written." — Melody Beattie
  • "Your present circumstances don’t determine where you can go; they merely determine where you start." — Nido Qubein
  • "You can get excited about the future. The past won't mind." — Hillary DePiano
  • "Out with the old, in with the new, cheers to the future, and all that we do."
  • "Your success and happiness lies in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties." — Helen Keller
  • "Each year’s regrets are envelopes in which messages of hope are found for the New Year." — John R. Dallas, Jr.
  • "The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot." — Michael Altshuler
  • "May your troubles be less and your blessings be more, and nothing but happiness come through your door." — Irish Blessing
  • "In the New Year, may your right hand always be stretched out in friendship, but never in want." — Irish Toast
  • "A New Year’s toast to love and laughter and happily ever after."
  • "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."
  • "Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment." — Buddha
  • "Here's to eternity—may we spend it in as good company as this night finds us."
  • "And now we welcome the new year — full of things that have never been." — Rainer Maria Rilke
  • "To the old, long life and treasure; to the young, all health and pleasure." — Ben Jonson
  • "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
  • "May the road rise to meet you, may the wind be ever at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face, and the rains fall soft upon your fields. And until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of his hand." — Irish Blessing
  • "Here’s a toast to the future, a toast to the past, and a toast to our friends, far and near."
  • "May the sunshine of comfort dispel the clouds of despair."
  • "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
  • "Here's to the year past and friends who have left us. Here's to the present and the friends who are here. Here's to the New Year and the new friends who will join us." — Emily Post

    Funny New Year's Toasts

    closeup of group of mixed age people having new years party at a building rooftop
    gilaxia
    • "A toast to friends and family who know us well, and love us anyway."
    • "Too much of anything is bad, but too much Champagne is just right." — F. Scott Fitzgerald.
    • "This year, may you keep your resolutions and your good looks!"
    • "To our health: May we all live to be as old as my jokes."
    • "I'm not a man (or woman) of many words."
    • "Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut." — Ernest Hemingway
    • Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we diet.
    • "Let us drink to bread, for without bread...there would be no toast."
    • "Here's to champagne, and, well...to more champagne!"
    • "Youth is when you're allowed to stay up late on New Year's Eve. Middle age is when you're forced to." — Bill Vaughan
    • "One swallow doesn't make a summer, but it breaks a new year's resolution."
    • "Let's hope this year is easier than keeping those 'healthy living' resolutions."
    • "Here's health to those I love and wealth to those who love me."
    • "May we all begin the new year with love in our hearts and too many appetizers in our bellies."
    • "A toast to all the champagne we'll drink tonight, and all the coffee we'll drink tomorrow."
    • "Take everything in moderation, including moderation." — Oscar Wilde
    • "Here's to doing and drinking, not sitting and thinking."
    • "I never worry about being driven to drink; I just worry about being driven home." – W.C. Fields
    • "Here’s to those who’ve seen us at our best and seen us at our worst and can’t tell the difference."
    • "I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me" — Winston Churchill
    • "Life, alas, is very dear. Up with the glass! Down with the beer!" — Louis Untermeyer
    • "Here’s to the nights we’ll never remember with the friends we’ll never forget."
    • "Here’s to our friends, and the strength to put up with them." — T.S. Eliot
    • "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." — Phyllis McGinley
    • "To the holidays—all 365 of them."
    • "An optimist stays up until midnight to see the New Year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves." — Bill Vaughan
    • "May you always have love in your hearts and champagne in your belly."
    • "May all your troubles during the coming year be as short as your New Year's resolutions."
    • "I used to know a clever toast, but pshaw! I cannot think of it—so fill your glass to anything and, bless your souls, I'll drink to it!" — Wallace Irwin
    • "Here’s to champagne for our real friends, and real pain to our sham friends."
    • "May you live to be 100 and may the last voice you hear be mine." — Frank Sinatra
    • "He who breaks a resolution is a weakling; he who makes one is a fool." — F.M. Knowles
    • "With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come." — William Shakespeare
    Headshot of Juliana LaBianca
    Juliana LaBianca

    Juliana is a writer, editor and SEO strategist with over six years' of experience on the editorial staffs of publications including Reader's Digest, Best Life and Good Housekeeping. She covers everything from holiday and home to travel and food, and lives in New York City, where she can often be found at hot yoga or raiding the candy aisle at CVS.

    Headshot of Cameron Jenkins
    Cameron Jenkins
    Staff Writer

    Cameron (she/her) is a staff writer for Good Housekeeping, where she covers everything from holidays to food. She is a graduate of Syracuse University, where she received a B.A. in magazine journalism. In her spare-time she can be found scrolling TikTok for the latest cleaning hacks and restaurant openings, binge-watching seasons of Project Runway or online shopping.