Year

“ To us a thorn, to her a rose;
The year so black, the year so white,
Like rivers twain their course have run;
The earthly stream we trace and know,
But who shall paint the heavenly one?
A year! We gather up our powers,
Our lamps we consecrate and trim ”

“ Year by year in his own beautiful land he beheld, with natural regret, the bright pomp of summer fading into the gloom and stagnation of winter, and year by year he hailed with natural delight the outburst of fresh life in spring. ”

“ The year was growing to be an old man. It looked back at spring, at the early days when it first felt the promises of life's glory and scarcely dared believe them true, at laughing May, at wide and spacious June, and then the turning of the year. ”

“ In the year that’s come and gone, dear, we wove a tether
All of gracious words and thoughts, binding two together.
In the year that’s coming on with its wealth of roses
We shall weave it stronger, yet, ere the circle closes.
p. 145In the year that’s come and gone, in the golden weather,
Sweet, my sweet, we swore to keep the watch of life together.
In the year that’s coming on, rich in joy and sorrow,
We shall light our lamp, and wait life’s mysterious morrow. ”

“ Winter has December, January, and February to cover the earth with snow, to freeze the rivers, and to paint curious pictures upon the windowpanes.
Can you compare the passing of the year and the life of man? Childhood, the springtime of life, is the time for play and dance and merry song, the time to make the body supple and strong. When the body is strong and the mind has been trained, comes the summer time of work—hard work in all the fields of labor, that the harvest may not fail. ”

“ Now of what concern is it that those who shall be born hereafter should speak of you, when you were spoken of by none who were born before you, who were not fewer, and certainly were better men?—especially, too, when among those who might hear our names there is not one that can retain the memories of a single year. Men, indeed, ordinarily measure the year only by the return of the sun, that is, one star, to its place; but when all the stars, after long intervals, shall resume their original places in the heavens, then that completed revolution may be truly called a year. ”

“ The beginning of the year in our sense is the starting-point of the series of the days of the calendar; among the primitive peoples it is the beginning of any year, whether the complete year or the phenomena of the time of vegetation only. There are several such phenomena appearing side by side, so that there can also be several beginnings to the year, e. g. several feasts of first-fruits, as among the Thonga, the rising of the Pleiades and the feast of the first-fruits among the Amazulu. ”

“ The earth receives light from the sun, and completes its course through the heavens once a year. Each year brings Spring with her garlands of flowers, Summer—golden Summer—with her sheaves of sunlit grain, [Pg 23] Autumn with the purple grape, and Winter clad in frost and snow. ”

“ But it will be the year in which our body and soul part—the year in which, for us, time ends and eternity begins. All other years fade away as nothing. The year in which we were born, the year in which we began business, the year in which our father died, are all of them of less importance to us than the year of our death. ”

“ Next to Christmas-day, the most pleasant annual epoch in existence is the advent of the New Year. There are a lachrymose set of people who usher in the New Year with watching and fasting, as if they were bound to attend as chief mourners at the obsequies of the old one. ”

“ There can be no doubt that when there was an absence of all civilisation and a calendar of any sort was unknown, the year meant simply the succession of seasons, and that no attempt would be made to reckon any day as its commencement. ”

“ Though every day be a New Year's Day, still the alteration in our dates and our calendars should set us all thinking of that continual lapse of the mysterious thing—the creature of our own minds—which we call time, and which is bearing us all so steadily and silently onwards. ”

“ Whether the conception of the year was known in the Indo-European period is not certain: it is however significant that all the words for ‘year’ of which the etymology is fairly certain either refer to the produce of the year—as ὥρα and its cognates, and also the word ‘year’ itself, Old Scand. ár—or else come from the pars pro toto counting of the year. Thus the Slavonic leto means ‘summer’ and ‘year’. Sanskrit çarad means ‘autumn’: that the corresponding Avestic sared means ‘year’ is explained by the fact that the years were reckoned in autumns. ”

“ It’s the first day of spring. Men are right silly, Andy thought, calling some dead and sodden day in mid-winter by the fancy, saucy name of New. The thing that is New, of course, is the Green. The New Year is the Green Year. ”

“ Lunar year, a period of twelve lunar months or 354 days, Platonic year, a cycle of years at the end of which the heavenly bodies are in the same place as at the Creation—also Great, or Perfect, year; Sabbatic, -al, year (see Sabbath) ; Sidereal year, the period required by the sun to move from a given star to the same star again—affected by Nutation only, one of the most invariable quantities which nature affords us, having a mean value of 365 days, 6 hours, 9 minutes, 9.6 seconds.—In years, advanced in age. ”

“ Year builds on year with unvarying steadfastness the divine temple of their beauty and their sacrifice. They create, like God. The universe which science sees, studies, and explains, is small, is petty, beside the one which grows under their spiritual touch ”

“ The word ‘year’ may however also represent the highest chronological unit even independently of the seasons, as in the case of the Egyptian shifting year of exactly 365 days, and the Islamite lunar year of 354. These however are exceptional cases. At the basis lies the natural year conditioned by the course of the sun and by the natural phases dependent thereon, which penetrate closely into the life of man. ”

“ Nothing is more equivocal among the ancients, than the term year. It always has been, and still is, a source of disputes among the learned, whether on account of its duration, its beginning, or its end. Some people heretofore made their year consist only of one month, others of four, others of six, others of ten, and others of twelve. Some have divided one of our years into two, and have made one year of winter, another of summer. The beginning of the year was fixed sometimes at autumn, sometimes at the spring, and sometimes at midwinter. Some people have used lunar months, others solar. ”

“ I went through the ordeal each morning with an indifference and abstraction born of long custom.
The time of the year was January, the year itself 1892. A clear, cold air with just enough frost in it to stir sluggish blood, induced one to walk briskly. ”

“ But, we measure man’s life by years, and it is a solemn knell that warns us we have passed another of the landmarks which stands between us and the grave. Disguise it as we may, the reflection will force itself on our minds, that when the next bell announces the arrival of a new year, we may be insensible alike of the timely warning we have so often neglected, and of all the warm feelings that glow within us now. ”

“ As a day is the period of the revolution of the earth on its axis, so a year is the period of the revolution of the earth around the sun. This time, which constitutes the astronomical year, has been ascertained with great exactness, and found to be three hundred and sixty-five days five hours forty-eight minutes and fifty-one seconds. The most ancient nations determined the number of days in the year by means of the stylus, a perpendicular rod which casts its shadow on a smooth plane bearing a meridian line. ”

“ If we simply continue to reckon the days according to our present arrangement of the year, calling each fourth year a leap-year of 366 days, and assign to each hundredth year 365 days—although it ought to be a leap-year, according to the four-year cycle—and again to each four hundredth year 366 days, we shall be certain to remain for thousands of years in such agreement with the sun that we do not need to concern ourselves in the least in the times of his revolution and positions in the heavens. ”

“ The lost leaves measure our years; they are gone as the days are gone, and the bare branches silently speak of a new year, slowly advancing to its buds, its foliage, and fruit. ”

“ The year, considered as a recurring cycle of seasons and of general appearances, must attract the notice of man as soon as his attention and memory suffice to bind together the parts of a succession of the length of several years. ”

“ My pipe is out, my glass is dry; My fire is almost ashes too; But once again, before you go, And I prepare to meet the New: Old Year! a parting word that's true, For we've been comrades, you and I — I THANK GOD FOR EACH DAY OF YOU; There! bless you now! Old Year, good-bye! ”

“ Of all the months that fill the year
Give April's month to me,
For earth and sky are then so filled
With sweet variety! ”

“ Year—If the civil year correspond with the solar the seasons of the year will always come at the same period. But if the civil year is supposed to be too long (as is the case in the Julian year) the seasons will go back proportionately; but if too short they will advance in the same proportion. Now, as the ancient Egyptians reckoned thirty days to the month invariably, and to complete the year, added five days, called supplementary days, their year consisted of 365 days. ”

“ Spring is strong and virtuous, Broad-sowing, cheerful, plenteous, Quickening underneath the mould Grains beyond the price of gold. So deep and large her bounties are, That one broad, long midsummer day Shall to the planet overpay The ravage of a year of war. ”

“ As we go on in life, anniversaries become rather melancholy affairs. The turn of the year—the annual return of the day—birthdays or death-days or set festal occasions like Christmas or the New Year, bring reminders of loss and change. ”

“ As apparently he was ignorant of any calendar of months by which the time of year might be described, he has recourse to the rising and setting of the stars, whose annual motion was known to him, to indicate the seasons of the year. ”

“ The Confessions of The Year The gray old year—the dying year,
His sands were well nigh run;
When there came by one in priestly weed,
To ask of the deeds he'd done.
“Now tell me, ere thou treadst the path
Thy brethren all have trode,
The scenes that life has shown to thee
Upon thine onward road.”
“I've seen the sunbeam rise and set,
As it rose and set before
And the hearts of men bent earthwardly,
As they have been evermore ”

“ "In two weeks it'll be the longest day in the year." She looked at us all radiantly. "Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it." ”

“ Astronomical year, the interval between one vernal equinox and the next, or one complete mean apparent circuit of the ecliptic by the sun, or mean motion through 360° of longitude—365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, 49.7 seconds—called also the Equinoctial, Solar, or Tropical year; Canicular year—the ancient Egyptian—counted from one heliacal rising of Sirius to the next— (the Canicular Cycle was the cycle of 1461 years of 365 days each, or 1460 Julian years, also called the Sothiac period) ; Ecclesiastical year, the year as arranged in the ecclesiastical calendar, with saints' days, festivals, &c. ”

“ A day of years, and a night of years, are each 360 years along; for as a day in symbolic time represents a year, or 360 days; so if the decorum of the symbol require it, each of these days may represent a year. ”

“ For this there are more reasons than one. The zealous antiquaries who have made extracts from local records have not realized that precise dates might be of value, and have often named a year without indicating whether it represents the calendar year (Circumcision style) or the calendar year (Annunciation style) in which a performance fell, or the calendar year in which a regnal, mayoral, or accounting year, in which the performance fell, began or ended. ”

“ By the new calendar the year of 365 days was divided into twelve months of thirty days each, every month being divided into three periods of ten days, each of which were called décades, and the tenth, or last, day of each decade being a day of rest. ”

“ POPULAR MONTHS OF THE EUROPEAN PEOPLES. In ancient times, and even at the present day in lands which lie outside the path of the great leveller, civilisation, the months taken over with the Roman calendar are not numbered divisions of the year, the names of which are a matter of indifference, but are concretely conceived and named as seasons. They are, in fact, nothing but seasons, the number and duration of which are determined by the conventional calendar. ”

“ The day is an epitome of the year. The night is the winter, the morning and evening are the spring and fall, and the noon is the summer. ”

“ The year is second only to the clay as a terrestrial unit of duration; and as the day is man's standard for the minute division of time, so the year is his standard for larger divisions, and the decade, the century and the millenium are its multiples. ”

“ The year will be exactly the same with our year; because, being an attendant on the earth, she must go round the sun in the same time as that does. Her difference of seasons will be much less than on our earth, having only a small inclination of her axis of six degrees and a half; so that the variation between her summer’s heat and her winter’s cold must be comparatively inconsiderable. ”