January is here — signaling the beginning of a new year and bringing a rejuvenating energy that inspires us to embrace every possibility and adventure that awaits in the days ahead!
It’s a month of resolutions, fresh starts, and the hopeful anticipation of a year filled with growth, joy, and good news.
To help you celebrate the beauty of January, we’ve curated a selection of positive and inspiring quotes (and poems) about the first month of the year.
And because we’re Good Good Good — we’ve also highlighted the best quotes around January’s significant days and awareness initiatives — like Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Poverty Awareness Month, and Self-Love Month.
Plus, quotes from inspirational celebrities and leaders with January birthdays.
Whether you’re ringing in the new year, celebrating a January birthday, or just looking to infuse your winter with a burst of optimism, these quotes are for you. Scroll all the way through to find some inspiring gems.
Here’s to making the most of January!
Explore more monthly quotes: January | February | March | April | May | June | July | August | September | October | November | December
The Best January Quotes
Famous Quotes About January
“To read a poem in January is as lovely as to go for a walk in June.”
— Jean Paul
“Feeling a little blue in January is normal.”
— Marilu Henner
“January brings the snow, makes our feet and fingers glow.”
— Sara Coleridge
“January is here, with eyes that keenly glow, a frost-mailed warrior striding a shadowy steed of snow.”
— Edgar Fawcett
“January is the quietest month in the garden. But just because it looks quiet doesn’t mean that nothing is happening.”
— Rosalie Muller Wright
“January looks forward to the new year and back to the old year. He sees past and future.”
— M.L. Stedman
“January is the month for dreaming.”
— Jean Hersey
Inspirational January Quotes
“I love beginnings. If I were in charge of calendars, every day would be January 1.”
— Jerry Spinelli
“No one ever regarded the first of January with indifference.”
— Charles Lamb
“We spend January 1st walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives… not looking for flaws, but for potential.”
— Ellen Goodman
“January, the first month of the year. A perfect time to start all over again, changing energies and deserting old moods, new beginnings, new attitudes.”
— Charmaine J. Forde
“If January is the month of change, February is the month of lasting change. January is for dreamers… February is for doers.”
— Marc Parent
Quotes for Awareness Holidays in January
A collection of quotes to celebrate January’s awareness months and national days.
→ Explore more of this month’s awareness days in our January calendar
New Year’s Day
January 1
“And now we welcome the new year. Full of things that have never been.”
— Rainer Maria Rilke
“I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re doing something.”
— Neil Gaiman
“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language, and next year’s words await another voice.”
— T.S. Eliot
→ Read and share more quotes about the new year
Poverty Awareness Month
January 1 - January 31
“Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.”
— James Baldwin
“Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time and always start with the person nearest you.”
— Mother Teresa
“As long as poverty, injustice and gross inequality exist in our world, none of us can truly rest.”
— Nelson Mandela
→ Read and share more quotes about poverty
Self-Love Month
January 1 - January 31
“Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing that we’ll ever do.”
— Brené Brown, Daring Greatly
“Taking care is one way to show your love. Another way is letting people take good care of you when you need it.”
— Fred Rogers
“Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.”
— Lucille Ball
→ Explore more self-love quotes
Martin Luther King Jr. Day
3rd Monday of January
“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’”
— Martin Luther King Jr.
“We have flown the air like birds and swum the sea like fishes, but have yet to learn the simple act of walking the earth like brothers.”
— Martin Luther King Jr.
“True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.”
— Martin Luther King Jr.
→ Read about how to celebrate MLK day
→ Explore more Martin Luther King Jr. quotes
Quotes from Inspiring People with January Birthdays
Greta Thunberg
January 3
“We can’t just choose to tell some facts and not others because we don’t want to upset people. We have to tell it like it is.”
— Greta Thunberg
“To do your best is no longer good enough. We now have to do the seemingly impossible.”
— Greta Thunberg
“I’m telling you there is hope. I have seen it, but it does not come from the governments or corporations. It comes from the people.”
— Greta Thunberg, in a speech
→ Explore more Greta Thunberg quotes
Dian Fossey
January 16
“When you realize the value of all life, you dwell less on what is past and concentrate more on the preservation of the future.”
— Dian Fossey
“It was their individuality combined with the shyness of their behavior that remained the most captivating impression of this first encounter with the greatest of the great apes.”
— Dian Fossey
“Any observer is an intruder in the domain of a wild animal and must remember that the rights of that animal supersede human interests. An observer must also keep in mind that an animal’s memories of one day’s contact might well be reflected in the following day’s behavior.”
— Dian Fossey
Michelle Obama
January 17
“Whether you come from a council estate or a country estate, your success will be determined by your own confidence and fortitude.”
— Michelle Obama, in a speech
“I have learned that as long as I hold fast to my beliefs and values. and follow my own moral compass, then the only expectations I need to live up to are my own.”
— Michelle Obama, in a speech
“Don’t ever make decisions based on fear. Make decisions based on hope and possibility. Make decisions based on what should happen, not what shouldn’t.”
— Michelle Obama, Becoming
→ Explore more Michelle Obama quotes
Muhammad Ali
January 17
“Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.”
— Muhammad Ali
“It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe.”
— Muhammad Ali
“He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.”
— Muhammad Ali
Dolly Parton
January 19
“Figure out who you are. Then do it on purpose.”
— Dolly Parton
“If you want the rainbow, you have to put up with the rain.”
— Dolly Parton
“You’ll never do a whole lot unless you’re brave enough to try.”
— Dolly Parton
→ Explore more Dolly Parton quotes
Funny January Quotes
“I think it would be much more sensible if resolutions began generally on January the second.”
— Helen Fielding
“January is the calendar’s ingrown hair.”
— Stewart Stafford
“Lots of people go mad in January. Not as many as in May, of course. Nor June. But January is your third most common month for madness.”
— Karen Joy Fowler
“If I had my way, I would remove January from the calendar altogether and have an extra July instead.”
— Roald Dahl
January Poems
“The thousands small birds of January in their smooth soaring cloud finding the trees.”
— Naomi Shihab Nye, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East
“January opens the box of the year
And bring out days that are bright and clear
And bring out days that are cold and gray
And shouts,
‘Come see what I brought today.’”
— Leland B. Jacobs
“To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves…”
— Wallace Stevens, Harmonium
“I’m January bringing you
A year of days — all brand, brand new;
I step upon the frosty ground.
When chimes and sleighbells ring around;
You welcome me and children sing,
And joy comes into everything.
I bring you love and lots of cheer,
And work and friends for all the year.”
— Annette Wynne, A Child’s Calendar
“The wind of the early quiet
merges slowly now with a thousand rolling wheels.
The lights are out, the air is loud.
It is an ordinary January day.
My shadow, do you hear the streets?
Are you at my heels? Are you here?
And I throw back the sheets.”
— Edwin Morgan
“Like January weather,
The years will bite and smart,
And pull your bones together
To wrap your chattering heart…”
— Dorothy Parker, Complete Poems
Short January Quotes
“January is my favorite month when the light is plainest, least colored. And I like the feeling of beginnings.”
— Anne Truitt
“I find January hard. Nothing really happens.”
— Frankie Bridge
“No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.”
— Hal Borland
“I pray this winter be gentle and kind — a season of rest from the wheel of the mind.”
— John Geddes
“It is deep January. The sky is hard. The stalks are firmly rooted in ice.”
— Wallace Stevens
→ Explore more short quotes
More January Quotes
“Through the chill of December the early winter moans… but it’s that January wind that rattles old bones.”
— John Facenda
“The first day of January always presents to my mind a train of very solemn and important reflections and a question more easily asked than answered frequently occurs viz: How have I improved the past year and with what good intentions do I view the dawn of its successor?”
— Charlotte Brontë
“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.”
— Albert Camus
“January was a two-faced month, jangling like jester’s bells, crackling like snow crust, pure as any beginning, grim as an old man, mysteriously familiar yet unknown, like a word one can almost but not quite define.”
— Patricia Highsmith
“What is it about the January feeling — past everything else, low-glowing hunger that propels me around.”
— Eileen Myles
