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Anniversary Quotes

There is no anniversary collection behind this page. It is put together from the pages on love, marriage, romance and time, then sorted by quality, so what comes up first is whatever those four pages rate highest.

Expect poems and passages from novels more than card lines. Some of the best material here only works with the sentences around it, which is why each quote links to its own page with the source and the notes. If you plan to put one in print, check the flag first: a line marked misattributed is fine to enjoy and risky to credit.

Random quote on Anniversary

Most quoted on anniversary:

I am bewildered by the death of love. And my responsibility for it.

Arthur Miller After the Fall (1964)

Every one who marries goes it blind, more or less.

Henry Adams Esther: A Novel (1884)

Love flowers best in openness and freedom.

Edward Abbey Desert Solitaire (1968)

Care and responsibility are constituent elements of love, but without respect for and knowledge of the beloved person, love deteriorates into domination and possessiveness.

Erich Fromm Man for Himself (1947)

Immature love says: "I love you because I need you." Mature love says: "I need you because I love you."

Erich Fromm The Art of Loving (1956)

Be ruled by time, the wisest counsellor of all.

Plutarch

The heart opens itself to the hope that the misfortunes of the past will be replaced by fruitful dialogue.

Elio Toaff

All investigations of Time, however sophisticated or abstract, have at their true base the human fear of mortality.

Thomas Pynchon Against the Day (2006)

Mankind is composed of two sorts of men — those who love and create, and those who hate and destroy.

José Martí Letter to a Cuban Farmer (1893)

Everybody has to die, but I always believed an exception would be made in my case. Now what?

William Saroyan

Beauty is momentary in the mind —
The fitful tracing of a portal;
But in the flesh it is immortal.
The body dies; the body's beauty lives.

Wallace Stevens Harmonium (1923)

You cannot love someone you do not know -- not unless you water down the definition of love so much that it becomes meaningless.

Jane Roberts The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression (1979)

It is best to love wisely, no doubt; but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all. Some of us can't: and are proud of our impotence, too.

William Makepeace Thackeray The History of Pendennis (1848)

As the gambler said of his dice, to love and win is the best thing, to love and lose is the next best.

William Makepeace Thackeray The History of Pendennis (1848)

When once the mind has raised itself to grasp and to delight in excellence, those who love most will be found to love most wisely.

Francis Turner Palgrave Golden Treasury of English Songs and Lyrics (1861)

With God, every moment is the moment of beginning again.

Catherine Doherty

Anyone who is in love is making love the whole time, even when they're not.

Paulo Coelho Eleven Minutes (2003)

In dreams and in love there are no impossibilities.

János Arany

The place became full of a watchful intentness now; for when other things sank blooding to sleep the heath appeared slowly to awake and listen.

Thomas Hardy The Return of the Native (1878)

In love, unlike most other passions, the recollection of what you have had and lost is always better than what you can hope for in the future.

Stendhal De L'Amour (On Love) (1822)

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