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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:

...variety is necessary in love, so love is to be produced by means of variety.

Vātsyāyana

One a child, one old
almost half a century apart // both
need my hand in this city

Mirkka Rekola

Marriage is like a good pie spoilt in the baking. Everything is admirable except the result! It is very heavy... very, very heavy!

John Oliver Hobbes The Ambassador (1898)

Love always envelops us: it is we, with our attitude towards it, who transform it into fire or light.

Jean Guitton

Though fools spurn Hymen's gentle powers,
We, who improve his golden hours,
By sweet experience know
That marriage, rightly understood,
Gives to the tender and the good
A paradise below.

Charles Cotton

As long as Property exists, it will accumulate in Individuals and Families. As long as Marriage exists, Knowledge, Property and Influence will accumulate in Families.

John Adams

So, on beyond Z!
It's high time you were shown
That you really don't know
All there is to be known.

Dr. Seuss On Beyond Zebra! (1955)

But is it true love, in the rectum? That’s what bothers me sometimes.

Samuel Beckett Molloy (1951)

A book on radical feminism that did not deal with love would be a political failure. For love, perhaps even more than childbearing, is the pivot of women's oppression today.

Shulamith Firestone The Dialectic of Sex (1970)

The love of God consists in an ardent desire to procure the general welfare, and reason teaches me that there is nothing which contributes more to the general welfare of mankind than the perfection of reason.

Gottfried Leibniz Closing sentence of the Preface to the general science (1677)

The periodic table is the universal catalog of everything you can drop on your foot. There are some things, such as light, love, logic, and time, that are not in the periodic table. But you can't drop any of those things on your foot.

Theodore Gray

A drop of water freezes instantly -
My seven years and seventy.
All changes at a blow
Springs of water welling from the fire.

Kaso Sodon

Yield frequently to the first inspiration. Too much meditation on the same subject ends by suggesting the worst part, or at least causes loss of precious time.

Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot Posthumous Manuscripts (1878)

On the Day of Judgement many a rich will suffer imprisonment and the office-holders of the world will have a terrible time, being called to answer for their deeds. So be prepared to answer for your acts on that Day.

Al-Fudayl ibn 'Iyad The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004)

When an irrational animal like camel dances at the tune of bell, why don't you, being the best of creation, attain absorption and ecstasy in the love of God, or go into rapture by listening the name of the Beloved.

Bu Ali Shah Qalandar The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004)

Love consists in embracing acts of obedience and in avoiding acts of disobedience which implies that the devotee of God develops his kinship with God as he merges his will in His will and avoids that which is forbidden by Him.

Sahl al-Tustari The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004)

I, I wish you could swim
Like the dolphins
Like dolphins can swim Though nothing, nothing will keep us together
We can beat them, forever and ever
Oh, we can be heroes just for one day.

Brian Eno

Time: That which man is always trying to kill, but which ends in killing him.

Herbert Spencer

What I do is based on powers we all have inside us; the ability to endure; the ability to love, to carry on, to make the best of what we have — and you don’t have to be a ‘Superman’ to do it.

Christopher Reeve

My six and seventy years are through.
I was not born, I am not dead.
Clouds floating on the high wide skies
The moon curves through its million-mile course.

Yakuo Tokuken

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