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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:

If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than it was because he was he, and I was I.

Michel de Montaigne Essais (1571)

A stunning first impression was not the same thing as love at first sight. But surely it was an invitation to consider the matter.

Lois McMaster Bujold Paladin of Souls (2003)

Let my delight be the country, and the running streams amid the dells—may I love the waters and the woods, though I be unknown to fame.

Virgil Georgics (-29)

Unconscionable Love,
To what extremes will you not drive our hearts!

Virgil Aeneid (-19)

I am not a dog lover. A dog lover to me means a dog that is in love with another dog.

James Thurber

What is love's perfection? To love our enemies, and to love them to the end that they may be our brothers.

Augustine of Hippo

I can love Germany and hate capitalism.

Joseph Goebbels

There are people who would never be in love had they not heard [others] speak of love

François de La Rochefoucauld Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665)

I'm a writer and this is what I love to do. There's no reason that just because you're a celebrity, you can't write.

Gloria Estefan

Musicians are seldom unemotional; a woman who could sing like that must know how to love indeed.

Honoré de Balzac The Wild Ass’s Skin (1831)

Adultery breathes new life into marriages which have been left for dead.

Marcel Proust In Search of Lost Time / Remembrance of Things Past (1913)

Love, who is most beautiful among the immortal gods, the melter of limbs, overwhelms in their hearts the intelligence and wise counsel of all gods and all men.

Hesiod Theogony (-700)

You must love those you lead before you can be an effective leader. You can certainly command without that sense of commitment, but you cannot lead without it.

Eric Shinseki

I love Armenia and I love America and I belong to both, but I am only this: an inhabitant of the earth, and so are you, whoever you are.

William Saroyan Inhale and Exhale (1936)

We believe in marriage for life, and deprecate all this loose, pestiferous talk in favor of easy divorce... Be not deceived — free love means free lust.

Lucy Stone

Do you know what happens to artists who fall in love with their models? They come to a bad end. The same applies to scientists.

Roger Zelazny Frost & Fire (1989)

Love for all means coldness to something or someone. Even Jesus, let us recall, was unnecessarily rude to his mother at Cana.

Camille Paglia Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990)

Thank you, o can opener, for this can which you are about to open. You are truly a beautiful can opener, and though I am not worthy of you, I love you.

Darby Conley

And when you wake, you will fly away, holding tight to the legs of all your angels. Goodbye, my love, into your blue, blue eyes.

Dave Matthews Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King (2009)

A forty-year-old woman is only something to men who have loved her in her youth!

Stendhal La Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma) (1839)

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