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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:

We give our intent to love and meekness, by the working of mercy and grace we are made all fair and clean.

Julian of Norwich

Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse; it is the principal means of escape from the loneliness which afflicts most men and women throughout the greater part of their lives.

Bertrand Russell Marriage and Morals (1929)

All who have meant good work with their whole hearts, have done good work, although they may die before they have the time to sign it. Every heart that has beat strong and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind.

Robert Louis Stevenson Aes Triplex (1878)

Divine the Powers that on this trio wait.
Supreme their conquest, over Time and Fate.
Love, Work, and Faith — these three alone are great.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox New Thought Pastels (1913)

Learning in the true sense of the word is possible only in that state of attention, in which there is no outer or inner compulsion. Right thinking can come about only when the mind is not enslaved by tradition and memory.

Jiddu Krishnamurti Life Ahead: On Learning and the Search for Meaning (1963)

She said, why don't we both just sleep on it tonight
And I believe, in the morning you'll begin to see the light...

Paul Simon

I observed, "Love is the fulfilling of the law, the end of the commandment." It is not only "the first and great" command, but all the commandments in one. "Whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, if there be any virtue, if there be any praise," they are all comprised in this one word, love.

John Wesley

There are many kinds of love, as many kinds of light,
And every kind of love makes a glory in the night.
There is love that stirs the heart, and love that gives it rest,
But the love that leads life upward is the noblest and the best.

Henry van Dyke

Freud's prescription for personal happiness as consisting of work and love must be taken with the proviso that the work has to be loved, and the love has to be worked at.

Sydney J. Harris Pieces of Eight (1982)

Love is a feeling and its expression is an art.

Suman Pokhrel

In Oran, as elsewhere, for want of time and thought, people have to love one another without knowing it.

Albert Camus The Plague (1947)

Something the heart must have to cherish,
Must love and joy and sorrow learn;
Something with passion clasp, or perish
And in itself to ashes burn.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Hyperion (1839)

His heart was one of those which most enamour us,
Wax to receive, and marble to retain:
He was a lover of the good old school,
Who still become more constant as they cool.

Lord Byron Beppo (1818)

She is a winsome wee thing,
She is a handsome wee thing,
She is a lo'esome wee thing,
This sweet wee wife o' mine.

Robert Burns

The landlady and Tam grew gracious
Wi' favours secret, sweet, and precious.

Robert Burns Tam o' Shanter (1790)

The reason why so few marriages are happy is because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages.

Jonathan Swift Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711)

For pity melts the mind to love.

John Dryden Alexander's Feast (1697)

Love? What is it? Most natural painkiller what there is. LOVE.

William S. Burroughs Last Words: The Final Journals of William S. Burroughs (2000)

Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith.

Steve Jobs Address at Stanford University (2005)

Now he had form and substance.
He had become a personality, something they had filtered out of the system many decades ago.

Harlan Ellison

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