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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:

The joys of marriage are the heaven on earth,
Life's paradise, great princess, the soul's quiet,
Sinews of concord, earthly immortality,
Eternity of pleasures; no restoratives
Like to a constant woman!

John Ford The Broken Heart (1625)

In the eye of the law no doubt, man and wife are for many purposes one: but that is a strong figurative expression, and cannot be so dealt with as that all the consequences must follow which would result from its being literally true.

William Henry Maule Wenman v. Ash (1853)

Time was a flickering gray fire constantly consuming all things, so that what appeared to be motion was actually the oxidation and reduction of possibilities, the collapse of potential matter from grace to nothingness.

Michael Swanwick Stations of the Tide (1991)

You've got to get up every morning with a smile on your face
And show the world all the love in your heart
The people gonna treat you better,
You're gonna find, yes you will,
That you're beautiful as you feel.

Carole King Tapestry (1971)

What, then, is time? If no one ask of me, I know; if I wish to explain to him who asks, I know not.

Augustine of Hippo

Time is generally the best medicine.

Ovid

Infinita est velocitas temporis quæ magis apparet respicientibus.
The swiftness of time is infinite, which is still more evident to those who look back upon the past.

Seneca the Younger

The ear is the avenue to the heart.

Voltaire

Fan Ch'ih asked, ... What is love?
The Master said: "To rank the effort above the prize may be called love."

Confucius

Anxiety is love's greatest killer. It makes one feel as you might when a drowning man holds unto you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic.

Anaïs Nin French Writers of the Past (2000)

Love is often a fruit of marriage.

Molière

But happy they, the happiest of their kind!
Whom gentler stars unite, and in one fate
Their Hearts, their Fortunes, and their Beings blend.

James Thomson

I should like to see any kind of a man, distinguishable from a gorilla, that some good and even pretty woman could not shape a husband out of.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

The good of other times let people state;
I think it lucky I was born so late.

Ovid

Education is an important element in the struggle for human rights. It is the means to help our children and our people rediscover their identity and thereby increase their self respect. Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs only to the people who prepare for it today.

Malcolm X By Any Means Necessary (1970)

For life, with all it yields of joy and woe,
And hope and fear (believe the aged friend),
Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love,—
How love might be, hath been indeed, and is.

Robert Browning A Death in the Desert (1864)

We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.

Maya Angelou A Brave and Startling Truth (1995)

I love Love — though he has wings,
And like light can flee,
But above all other things,
Spirit, I love thee —
Thou art love and life! Oh come,
Make once more my heart thy home.

Percy Bysshe Shelley Song: Rarely, Rarely, Comest Thou (1821)

A mature person is one who does not think only in absolutes, who is able to be objective even when deeply stirred emotionally, who has learned that there is both good and bad in all people and all things, and who walks humbly and deals charitably with the circumstances of life, knowing that in this world no one is all-knowing and therefore all of us need both love and charity.

Eleanor Roosevelt You Learn by Living (1960)

Love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.
A Brave and Startling Truth.

Maya Angelou A Brave and Startling Truth (1995)

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