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Birthday Quotes

Birthday quotes here lean towards reflection rather than celebration. The page is built from the pages on age, time, friendship and happiness, and Shakespeare has the most entries, then Byron, Edward Young and Longfellow.

That is useful if you want something thoughtful for a milestone birthday and less so for a card with balloons on it. The funny ones are on the Funny page. A warning on the friendship quotes: “Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer” is not from Sun Tzu, and “Time flies like an arrow” was not said by Groucho Marx. Both are flagged here.

Random quote on Birthday

Most quoted on birthday:

In Aryans' Discipline, to build a friendship is to build wealth, to maintain a friendship is to maintain wealth and to end a friendship is to end wealth.

Gautama Buddha

We always lose the friendship of those who lose our esteem.

Joseph Joubert The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert (1883)

Do not seek to possess either goods or fiefs for your old age.

Miyamoto Musashi

There cannot be friendship without equality.

Swami Vivekananda

There is no such thing as eternal friendship or eternal hostility–-only eternal interests.

Abd Al-Hamid Al-Ansari

Be honey to those who seek your friendship, but deadly poison to those who dare attack you.

Faisal of Saudi Arabia

First girls develop friendship with boys. They when differences occur, they level rape charges. Boys commit mistakes. Will they be hanged for rape.

Mulayam Singh Yadav

The value of friendship is immeasurable, as it enriches our lives in ways we never thought possible.

Yasmina Khadra What the Day Owes the Night (2008)

With your love and knowledge about Uganda and through your various contacts and friendships in Belgium, we are confident that we will benefit greatly.

Sandra Katushabe

Youth is a silly, vapid state,
Old age with fears and ills is rife;
This simple boon I beg of Fate —
A thousand years of Middle Life.

Carolyn Wells

A tree in its old age is like a bent but mellowed and wise old man; it inspires our respect and tender admiration; it is too noble to need our pity.

Donald C. Peattie An Almanac for Moderns (1935)

Just playing for so many years with the same bunch of girls, you form friendships that will last forever.

Trisha Chetty

Friendship is far more tragic than love. It lasts longer.

Oscar Wilde A Few Maxims for the Instruction of the Over-Educated (1894)

It is utterly false and cruelly arbitrary... to put all the play and learning into childhood, all the work into middle age, and all the regrets into old age.

Margaret Mead Teacher's Treasury of Stories for Every Occasion (1958)

What is Friendship? Something deep
That the heart can spend and keep:
Wealth that greatens while we give,
Praise that heartens us to live.

Henry van Dyke

Friendship is always helpful, but love sometimes even does harm

Seneca the Younger

In youth we learn; in old age we understand.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach Aphorisms (1880)

Youth, large, lusty, loving—Youth, full of grace, force, fascination!
Do you know that Old Age may come after you, with equal grace, force, fascination?

Walt Whitman Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed (1919)

Nearly allied to justice are the virtues of beneficence, compassion, gratitude, piety, and friendship.

Epicurus

The human heart to youth is a fairy-land of adventure, to old age it is a sitting room where one knows his way in the dark.

Frank Crane Four Minute Essays Vol. 5 (1919)

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