We do not count a man's years until he has nothing else to count.
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.
Most quoted on birthday:
Our image of happiness is indissolubly bound up with the image of the past.
True happiness
Consists not in the multitude of friends,
But in the worth and choice.
I am the angel of reality,
Seen for a moment standing in the door.
Who well lives, long lives; for this age of ours
Should not be numbered by years, daies, and hours.
So long as you do not quarrel with sin, you will never be a truly happy man.
Time was the enemy never to be conquered and there were no reserves to help stay the tide.
Time, like a flurry of wild rain,
Shall drift across the darkened pane!
We're charm'd with distant views of happiness,
But near approaches make the prospect less.
Time is the old justice that examines all such offenders, and let Time try.
He briskly and cheerfully asked him how a man should kill time.
I see that time divided is never long, and that regularity abridges all things.