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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:

You must become an old man in good time if you wish to be an old man long.

Cicero

The sum total of all sums total is eternal.

Lucretius

Make your friends your teachers and blend the usefulness of learning with the pleasure of conversation.

Baltasar Gracián

Before he is dead and buried no one ought to be called happy.

Ovid

Joys do not stay, but take wing and fly away.

Martial

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

William Blake Auguries of Innocence (1803)

Every moment age is creeping up stealthily,
but life, life is melting down
like a candle that is flickering around.

Suman Pokhrel

We are always acting on what has just finished happening. It happened at least 1/30th of a second ago. We think we’re in the present, but we aren’t. The present we know is only a movie of the past.

Ken Kesey The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968)

There are some people who imagine that older adults don't know how to use the internet. My immediate reaction is, "I've got news for you, we invented it."

Vint Cerf Your Life: Vinton Cerf (2016)

If there is meaning in the past and in the imagined future, it is captured in the moment. When you have all the time in the world, you can spend it, not on going somewhere, but on being where you are.

Robin Wall Kimmerer Braiding Sweetgrass (2013)

We age inevitably:
The old joys fade and are gone:
And at last comes equanimity and the flame burning clear.

James Oppenheim War and Laughter (1916)

The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson Society and Solitude (1870)

One great thing about getting old is that you can get out of all sorts of social obligations just by saying you're tired.

George Carlin It's Bad for Ya (2008)

In records that defy the tooth of time.

Edward Young

The friendships of the world are oft
Confederacies in vice, or leagues of pleasure;
Ours has severest virtue for its basis,
And such a friendship ends not but with life.

Joseph Addison Cato, A Tragedy (1713)

Venerable men! you have come down to us from a former generation. Heaven has bounteously lengthened out your lives, that you might behold this joyous day.

Daniel Webster Address on Laying the Cornerstone of the Bunker Hill Monument (1825)

The great end of all human industry, is the attainment of happiness. For this were arts invented, sciences cultivated, laws ordained, and societies modelled, by the most profound wisdom of patriots and legislators.

David Hume Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary (1741)

The loss of wealth is loss of dirt,
As sages in all times assert;
The happy man's without a shirt.

John Heywood

Lots of things take time, and time was Momo's only form of wealth.

Michael Ende Momo (1973)

Many a time,… from a bad beginning great friendships have sprung up.

Terence

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