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:
Eternity gives nothing back of what one leaves out of the minutes.
We are not born, we do not live for ourselves alone; our country, our friends, have a share in us.
I'd rather be unhappy than have the sort of false, lying happiness you were having here.
What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome.
Avoid greatness; in a cottage there may be more real happiness than kings or their favorites enjoy.
In the great inconstancy and crowd of events, nothing is certain except the past.
I would like to offer one short poem you can recite from time to time, while breathing and smiling
Do not think
I’ve reached where I am now
by slipping like a landslide
or evaporating like a cloud.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
I have drunken deep of joy,
And I will taste no other wine tonight.
But an old age serene and bright,
And lovely as a Lapland night,
Shall lead thee to thy grave.