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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:

It is time for thee to be gone, lest the age more decent in its wantonness should laugh at thee and drive thee off the stage.

Horace

What find you better or more honourable than age? Take the preheminence of it in everything, — in an old friend, in old wine, in an old pedigree.

Shackerley Marmion

Love is rarer than genius itself. And friendship is rarer than love.

Charles Péguy

It is a common saying that many pecks of salt must be eaten before the duties of friendship can be discharged.

Cicero

Friends, those relations that one makes for one's self.

Eustache Deschamps

The vulgar herd estimate friendship by its advantages.

Ovid

As the yellow gold is tried in fire, so the faith of friendship must be seen in adversity.

Ovid

To desire the same things and to reject the same things, constitutes true friendship.

Sallust

A friend must not be injured, even in jest.

Publilius Syrus

Reprove your friends in secret, praise them openly.

Publilius Syrus

They say you can’t really remember pain, remembering only the fact of it, not the precise way it feel. Maybe the same thing’s true of happiness.

William Barton

Do not fall prey to seeking pure happiness. Instead, seek lifelong progress toward happierness.

Arthur C. Brooks

What is there given by the gods more desirable than a happy hour?

Catullus

An infinite question is often destroyed by finite answers. To define everything is to annihilate much that gives us laughter and joy.

Madeleine L'Engle A Circle of Quiet (1972)

Some say that the age of chivalry is past, that the spirit of romance is dead. The age of chivalry is never past so long as there is a wrong left unredressed on earth.

Charles Kingsley

I know now: I do not hope for anything. I do not fear anything, I have freed myself from both the mind and the heart, I have mounted much higher, I am free.

Nikos Kazantzakis The Saviors of God (1923)

Trust no future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act, act in the living present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Voices of the Night (1839)

Whereas before you dwelt in time and paid brief visits to the Now, have your dwelling place in the Now and pay brief visits to past and future.

Eckhart Tolle The Power of Now (1997)

A young man who had been troubling society with impalpable doctrines of a new civilization which he called "the Kingdom of Heaven" had been put out of the way; and I can imagine that believer in material power murmuring as he went homeward, "it will all blow over now." Yes. The wind from the Kingdom of Heaven has blown over the world, and shall blow for centuries yet.

George William Russell The Economics of Ireland and the Policy of the British Government (1921)

Like our shadows,
Our wishes lengthen as our sun declines.

Edward Young Night-Thoughts (1742)

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