He was always late on principle, his principle being that punctuality is the thief of time.
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:
Pleasures are ever in our hands or eyes;
And when in act they cease, in prospect rise.
Reason's whole pleasure, all the joys of sense,
Lie in three words,—health, peace, and competence.
Follow pleasure, and then will pleasure flee,
Flee pleasure, and pleasure will follow thee.
I fly from pleasure, because pleasure has ceased to please: I am lonely because I am miserable.
The little pleasure of the game
Is from afar to view the flight.
Age imprints more wrinkles on the mind than it does on the face.
A green old age, unconscious of decays,
That proves the hero born in better days.
Thus pleasures fade away;
Youth, talents, beauty, thus decay,
And leave us dark, forlorn, and gray.
At your age,
The hey-day in the blood is tame, it's humble,
And waits upon the judgment.
You are old;
As you are old and reverend, you should be wise.
And can eternity belong to me,
Poor pensioner on the bounties of an hour?
She that asks
Her dear five hundred friends, contemns them all,
And hates their coming.