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:
Men may scoff, and men may pray,
But they pay
Every pleasure with a pain.
No one is so old that he does not think he could live another year.
Old age is not so fiery as youth, but when once provoked cannot be appeased.
Old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.
Give me a staff of honor for mine age,
But not a sceptre to control the world.
We feel and experience ourselves to be eternal. (Latin: "Sentimus experimurque nos æternos esse.")
For the things seen are temporary, but the things unseen are everlasting.
As dear to me as are the ruddy drops
That visit my sad heart.
I hate the prostitution of the name of friendship to signify modish and worldly alliances.