We shall forget by day, except
The moments when we choose to play
The imagined pine, the imagined jay.
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:
All that we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.
Swift speedy Time, feathered with flying hours,
Dissolves the beauty of the fairest brow.
And write whatever Time shall bring to pass
With pens of adamant on plates of brass.
Time, eftsoon will tumble
All of us together like leaves in a gust,
Humbled indeed down into the dust.
Time is lord of thee:
Thy wealth, thy glory, and thy name are his.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow.
Therefore fear not to assay
To gather, ye that may,
The flower that this day
Is fresher than the next.
Rich the treasure,
Sweet the pleasure,
Sweet is pleasure after pain.
Oh, for one hour of blind old Dandolo,
Th' octogenarian chief, Byzantium's conquering foe!
When he's forsaken,
Wither'd and shaken,
What can an old man do but die?
Boys must not have th' ambitious care of men,
Nor men the weak anxieties of age.
And the bright faces of my young companions
Are wrinkled like my own, or are no more.