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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 our sacred duty to give the new generation a safe, happy, beautiful and prosperous Bangladesh.

Mohammad Abdul Hamid Abdul Hamid (2022)

I am the Proof of God for the created beings and I am a proof for the saints (awliya) of my time.

Sahl al-Tustari

As two floating planks meet and part on the sea,
O friend! so I met and then drifted from thee.

William R. Alger

It is the invariable lesson to humanity that distance in time, and in space as well, lends focus. It is not recorded, incidentally, that the lesson has ever been permanently learned.

Isaac Asimov The Foundation series (1951)

Science has toiled too long forging weapons for fools to use. It is time she held her hand.

H. G. Wells The First Men in the Moon (1901)

Right in the Heart of the African Jungle a small white man lives. Now there is one extraordinary fact about him that he is the friend of all animals.

Gerald Durrell Written by Durrell at age ten (1935)

LSD wanted to tell me something. … It gave me an inner joy, an open mindedness, a gratefulness, open eyes and an internal sensitivity for the miracles of creation.

Albert Hofmann LSD: The Geek's Wonder Drug? (2006)

Very busy people always find time for everything.
Conversely, people with immense leisure find time for nothing.

Ernest Dimnet The Art of Thinking (1928)

Beauty is but the cloak of happiness. Where joy tarries, there also is beauty.

Ludwig Klages Rhythmen und Runen (1944)

The bitterness of joy lies in the knowledge that it cannot last. Nor should joy last beyond a certain season, for, after that season, even joy would become merely habit.

Tanith Lee Delusion's Master (1981)

Time, in all crises, is usually the ingredient missing to make a solution. It is best supplied by an agreement on a pause.

John Keegan The First World War (1998)

Happiest is he who expects no happiness from others. Love delights and glorifies in giving, not receiving. So learn to love and give, and not to expect anything from others.

Meher Baba Lord Meher (1986)

SETI is probably the most important quest of our time, and it amazes me that governments and corporations are not supporting it sufficiently.

Arthur C. Clarke Seti@Home Donor List (2006)

Friendship with oneself is all-important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.

Eleanor Roosevelt The Beacon Book of Quotations by Women (1992)

The end and aim of the Cynic philosophy, as indeed of every philosophy, is happiness, but happiness that consists in living according to nature, and not according to the opinions of the multitude.

Julian

If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play.

John Cleese Best New Games (2002)

And I will die, and you will die, and we all will die, and even the stars will fade out one after another in time.

Jack Kerouac Desolation Angels (1965)

Wherever you are it is your own friends who make your world.

William James The Thought and Character of William James (1935)

The most exciting happiness is the happiness generated by forces beyond your control.

Ogden Nash I'm a Stranger Here Myself (1938)

Beauty was the promise of happiness, not happiness itself; and the anticipated world was often more rich than anything real.

Kim Stanley Robinson Red Mars (1992)

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