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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:

What we call evil, is the only and best shape, which, for the person and his condition at the time, could be assumed by the best good.

George MacDonald Phantastes (1858)

Once I built a railroad, I made it run,
made it race against time.
Once I built a railroad; now it's done.
Brother, can you spare a dime?

Yip Harburg

Now the sun touched the horizon and the man reined in his horse tiredly, glad that the time for prayer had come.

James Clavell Whirlwind (1986)

The four most expensive words in the English language are "this time it’s different."

John Templeton The Four Pillars of Investing : Lessons for Building a Winning Portfolio (2002)

Experienced well-being is on average unaffected by marriage, not because marriage makes no difference to happiness, but because it changes some aspects of life for the better and others for the worse.

Daniel Kahneman Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

In dependence, there is no happiness, even in a dream.

Tulsidas

Happiness is the feeling we experience when we are too busy to be miserable.

Thomas Lansing Masson

The year was woven on the loom, finished and folded away upon the pile of other years in the tall chests of Time.

Tanith Lee Night's Master (1978)

I don't have many friends, so I try and be there for the ones that do make it that far.

Michael Lieber The War Hero (2018)

One understands time when there is no time.

Hossein Nuri Turning Fear Into Power (2014)

When Divine providence graces you, and you are endowed with passion of love and alienated from your ego, at that time Divine love enters your inmost being and He shows His Beauty to you.

Bu Ali Shah Qalandar The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004)

Old friends are the best advisers, but seldom the most agreeable, because they are generally regardless of pleasing at the expense of truth.

Richard Duppa Maxims, Reflections, &c (1830)

A labyrinth of symbols... An invisible labyrinth of time.

Jorge Luis Borges The Garden of Forking Paths (1942)

It is only in appearance that time is a river. It is rather a vast landscape and it is the eye of the beholder that moves.

Thornton Wilder The Eighth Day (1967)

Reason gains all men, by compelling none.
Mercy was always Heaven's distinguished mark:
And he, who bears it not, has no friend there.

Aaron Hill Alzira: A Tragedy (1736)

In spite of its size and range, this is […] a personal essay. It is a Time-haunted man addressing himself chiefly to all those people he knows from experience to be also Time-haunted.

J. B. Priestley Man and Time (1964)

The disciple whom Jesus loved leaned on His bosom. Dear friend, where are you?

Anna Shipton Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

You can’t get out of getting old. You can’t get out of having a relationship change.

Glen Cook The White Rose (1985)

"Friendship and trust" were the foundation of the (current Israeli) government and only "friendship and trust" will keep it in power.

Yair Lapid

To one who asked what was the proper time for lunch, he said, "If a rich man, when you will; if a poor man, when you can."

Diogenes of Sinope

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