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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:

And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Not all his men may sever this,
It yields to friends', not monarchs', calls;
My whinstone house my castle is—
I have my own four walls.

Thomas Carlyle My Own Four Walls (1825)

The tears stream down my cheeks from my unblinking eyes. What makes me weep so? From time to time. There is nothing saddening here. Perhaps it is liquefied brain.

Samuel Beckett The Unnamable (1954)

Time, they say, must the best of us capture,
And travel and battle and gems and gold
No more can kindle the ancient rapture,
For even the youngest of hearts grows old.

John Buchan Prester John (1910)

We've been looking for the enemy for some time now. We've finally found him. We're surrounded. That simplifies things.

Chesty Puller

We state with a unified voice that religions through which Almighty God sought to bring happiness to mankind should not be turned into instruments to cause misery

Abdullah of Saudi Arabia

I affirm that Indonesia is a true friend of Malaysia and I hope that trade and business relations, investment, culture and labor issues can be improved. The friendship between the two (nations) must be strengthened.

Anwar Ibrahim Anwar Ibrahim (2022)

One a child, one old
almost half a century apart // both
need my hand in this city

Mirkka Rekola

If one could continually satisfy his desires, he would never have time to desire. Happiness then is necessarily composed of alternatives. It could not exist at a constant level.

Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot Posthumous Manuscripts (1878)

Fear when the friend fears you.

Hossein Nuri Illuminationist Depictions (2015)

So, on beyond Z!
It's high time you were shown
That you really don't know
All there is to be known.

Dr. Seuss On Beyond Zebra! (1955)

The periodic table is the universal catalog of everything you can drop on your foot. There are some things, such as light, love, logic, and time, that are not in the periodic table. But you can't drop any of those things on your foot.

Theodore Gray

A drop of water freezes instantly -
My seven years and seventy.
All changes at a blow
Springs of water welling from the fire.

Kaso Sodon

Yield frequently to the first inspiration. Too much meditation on the same subject ends by suggesting the worst part, or at least causes loss of precious time.

Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot Posthumous Manuscripts (1878)

On the Day of Judgement many a rich will suffer imprisonment and the office-holders of the world will have a terrible time, being called to answer for their deeds. So be prepared to answer for your acts on that Day.

Al-Fudayl ibn 'Iyad The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004)

I, I wish you could swim
Like the dolphins
Like dolphins can swim Though nothing, nothing will keep us together
We can beat them, forever and ever
Oh, we can be heroes just for one day.

Brian Eno

Time: That which man is always trying to kill, but which ends in killing him.

Herbert Spencer

Friend. Songwriter. The Great Harmonizer of Humanity. Dolly. Dolly. Dolly. Forever Dolly.

Lily Tomlin

Not that freedom ensured happiness. Indeed, to be free was to live in absence. Of responsibilities, of loyalties, of the pressures that expectation imposed.

Steven Erikson House of Chains (2002)

Why do we travel to remote locations? To prove our adventurous spirit or to tell stories about incredible things? We do it to be alone amongst friends and to find ourselves in a land without man.

George Mallory The Wildest Dream: The Biography of George Mallory (2001)

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