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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:

Strength and beauty are the blessings of youth; temperance, however, is the flower of old age.

Democritus

There's no such thing as old age; there is only sorrow.

Edith Wharton A Backward Glance (1934)

Good to the poor, to kindred dear,
To servants kind, to friendship clear,
To nothing but herself severe.

Thomas Carew Poems (1640)

Books should be closed each year, especially in partnership because frequent accounting makes for long friendship.

Luca Pacioli

It was like beginning life anew without the vigor and enthusiasm of youth, like learning to become left-handed in old age.

Chinua Achebe Things Fall Apart (1958)

There is no age more dangerous than old age.

Isaac Isaacs

When your friendship unit is really strong and you genuinely care for someone, everything else, you do it as a team.

Wendy Osefo

True friendship's laws are by this rule express'd,
Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest.

Homer

God, how we get our fingers in each other’s clay. That’s friendship, each playing the potter to see what shapes we can make of the other.

Ray Bradbury Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962)

Women are not forgiven for aging. Robert Redford's lines of distinction are my old-age wrinkles.

Jane Fonda

Never engage with people on a negative path, as they may lead you toward ruin. Instead, guide them toward positivity, even if it risks your friendship.

Siddharth Katragadda Life: A collection of Inspirational Quotes (2020)

Marriage is a relationship just like friendship. So, if you are not getting the best from your friend, it is better and more peaceful to quit.

Moji Olaiya

As nice as we are in love, we forgive more faults in that than in friendship. Expostulations betwixt friends end generally ill, but well betwixt lovers.

Henry Home, Lord Kames Treasury of Thought (1881)

Old age realizes the dreams of youth: look at Dean Swift; in his youth he built an asylum for the insane, in his old age he was himself an inmate.

Søren Kierkegaard Either/Or (1843)

Conversation is imperative if gaps are to be filled, and old age, it is the last gap but one.

Patrick White The Tree of Man (1955)

One needs only eyes to see the necessary influence of old age on reason.

Julien Offray de La Mettrie Man a Machine (1747)

Their friendship was at an end, it seemed to him. The evil time when he had lived on Ravelston had spoiled everything. Charity kills friendship.

George Orwell Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936)

Friendship is the cement of two minds,
As of one man the soul and body is;
Of which one cannot sever but the other
Suffers a needful separation.

George Chapman The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois (1613)

A friendship that like love is warm;
A love like friendship, steady.

Thomas Moore Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed (1919)

Travel is a caprice in childhood, a passion in youth, a necessity in manhood, and an elegy in old age.

José Rizal

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