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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:

In old age... we are like a batch of letters that someone has sent. We are no longer in the past, we have arrived.

Knut Hamsun Wanderers (1909)

If moms know how to keep open the line that connects them to the friendship of their children, they will learn that today's young people are great!

Doris Veillette

The truths are universal: Every kid knows fear. Every kid knows family and friendship. Loss, love, laughter. Everything else is just detail.

Jason Reynolds

(In referring to simple pleasures) These are arts that those who ridicule should not so readily despise, since they lighten melancholy and foster friendship.

Robin Saikia A Very Fine Cat Indeed: A Dramatic Monologue (2020)

"To improve the security situation, the leadership of the Armed Forces should not be based on friendship or 'man know man' but based on performance."

Fela durotoye

No poor man can afford to have many friends. They would ruin him. Indeed, friendship is a luxury which should be indulged in with caution even by the rich.

Marcus Clarke

He whose friendship is worth having, must hate and be hated.

William Maginn

Beautiful friendship tried by sun and wind,
Durable from the daily dust of life.

Stephen Phillips Poems (1897)

This friendship and this bond that we share is, to us, the No. 1 priority.

Tessa Virtue

He decided to stay in his space suit; explosive decompression didn’t appeal to him. Come to think about it, death from old age was his choice.

Robert A. Heinlein The Past Through Tomorrow (1967)

Shameful it is to say, yet the common herd, if only we admit the truth, value friendships by their profit.

Ovid

The friendship that can cease has never been real.

Jerome

And oh! I shall find how, day by day,
All thoughts and things look older;
How the laugh of pleasure grows less gay,
And the heart of friendship colder.

Winthrop Mackworth Praed

I never indulge sentiment over broken friendships. We have extracted all we need from a friend, and so get rid of him on the same terms as he gets rid of us.

Norman Lindsay

I can’t keep pleasing you, I can’t keep making everyone happy. I can’t keep buying everybody something just to keep a friendship.

Heart Evangelista

Man walks with small steps in infancy and in old age.

Manuel González Prada Conference at the Lima Athenaeum (1886)

When men grow virtuous in their old age, they only make a sacrifice to God of the devil's leavings.

Alexander Pope Thoughts on Various Subjects (1727)

Friendship, 'tis said, is love without his wings,
And friendship, sir, is sweet enough for me.

Alfred Austin Savonarola (1881)

True and perfect Friendship is, to make one heart and mind of many hearts and bodies.

Pythagoras The Sayings of the Wise (1555)

And in spite of David and Jonathan, Hamlet and Horatio, Caesar and Antony, Bush and Blair, women have a greater gift, I think, for friendship.

John Mortimer

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