Birthday quotes
A collection of quotes on the topic of anniversary, birthday, birthday, life.
Best birthday quotes
“There is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way.”
“Wrinkles should merely indicate where the smiles have been.”
“Happiness is the readiness to be happy.”
Aphorism #33
Interglacial (2004)
“Don't count the days, make the days count.”
“Grow old with me! The best is yet to be.”
“It is us today. It will be you tomorrow.”
Statement after his speech before the League of Nations (30 June 1936), as quoted in " "The Lion is Freed" in TIME magazine (8 September 1975) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,917777,00.html?iid=chix-sphere
Birthday quotes
“Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears.”
“There are two great days in a person's life - the day we are born and the day we discover why.”
“And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.”
This quote is often misattributed to Lincoln. The earliest instance that Quote Investigator could locate was "in an advertisement in 1947 for a book about aging by Edward J. Stieglitz, M.D". The advertisement for “The Second Forty Years” which ran in the Chicago Tribune newspaper read like this: The important thing to you is not how many years in your life, but how much life in your years! (Compare 1947 March 16, Chicago Tribune, “How Long Do You Plan to Live?”, [Advertisement for the book "The Second Forty Years" by Edward J. Stieglitz, M.D.], p. C7, Chicago, Illinois. (ProQuest)). Source of misattribution: It’s Not the Years in Your Life That Count. It’s the Life in Your Years - Abraham Lincoln? Adlai Stevenson? Edward J. Stieglitz? Anonymous? by Quote Investigator on July 14, 2012 http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/07/14/life-years-count/
To my way of thinking it is not the years in your life but the life in your years that count in the long run.
Adlai Stevenson II, Address at Princeton University, "The Educated Citizen" (22 March 1954) http://infoshare1.princeton.edu/libraries/firestone/rbsc/mudd/online_ex/stevenson/adlai1954.html. This has also been paraphrased "What matters most is not the years in your life, but the life in your years" and misattributed to Abraham Lincoln and Mae West.
Adlai Stevenson II, "If I Were Twenty-One" in Coronet (December 1955).
Misattributed
Variant: It is not the years in your life but the life in your years that counts.
“You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.”
“The way I see it, you should live everyday like its your birthday”
“TODAY IS THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF YOUR LIFE”
Source: Revolution for the Hell of It (1968), p. 184.
“As long as there's life, there's hope.”
“I was brought up to respect my elders, so now I don't have to respect anybody.”
“Cherish all your happy moments: they make a fine cushion for old age.”
“A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age.”
Variant: A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age.
“You see persons and things not as they are but as you are.”
Lady Bracknell, Act III
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)
“True friends are like diamonds – bright, beautiful, valuable, and always in style.”
“The old believe everything; the middle-aged suspect everything; the young know everything.”
Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young (1894)
“Very early, I knew that the only object in life was to grow.”
Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1852), Vol. I, p. 132.
“And I rose
In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days…”
Source: Collected Poems
“Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”
“I love everything that's old: old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wines.”
She Stoops to Conquer (1771), Act I
Source: The Vicar of Wakefield
“You are stronger than you seem,
Braver than you believe,
and smarter than you think you are.”
Variant: You are braver than you believe,
Stronger than you seem,
And smarter than you think(:
Source: Winnie-the-Pooh
“That's not my love; that's just your life.”
Ibid.
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Isso não é o meu amor; é apenas a sua vida.
“Those who love deeply never grow old; they may die of old age, but they die young.”
“It is sad to grow old but nice to ripen.”
“I am not, I will not be.
I have not, I will not have.”
That frightens all the childish
And extinguishes fear in the wise.
§ 26
Major attributed works, Ratnāvalī (Precious Garland)
“God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well.”
“And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.”
"The End"; The last full song track of Abbey Road (1969) the last Beatles album to be recorded before the band broke up. (Let It Be was the last album released, but had been recorded earlier.)
Lyrics, The Beatles
Source: The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics
“You know you're getting old when the candles cost more than the cake.”
Source: At Knit's End: Meditations for Women Who Knit Too Much
Variant: The greatest gifts you can give your children are the roots of responsibility and the wings of independence
“There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.”
"War Shrines"
Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies (1922)
“The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.”
“Birthdays could be such a bummer when you were older than the country you lived in.”
Source: A Quick Bite
“The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been.”
“Happy birthday. And next time? Eat the stupid cupcake.”
Source: Let Them Eat Cake
“May you live all the days of your life.”
Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 2
“We turn not older with years but newer every day.”
Source: http://archive.emilydickinson.org/correspondence/norcross/l379.html Letter
“No wise man ever wished to be younger.”
Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)
“Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.”
No known citation to Marx. First appears unattributed in mid-1960s logic/computing texts as an example of the difficulty of machine parsing of ambiguous statements. Google Books http://books.google.co.uk/books?client=firefox-a&lr=&as_brr=0&q=%22fruit-flies%22+%22time+flies%22+banana&btnG=Search+Books&as_drrb_is=b&as_minm_is=0&as_miny_is=1900&as_maxm_is=0&as_maxy_is=1970. The Yale Book of Quotations dates the attribution to Marx to a 9 July 1982 net.jokes post on Usenet.
Misattributed
“This is the place of places and and it is here.”
“There is still no cure for the common birthday.”
“The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age.”
“deep down I believe my year was a special year: it produced me.”
“I’m sorry I can’t do more. But happy birthday, Sadie.”
He leaned forward and kissed me on the lips.”
Source: The Throne of Fire
“Happy birthday, Alexander," Magnus murmured.
"Thanks for remembering," Alec whispered back.”
Source: What to Buy the Shadowhunter Who Has Everything
“Sometimes the greatest things are the most embarrassing.”
Source: Seriously... I'm Kidding
“Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”
Variant: There is no one alive who
is Youer than You!
Source: Happy Birthday to You!
“You are never too old to set another goal, or to dream a new dream.”
Unknown, but also attributed to Les Brown, a motivational speaker. Commonly attributed to C.S. Lewis, but never with a primary source listed.
Misattributed
“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”
Variant on aphorism "Study as if you were to live forever. Live as if you were to die tomorrow" pre-dating Gandhi, variously attributed to Isidore of Seville (c. 560 – 636), in FPA Book of Quotations (1952) by Franklin Pierce Adams, to Edmund Rich (1175–1240) in American Journal of Education (1877), or to Alain de Lille in Samuel Smiles's Duty https://books.google.com/books?id=33UzAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA363&dq=live+die+tomorrow+learn+forever&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjd3s_2m57MAhWFMGMKHe-sAl8Q6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=live%20die%20tomorrow%20learn%20forever&f=false (1881).
The 1995 book "The good boatman: a portrait of Gandhi," states that Gandhi subscribed "to the view that a man should live thinking he might die tomorrow but learn as if he would live forever."
In his 2010 Boyer lecture Glyn Davis (Professor of Political Science and Vice-Chancellor of Melbourne University) attributes the quote to Desiderius Erasmus. "He [Erasmus] reworked Pliny to urge 'live as if you are to die tomorrow, study as if you were to live forever'. Many students obey the first clause - the best heed both."
There is a similar quote by Johann Gottfried Herder: "Mensch, genieße dein Leben, als müssest morgen du weggehn; Schone dein Leben, als ob ewig du weiletest hier." ["Man, enjoy your life as if you were to depart tomorrow; spare your life as if you were to linger here forever."] (Zerstreute Blätter, 1785).
Disputed
"How Mary Pickford Stays Young", Reader's Digest, Vol. 5 (1926); condensed from an interview in Everybody's Magazine (28 May 1926)
“The birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me.”
A Birthday, st. 2.
“There is no knowledge that is not power.”
Old Age
1870s, Society and Solitude (1870)
“Learn as if you were to live forever; live as if you were to die tomorrow.”
They Call Me Coach (1972)
“I have no plans, and no plans to plan.”
On his presidential plans New York Times (14 September 1986)
“There is no way to happiness; happiness is the way.”
The source is likely to be either modern Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, or Calvinist clergyman Abraham Johannes Muste. The phrase appears in Thich Nhat Hanh's writings; but it also appears in a volume of US senate hearings from 1948, when Thich Nhat Hanh had not yet been ordained as a monk. Muste is known to have used a variant of the phrase – "'peace' is the way" in 1967, but this was not the first time he had used it, and he had a connection with the 1948 hearing.
Misattributed
“Success is like reaching an important birthday and finding you're exactly the same.”
As quoted in Audrey Hepburn : A Life in Pictures (2007) by Yann-Brice Dherbier and Pierre-Henri Verlhac
“That is what I want to be remembered for.”
Yours, Isaac Asimov (20 September 1973) <!-- page 329 -->
General sources
Context: What I will be remembered for are the Foundation Trilogy and the Three Laws of Robotics. What I want to be remembered for is no one book, or no dozen books. Any single thing I have written can be paralleled or even surpassed by something someone else has done. However, my total corpus for quantity, quality and variety can be duplicated by no one else. That is what I want to be remembered for.
“The greatest gift of life is friendship, and I have received it.”