A collection of quotes on the topic of birthday, day, year, likeness.
“Breathe. It’s only a bad day, not a bad life.”
“Do one thing every day that scares you.”
“Rocket ships
are exciting
but so are roses
on a birthday.”
Source: Come Be With Me: A Collection of Poems
“Every day
The sun comes up again
A little hope begins”
"Every Day" (leaked 6 October 2011)
Lyrics, unreleased
“The finest day i ever had was when tomorrow never came”
“This book is my fiftieth-birthday present to myself.”
Breakfast of Champions (1973)
Context: This book is my fiftieth-birthday present to myself. I feel as though I am crossing the spine of a roof — having ascended one slope.
I am programmed at fifty to perform childishly — to insult “The Star-Spangled Banner,” to scrawl pictures of a Nazi flag and an asshole and a lot of other things with a felt-tipped pen. To give an idea of the maturity of my illustrations for this book, here is my picture of an asshole:
“The only sin is the sin of being born.”
As quoted in "Samuel Beckett Talks About Beckett" by John Gruen, in Vogue, (December 1969), p. 210
Comparable to "The tragic figure represents the expiation of original sin, of the original and eternal sin of him and all his 'soci malorum,' the sin of having been born. 'Pues el delito mayor / Del hombre es haber nacido.'" from his essay Proust, quoting Pedro Calderón de la Barca's La vida es sueño (Life is a Dream).
“This is a good day to die. Follow me!”
Rallying cry at the Battle of the Little Bighorn (25 June 1876), quoted in Campaigns of General Custer in the North-west by Judson Elliott Walker
“If you can make it through the night, there's a brighter day.”
Variant: For every dark night, there's a brighter day.
Variant: I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
“I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.”
“We were all at once terribly alone; and alone we must see it through.”
Source: All Quiet on the Western Front
"Wanda June"
Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1970)
Context: Hello, I am Wanda June. Today was going to be my birthday, but I was hit by an ice-cream truck before I could have my party. I am dead now. I am in Heaven. That is why my parents did not pick up my cake at the bakery. I am not mad at the ice-cream truck driver, even though he was drunk when he hit me. It didn't hurt much. It wasn't even as bad as the sting of a bumblebee. I am really happy here! It's so much fun. I'm glad the driver was drunk. If he hadn't been, I might not have gone to Heaven for years and years and years. I would have had to go to high school first, and then beauty college. I would have had to get married and have babies and everything. Now I can just play and play and play. Any time I want any pink cotton candy I can have some. Everybody up here is happy — the animals and the dead soldiers and people who went to the electric chair and everything. They're all glad for whatever sent them here. Nobody is mad. We're all too busy playing shuffleboard. So if you think of killing somebody, don't worry about it. Just go ahead and do it. Whoever you do it to should kiss you for doing it. The soldiers up here just love the shrapnel and the tanks and the bayonets and the dum dums that let them play shuffleboard all the time — and drink beer.
Source: The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx
“We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.”
“The way I see it, you should live everyday like its your birthday”
In this quote Dasa is warning against the inevitable when one is busy with worldly chores as given here[Narayan, M.K.V., Lyrical Musings on Indic Culture: A Sociology Study of Songs of Sant Purandara Dasa, http://books.google.com/books?id=-r7AxJp6NOYC&pg=PA79, 1 January 2010, Readworthy, 978-93-80009-31-5, 81]
From interview with Komal Nahta
“Birthdays was the worst days; now we sip champagne when we're thirsty.”
Song lyrics, Ready to Die (1994), "Juicy"
Variant: April 1. This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four.
Source: Pudd'nhead Wilson and Other Tales
Source: The Old Man and the Sea (1952)
“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.
“Today I shall behave, as if this is the day I will be remembered.”
“It was the possibility of darkness that made the day seem so bright.”
Source: Wolves of the Calla
Veeramani, Collected Works of Periyar, p. 502.
Aryanism
“For a woman, forty is torture, the end. I think turning forty is miserable.”
Kelly (1969) in interview with William B. Arthur. Cited in: James Spada (1988) Grace: The Secret Lives of a Princess. p. 280
From "I’ll astonish you", interview by Len Brown, Details (March 1991).
In interviews etc., About himself and his work
The Satanic Bible (1969)
I Don't Know, written by Ozzy Osbourne, Randy Rhoads and Bob Daisley
Song lyrics, Blizzard of Ozz (1980)
A self-deprecating joke about his age, quoted at American Experience http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/transcript/reagan-transcript/
1980s, Second term of office (1985–1989)
“It don't gotta be Mother's Day, or your birthday
For me to just call and say”
Hey Mama
Hey Mama
Lyrics, Late Registration (2005)
2009
Source: Remarks by the President on winning the Nobel Peace Prize (9 October 2009) http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-on-Winning-the-Nobel-Peace-Prize/
Source: The Battle of the Labyrinth
Source: At Knit's End: Meditations for Women Who Knit Too Much
Variant: If Joan of Arc could turn the tide of an entire war before her eighteenth birthday, you can get out of bed.
“Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.”
Works and Days
1870s, Society and Solitude (1870)
“Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter, sermons and soda water the day after.”
Variant: Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth. (said of Mahatma Gandhi)
Source: On Peace
“Birthdays could be such a bummer when you were older than the country you lived in.”
Source: A Quick Bite
“Happy birthday. And next time? Eat the stupid cupcake.”
Source: Let Them Eat Cake
“Birthdays are ghost bounty hunters that track you down to ask, "Que pasa, baby?”
Source: The Ghost of Crutchfield Hall
“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”
Loose translation, commonly attributed to Gramsci by Slavoj Žižek, presumably formulation by Žižek (see below).
Presumably a translation from a loose French translation by Gustave Massiah; strict English with cognate terms and glosses:
Le vieux monde se meurt, le nouveau monde tarde à apparaître et dans ce clair-obscur surgissent les monstres
The old world is dying, the new world tardy (slow) to appear and in this chiaroscuro (light-dark) surge (emerge) monsters.
“ Mongo Beti, une conscience noire, africaine, universelle http://www.liberationafrique.org/imprimersans.php3?id_article=16&nom_site=Lib%C3%A9ration”, Gustave Massiah, CEDETIM, août 2002 ( archive https://web.archive.org/web/20160304061734/http://www.liberationafrique.org/imprimersans.php3?id_article=16&nom_site=Lib%C3%A9ration, 2016-03-04)
“Mongo Beti, a Black, African, Universal Conscience”, Gustave Massiah, CEDETIM, August 2002
Collected in: Remember Mongo Beti, Ambroise Kom, 2003, p. 149 https://books.google.com/books?id=6YgdAQAAIAAJ&q=%22Le+vieux+monde+se+meurt,+le+nouveau+monde+tarde+%C3%A0+appara%C3%AEtre+et+dans+ce+clair-obscur+surgissent+les+monstres%22.
Original, with literal English translation (see above):
La crisi consiste appunto nel fatto che il vecchio muore e il nuovo non può nascere: in questo interregno si verificano i fenomeni morbosi piú svariati.
The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.
Similar sentiments are widespread in revolutionary rhetoric; see: No, Žižek did not attribute a Goebbels quote to Gramsci http://thecharnelhouse.org/2015/07/03/no-zizek-did-not-attribute-a-goebbels-quote-to-gramsci/, Ross Wolfe, 2015-07-03
Misattributed
Source: Selections from the Prison Notebooks
“So how did he look at me?"
"Like it was his birthday and you were the cake.”
Source: Dreamfever
Source: A Birthday for Frances
“Things are so hard to figure out when you live from day to day in this feverish and silly world.”
Source: On the Road: The Original Scroll
Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower
“There is still no cure for the common birthday.”
Source: Walden (1854), p.375
“The birth of the mind is the death of the senses”
Source: Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives
"Valentine's Day, that great state holiday" in The Boston Globe (14 February 2004) http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/02/14/valentines_day_that_great_state_holiday
Source: New Rules: Polite Musings from a Timid Observer
Source: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
“Your birth is a mistake you'll spend your whole life trying to correct.”
Source: Invisible Monsters
“Day and night I always dream with open eyes.”
"I dream awake" ["Ismaelillo"]
As quoted in Great Hispanic-Americans (2005) by Nicolás Kanellos, Robert Rodriguez and Tamra Orr, p. 72
Source: The Girl in the Flammable Skirt
“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
Source: Belgarath the Sorcerer
“Happy birthday, Alexander," Magnus murmured.
"Thanks for remembering," Alec whispered back.”
Source: What to Buy the Shadowhunter Who Has Everything
