Looking for inspirational birthday quotes?
It is always fun to celebrate birthdays, as well as to think about the many things that have been said about or that relate to them. Aside from getting wiser, one can delight in good food and good company.
Here are some awesome birthday quotes to liven up your big day, and perhaps even share with family and friends.
Famous Birthday Quotes Celebrating Life
Since first reading Dr. Seuss, my favorite birthday quote has been:
1. “Today you are You; that is truer than true.
Getting older (and hopefully wiser), we face old age, our senior years. Perhaps Emily Dickinson has the right idea:
2. “We turn not older with years, but newer every day” – Emily Dickinson
Sam Hagar reinforced this idea saying:
3. “Every year on your birthday, you get a chance to start new.” – Sam Hagar
Can we live with that idea? Here’s what I always say:
4. “Wow, thank you Lord for another great chance to make a difference.”
Yes, I am grateful that I’m still alive. But life isn’t forever, so remember:
5. “Live as if you were to die tomorrow.
Henry Ford agreed:
6. “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at 20 or 80.
Anyone who keeps learning stays young.
The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young”. – Henry Ford
Band leader, Les Brown emphasized:
George Eliot said:
While I was still in school, I had to read writings by ancient philosophers. I never thought they were relevant to me. As another birthday approaches, I’ve looked at some of those words of wisdom, re-evaluating their relevance.
Perhaps they are things that I’ve learned to live by, to accept – and yes – use as birthday quotes:
9. “God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to
give ourselves the gift of living well,” – Voltaire
A great birthday quote by William Shakespeare’s is:
Inspirational Birthday Quotes and Sayings
Mark Twain agreed,
Certainly some good things to remember as we celebrate birthdays! Samuel Ullman said:
12. “Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.” – Samuel Ullman
At birthday gatherings you also might also want to quote:
13. “Let us celebrate the occasion with wine and sweet words,” – Plautus
14. “Man’s main task in life is to give birth to himself,
to become what he potentially is,” – E. Fromm
15. “Age is opportunity no less than youth itself,” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
If you're enjoying these quotes, make sure to read our collection of age quotes for the young and the young at heart.
16. “Happiness is when what you think, what you say,
and what you do are in harmony,” – Mahatma Gandhi
Or you might hear:
17. “I’m like a fine wine. They don’t bring me out very much
But, I am well preserved,” – Rose Kennedy
18. “Beautiful young people are accidents of nature,
Of course in discussing getting older, other pearls of wisdom are shared:
19. “The older the fiddler, the sweeter the tune,” – English Proverb
Birthday Quotes and sayings to uplift you
21. “It’s not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old,
They grow old because they stop pursuing dreams,” – Gabriel G. Marquez
Another great birthday quote, this one by a comedian is:
22. “Age is strictly a case of mind over matter.
If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter,” – Jack Benny
Another by George Burns is,
23. “You can’t help getting older, but you don’t have to get old.” – George Burns
With laughter, Bob Hope said,
24. “You know you’re getting old when the candles cost more than the cake.” – Bob Hope
Who would want to fix things?
25. “If we could be twice young and twice old,
we could correct all our mistakes,” – Euripides
For those with a strong belief in God:
26. “Our life is a gift from the Creator. Your gift back to the Creator is what you do with your life,” – Billy Mills
Hearts are always mentioned with birthdays:
27. “Some people, no matter how old they get, never lose their beauty –
They merely move it from their faces into their hearts,” – Martin Buxbaum
28. “The heart of the giver makes the gift dear and precious,” – Martin Luther
Some U.S. Presidents have made some birthday quotes:
29. “Be sure you put your feet in the right place,
30. “Whatever you are, be a good one.” – Lincoln
Happy Birthday Quotes that will make your day
31. “Let us seek the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past.
32. “Study the past if you would define the future!”
33. “It doesn’t matter how slowly you go, so long as you don’t stop.”
34. “Choose a job you love.You will never have to work a day in your life.”
35. “The superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions.”
35. “It is not the strongest of the species that survive
But the one most responsive to change,” – Darwin
36. “It’s the mark of an educated mind to be able to
entertain a thought without accepting it,” – Aristotle
37. “Life is like riding a bicycle.
To keep your balance you must keep moving,” – Einstein
38. “Obstacles are those frightful things you see
when you take your eyes off the goal,” – Henry Ford
39. “Don't celebrate how old you are,
celebrate the years you survived.” – Touaxia Vang
40. “Don’t anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen,” – Ben Franklin
Happy Birthday Quotes and Wishes to make you strong
43. “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” – Tolkien
So, as we all age – day by day, and as I pray I get to reach 70 in a couple of years, I often repeat this quote:
44. “I don't mind getting older; it's a privilege denied to so many!” ― Chris Geiger, ‘The Cancer Survivors Club’
45. “A birthday is the anniversary of your birth. It's the time most of us reflect over the past year and what we hope for in the coming year.” – Claudia T Hudson
46. “Today is the oldest you have been, and the youngest you will ever be. Make the most of it!” – Nicky Gumbel
47. “There are two attitudes you can have when it comes to your birthday:
1. be thankful you have lived another year.
or, 2. complain about being a year older.” – Catherine Pulsifer
48. “When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice.” – Cherokee Expression
49. “Your age isn't you. Use today to feel your best, celebrate and be your very happiest.” – M. Rivers
50. “A birth-date is a reminder to celebrate the life as well as to update the life.” – Amit Kalantri
More birthday quotes for friends, family and loved ones
51. “A birthday is not a day to fear. It is a day to celebrate and look forward to the coming year.” – Byron Pulsifer
52. “Birthdays are inevitable, beautiful and very particular moments in our lives! Moments that bring precious memories back, celebrate the present times and give hope for the future.” – Bsbr Arish
53. “Your birthday is my pleasure. You are my sweetest treasure.” – Danny Demeersseman
54. “We have to be able to grow up. Our wrinkles are our medals of the passage of life. They are what we have been through and who we want to be.” – Lauren Hutton
55. “Your birthday is the beginning of your own personal new year. Your first birthday was a beginning, and each new birthday is a chance to begin again, to start over, to take a new grip on life.” – Wilfred Peterson
56. “I enjoy celebrating birthdays. Everyone should have their birthday celebrated.” – Loraine D. Nunley
57. “May your years be counted not by your age
but by how you spend your days.” – Catherine Pulsifer
58. “Our birthdays are feathers in the broad wing of time.” – Jean Paul Richter
59. “Birthdays come but once a year, celebrate and be of good cheer.” Robert Rivers
60. “Each year as our birthday comes, our thoughts and beliefs may change a bit from year to year. But believe our wish for you is always the same, may you find happiness and blessings all of your days!” – Catherine Pulsifer
More birthday quotes and sayings
61. “Birthdays could be such a bummer when you were older than the country you lived in.” – Lynsay Sands
62. “Every day is a gift. But some days are packaged better.” – Sanhita Baruah
63. “Birthdays are happy as a child, defeatist with age and joyful again at surviving another year.” – Stewart Stafford
64. “Birthdays were made for going wild over the people we think are amazing.” – Richelle E. Goodrich
65. “The only way that getting older can be a bad thing is if you are not fully living in the moment now.” – Andrena Sawyer
66. “Rather than see ageing as a reason to contract, we should view it as an opportunity to expand. We should make each year of our lives are more interesting than the one before.” – Srinivas Rao
67. “Every birthday celebrates a life because every life is important.” – Richelle E. Goodrich
68. “Birthday should be considered as a unit of measurement to measure our present status toward success!” – Mohith Agadi
69. “Birthdays; They never cease to exist, and like birthdays you will never cease to exist in my heart.” – Xela Ffronrims
70. “Birthdays are special days. It reminds us of that day when the heavens gave miracles our way. You are a MIRACLE. Bless yourself. Bless others. Be a blessing.” – Mystqx Skye
Did you find your favorite birthday quotes here?
Birthdays are special days – not only to celebrate among people we love, but also to remind us of how far we’ve come in life. During this occasion, keep these beautiful quotes handy as a gift to yourself.
Quotations about Birthdays
& Happy Birthday Quotes
Welcome to my page of quotations for and about birthdays. —ღ Terri
The first fact about the celebration of birthdays is that it is a good way of affirming defiantly, and even flamboyantly, that it is a good thing to be alive. ~Gilbert K. Chesterton, "Our Birthday," 1935
There will be many loving thoughts hovering around you like Angels to‑day. ~Birthday letter quoted in J.R. Macduff, Birthdays, 1893
...he's younger every birth‑day than he was the year before. ~Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby, 1839
It's never too late to become what you want to be. Unless you want to be younger. ~Internet meme
I would garner the joys of the years that have passed
Into one Perfect Day, if I could,
And its music would be but the brook's laughing lilt,
Its quiet the calm of the wood;
And this wonderful day, with its sunshine and warmth,
With its smiles and its flowers, its cheer,
I would fashion for you, that the whole world might know
'Tis your birthday, the sweet o' the year.
~W. Dayton Wegefarth (1885–1973), "Your Birthday," Rainbow Verse: A Book of Helpful Sunny Philosophy, 1919
Who doesn't awaken on their birthday with a tingle, a heart-skip of excitement? A thrill of a thrill, a nascent throb?... In any case, a heightened awareness of a period of personal significance. Of specialness. Our birthday is the anniversary of our self, the blessing of the fact of our being. ~Donna Henes, "Telling Time: Birthdays," Celestially Auspicious Occasions: Seasons, Cycles & Celebrations, 1996
We thank people for birthday presents of cigars and slippers. Can I thank no one for the birthday present of birth? ~Gilbert K. Chesterton, "The Ethics of Elfland," Orthodoxy, 1908
A Daily Ride Earth gives to everyone,
And every Year a Trip around the Sun.
~Arthur Guiterman, "Of Stars," A Poet's Proverbs, 1924
Birthdays would be excellent institutions were it only for the pleasant little inflation they bring. ~Mary Wright Sewell (1797–1884)
Birthdays! What music in the world! In these unresting times, when nothing intellectual, economic, social, political, seems stable; when customs and traditions hoary with age are mixed with explosive elements, this oldest of institutions is not in danger of yielding to destructive forces. ~J.R. Macduff, Birthdays, 1893
Your birthday, as my own, to me is dear...
But yours gives most; for mine did only lend
Me to the world; yours gave to me a friend.
~Marcus Valerius Martialis (Martial), "To Quintius Ovidius," translated by William Hay
The only thing worse than having another birthday is not having another one. ~Andy Rooney, "Birthdays," 1995, Years of Minutes, 2003
When we reach a certain age we begin to wonder at the enthusiasm children display over their birthdays. ~"Poor Richard Junior's Philosophy," The Saturday Evening Post, 1903, George Horace Lorimer, editor
It's your birthday to-day, so why are we waiting?
Without further delay, Let's start celebrating.
~Norman Wesley Brooks, 1967
To be remembered on one's birthday
Is a thrill — to know others are saying
With cakes, cards, and good wishes,
Thanks for being born into our lives!
~Terri Guillemets, "Keepsake," 2022
The aging process has you firmly in its grasp if you never get the urge to throw a snowball. ~Doug Larson, unverified
Often have I reckoned up on my birthday the increasing years — the feathers in the broad wing of time — and thought upon the sounding flights of youth... ~Johann Paul Friedrich Richter
May ev'ry birthday sweetly bring,
A thousand proofs of love;
A pure and perfect crystal spring
Of bliss from Heav'n above!
~George Wells, Golden Wishes, 1885
Life is momentous,—never more so than when the Birthday chimes are ringing their new peals. ~Wigram, quoted in J.R. Macduff, Birthdays, 1893
How wildly Time rolls and tumbles and tosses
Over the world with its joys and its losses!
Winters and Summers, Octobers and Marches,
Frowning and smiling and garlands for larches.
Nature, untiring, her wind-harps is thumbing;
Beckoning on birthdays that ever are coming.
Progress is laughing, and counting her measures;
Past is receding, and hiding her treasures.
The Present forever, but never delaying,
Is here, and is gone, the while we are saying,
Time, in his flurry, but tumbles and tosses,
Jumbling our hopes with crowns and with crosses...
~Sara L. Vickers Oberholtzer, "A Birthday Jingle," 1891
Well, one can't get over the habit of being a little girl all at once... ~Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea, 1909
This is my birthday, and a happier one
Was never mine...
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "The Divine Tragedy," 1871
There are people in the world who mark the sun's cycles on a stick, counting themselves graveward, as aunt Margery counted my cups of milk in days of yore by the chalk-marks above the shelf. You give grand birth-day parties, and have troops of friends rejoicing that a new leaf is turned over in your destiny — as though the new leaf were always sure to be brighter than the old... I too would fain tie a knot in my thread of life, lest it should slip through my fingers unheeded. So here is a notch in my stick — a little ink-mark to show that I have closed a paragraph, and, with almost the trembling uncertainty of a year ago, am about commencing another. ~Fanny Forester (Emily Chubbuck Judson)
Tick tock—
It's cake o'clock!
~Internet meme
A birthday is a solemn thing; a fellow realizes then, how speedily the days take wing, the days that do not come again. ~Walt Mason (1862–1939), "Birthdays"
The mind, as you age,
Is an artist, it seems.
Monet paints your mem'ries,
Picasso your dreams.
[W]e never get too old to do goofy stuff; we just get old enough to think we do. ~Leave It To Beaver, "Beaver's Rat," 1961, written by Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher [S4, E31, Ward Cleaver]
AGE Something to brag about in your wine-cellar and forget about in a birth-day book. ~Charles Wayland Towne, The Foolish Dictionary, Executed by Gideon Wurdz, Master of Pholly, Doctor of Loquacious Lunacy, etc., 1904
Thanks to modern medical advances such as antibiotics, nasal spray, and Diet Coke, it has become quite routine for people in the civilized world to pass the age of 40, sometimes more than once. ~Dave Barry, "Your Disintegrating Body," Dave Barry Turns 40, 1990
I suppose it's possible that the Sundance Kid didn't like to make much of his birthdays — they may have struck him as just another reminder that his draw was getting slower by the year — but what if he truly liked a major celebration? What if he looked forward every year to marking the day of his birth with what they used to call in the West "a real wingding, with pink balloons and a few survivors"? ~Calvin Trillin, "Special Occasion," Travels with Alice, 1989
My childhood may be over, but that doesn't mean playtime is. ~Ron Olson
We mature in knowledge and wisdom but never leave the playground of our hearts. ~Terri Guillemets
So mayst thou live, dear! many years,
In all the bliss that life endears...
~Thomas Hood, "To My Daughter, On Her Birthday"
I was young and foolish then; now I am old and foolisher. ~Mark Twain, a Biography
I am glad it is your birthday. It is this little bouquet's birthday too. Its Father is a very old man by the name of Nature... ~Emily Dickinson
For your birthday, friend,
I wrote this haiku for you.
Worst present ever.
BIRTHDAY Anniversary of one's birth. Observed only by men and children. ~Charles Wayland Towne, The Foolish Dictionary, Executed by Gideon Wurdz, Master of Pholly, Doctor of Loquacious Lunacy, etc., 1904
To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable. ~Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1890
Don't get old, and don't run with scissors. ~J.L.W. Brooks, "Sixty-eight," 2022
Age does not diminish the extreme disappointment of having a scoop of ice cream fall from the cone. ~Jim Fiebig, as quoted in The Reader's Digest, 1981
Age is like the latest version of a software — it has a bunch of great new features but you lost all the cool features the previous version had. ~Terri Guillemets, "Thirties and beyond," 2006
May you live to be a hundred years
With one extra year to repent.
~Irish toast
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Original post date 1998 March 18th