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


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. ~G.K. Chesterton, "Our Birthday," 1935


A birthday is just the first day of another 365-day journey around the sun. Enjoy the trip. ~Author unknown


There will be many loving thoughts hovering around you like Angels to‑day. ~Birthday letter quoted in J.R. Macduff, Birthdays, 1893


Because time itself is like a spiral, something special happens on your birthday each year: The same energy that God invested in you at birth is present once again. ~Menachem Mendel Schneerson


[H]e's younger every birth‑day than he was the year before. ~Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby, 1839


Birthdays would be excellent institutions were it only for the pleasant little inflation they bring. ~Mary Wright Sewell (1797–1884)


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 know we're getting old when the only thing we want for our birthday is not to be reminded of it. ~Author unknown


There is still no cure for the common birthday. ~John Glenn


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


Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional. ~Chili Davis


You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely. ~Ogden Nash


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," 2013
In childhood, we yearn to be grown-ups. In old age, we yearn to be kids. It just seems that all would be wonderful if we didn't have to celebrate our birthdays in chronological order. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


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


Birthdays are good for you. Statistics show that the people who have the most live the longest. ~Larry Lorenzoni


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


This is my birthday, and a happier one
Was never mine...
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "The Divine Tragedy," 1871


Anticipate the day as if it was your birthday and you are turning six again. ~Mike Dolan, @HawaiianLife, tweet, 2012


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


They say that age is all in your mind. The trick is keeping it from creeping down into your body. ~Author unknown


We advance in years somewhat in the manner of an invading army in a barren land; the age that we have reached, as the saying goes, we but hold with an outpost, and still keep open communications with the extreme rear and first beginnings of the march. ~Robert Louis Stevenson, "Virginibus Puerisque II," Virginibus Puerisque, 1881


So mayst thou live, dear! many years,
In all the bliss that life endears...
~Thomas Hood, "To My Daughter, On Her Birthday"


Inside every older person is a younger person wondering what happened. ~Jennifer Yane


Middle age is the time when a man is always thinking that in a week or two he will feel as good as ever. ~Don Marquis


Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children. ~George Bernard Shaw


The first sign of maturity is the discovery that the volume knob also turns to the left. ~Jerry M. Wright


When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not; but my faculties are decaying, now, & soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the latter. It is sad to go to pieces like this, but we all have to do it. ~Mark Twain


Middle age is having a choice between two temptations and choosing the one that'll get you home earlier. ~Dan Bennett


They're not gray hairs. They're wisdom highlights. ~Author Unknown


First you forget names; then you forget faces; then you forget to zip up your fly; and then you forget to unzip your fly. ~Branch Rickey


Youth is a disease from which we all recover. ~Dorothy Fulheim


Youth would be an ideal state if it came a little later in life. ~Herbert Asquith


You're not 40, you're eighteen with 22 years experience. ~Author Unknown


I still have a full deck; I just shuffle slower now. ~Author Unknown


May you live to be a hundred years
With one extra year to repent.
~Author Unknown


Wisdom doesn't necessarily come with age. Sometimes age just shows up all by itself. ~Tom Wilson