Birthday quotes & card messages

All children, except one, grow up.

I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers. It would be terrible if we just skipped from September to November, wouldn’t it?

Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’We are not now that strength which in old daysMoved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;One equal temper of heroic hearts,Made weak by time and fate, but strong in willTo strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

To me, fair friend, you never can be old,For as you were when first your eye I ey’d,Such seems your beauty still.

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,Old Time is still a-flying:And this same flower that smiles to-dayTo-morrow will be dying.

Jenny kiss’d me when we met,Jumping from the chair she sat in;Time, you thief, who love to getSweets into your list, put that in!Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,Say that health and wealth have miss’d me,Say I’m growing old, but add,Jenny kiss’d me.

My heart is like a singing birdWhose nest is in a water’d shoot;My heart is like an apple-treeWhose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit;My heart is like a rainbow shellThat paddles in a halcyon sea;My heart is gladder than all these,Because my love is come to me.

My heart leaps up when I beholdA rainbow in the sky:So was it when my life began;So is it now I am a man;So be it when I shall grow old,Or let me die!The Child is father of the Man;And I could wish my days to beBound each to each by natural piety.

I strove with none, for none was worth my strife.Nature I loved and, next to Nature, Art:I warm’d both hands before the fire of life;It sinks, and I am ready to depart.

Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.

Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.

To fill the hour,—that is happiness; to fill the hour and leave no crevice for a repentance or an approval.

The only gift is a portion of thyself.

Isn’t it splendid to think of all the things there are to find out about? It just makes me feel glad to be alive—it’s such an interesting world.

“Dear old world,” she murmured, “you are very lovely, and I am glad to be alive in you.”

“Oh, Marilla, looking forward to things is half the pleasure of them,” exclaimed Anne. “You mayn’t get the things themselves; but nothing can prevent you from having the fun of looking forward to them.”

“I could tell you my adventures—beginning from this morning,” said Alice a little timidly: “but it’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”

One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever.

Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,And what I assume you shall assume,For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

Life has loveliness to sell,All beautiful and splendid things,Blue waves whitened on a cliff,Soaring fire that sways and sings,And children's faces looking upHolding wonder like a cup.

Spend all you have for loveliness,Buy it and never count the cost;For one white singing hour of peaceCount many a year of strife well lost,And for a breath of ecstasyGive all you have been, or could be.

The world is so full of a number of things,I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.

Clouds come floating into my life from other days no longer to shed rain or usher storm but to give colour to my sunset sky.

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor WitShall lure it back to cancel half a Line,Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

I hope I never ridicule what is wise or good. Follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies, do divert me, I own, and I laugh at them whenever I can.

I can resist everything except temptation.

Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes.

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance

To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.

Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

BIRTH, n. The first and direst of all disasters.

AGE, n. That period of life in which we compound for the vices that we still cherish by reviling those that we have no longer the enterprise to commit.