Introduction: Mary Harrell-Sesniak is a genealogist, author and editor with a strong technology background. In this blog article, Mary shares some of the interesting and/or funny quotes about birthdays and aging that she found in old newspapers.
While researching birthdays and aging in GenealogyBank’s Historical Newspaper Archives, I came across some delightful quotes from famous people. Some are modern, some are historical and others are just plain hysterical!
Have fun using these quotes in blogs or while making “Happy Birthday” cards. If you have some of your own birthday quotes to share, please post them in the comments section of this blog.
Famous People Birthday & Gift Quotes
- “I love a card. You know, cards? At birthdays? I collect them.” –Adele
- “I binge when I’m happy. When everything is going really well, every day is like I’m at a birthday party.” –Kirstie Alley
- “I like to go to anybody else’s birthday, and if I’m invited I’m a good guest. But I never celebrate my birthdays. I really don’t care.” –Mikhail Baryshnikov
- “A friend never defends a husband who gets his wife an electric skillet for her birthday.” –Erma Bombeck
- “There are 364 days when you might get unbirthday presents…and only one for birthday presents, you know.”–Lewis Carroll (AKA Charlie Lutwidge Dodgson)
- “I don’t pay attention to the number of birthdays. It’s weird when I say I’m 53. It just is crazy that I’m 53. I think I’m very immature. I feel like a kid. That’s why my back goes out all the time, because I completely forget I can’t do certain things anymore – like doing the plank for 10 minutes.” –Ellen DeGeneres who was born 26 January 1958
- “A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman’s birthday but never remembers her age.” –Robert Frost
- “In 1993 my birthday present was a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.” –Annette Funicello
- “There is still no cure for the common birthday.” –John Glenn
- “All the world is birthday cake, so take a piece, but not too much.” –George Harrison
- “Money is appropriate, and one size fits all.” –William Randolph Hearst on suggestions for gifts
- “The way I see it, you should live every day like it’s your birthday.” –Paris Hilton
- “You know you’re getting older when the candles cost more than the cake.” –Bob Hope
- “Your children need your presence more than your presents.” –Jesse Jackson
- “My biggest hero, Gregory Peck, was my birthday present on April 14, 1973. I just sat and stared at him.” –Loretta Lynn
- “Any time women come together with a collective intention, it’s a powerful thing. Whether it’s sitting down making a quilt, in a kitchen preparing a meal, in a club reading the same book, or around the table playing cards, or planning a birthday party, when women come together with a collective intention, magic happens.” –Phylicia Rashad
- “I’m not going to be caught around here for any fool celebration. To hell with birthdays!” –Norman Rockwell
- “I wish people would stop talking about my birthday.” –George Bernard Shaw
- “Love the giver more than the gift.” –Brigham Young
- “I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift should be curiosity.” –Eleanor Roosevelt
- “You know you’re getting old when you get that one candle on the cake. It’s like, ‘see if you can blow this out.’” –Jerry Seinfeld
- “The last birthday that’s any good is 23.” –Andy Rooney
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Famous People Quotes on Aging
- “It’s sad to grow old, but nice to ripen.” –Brigitte Bardot
- “A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.” –John Barrymore
- “Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be!” –Robert Browning
- “Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act.” –Truman Capote
- “Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you’ve got to start young.” –Fred Astaire
- “I can’t go back to yesterday – because I was a different person then.” –Lewis Carroll (AKA Charlie Lutwidge Dodgson) from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
- “Old age isn’t so bad when you consider the alternative.” –Maurice Chevalier
- “We turn not older with years, but newer every day.” –Emily Dickinson
- “It is never too late to be what you might have been.” –George Eliot
- “I’ll keep singing ’till I die.” –Bing Crosby
- “All my possessions for one moment of time.” –Queen Elizabeth
- “The years teach much which the days never knew.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “An old young man will be a young old man.” –Benjamin Franklin (AKA Poor Richard)
- “At twenty years of age, the will reigns; at thirty, the wit; and at forty, the judgment.” –Benjamin Franklin (AKA Poor Richard)
- “Youth is pert and positive, Age modest and doubting; So ears of corn when young and bright, stand bold upright, But hang their heads when weighty, full and ripe.” –Benjamin Franklin (AKA Poor Richard)
- “Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing.” –Oliver Wendell Holmes
- “Old age is fifteen years older than I am.” –Oliver Wendell Holmes
- “Middle age is when your age starts to show around your middle.” –Bob Hope
- “Forty is the old age of youth; fifty the youth of old age.” –Victor Hugo
- “And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.” –Abraham Lincoln
- “Whatever poet, orator, or sage may say of it, old age is still old age.” –Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- “The older you get the stronger the wind gets – and it’s always in your face.” –Jack Nicklaus
- “Age is a case of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it don’t matter.” –Satchel Paige
- “How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were?” –Satchel Paige
- “It takes a long time to become young.” –Pablo Picasso
- “I was forced to live far beyond my years when just a child, now I have reversed the order and I intend to remain young indefinitely.” –Mary Pickford
- “Youth is just wasted on young people.” –George Bernard Shaw
- “To me, fair friend, you never can be old, For as you were when first your eye I eye’d, Such seems your beauty still.” –William Shakespeare
- “In childhood be modest, in youth temperate, in manhood just, in old age prudent.” –Socrates
- “May you live all the days of your life.” –Jonathan Swift
- “Too bad that youth is wasted on the young.” –Mark Twain.
- “The first half of life consists of the capacity to enjoy without the chance; the last half consists of the chance without the capacity.” –Mark Twain
- “You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.” –Mae West
- “Those whom the gods love grow young.” –Oscar Wilde
- “My happiest memory of childhood was my first birthday in reform school. This teacher took an interest in me. In fact, he gave me the first birthday presents I ever got: a box of Cracker Jacks and a can of ABC shoe polish.” –Flip Wilson
- “The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.” –Oprah Winfrey
- “From our birthday, until we die, is but the winking of an eye.” –William Butler Yeats
Memorable Songs & Books
May God bless and keep you always
May your wishes all come true
May you always do for others
And let others do for you
May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young.
–Bob Dylan from the song “May You Stay Forever Young”
They say it’s your birthday
It’s my birthday too, yeah
They say it’s your birthday
We’re gonna have a good time
I’m glad it’s your birthday
Happy birthday to you
–John Lennon & Paul McCartney from the song “Birthday”
Time is on my side, yes it is
Time is on my side, yes it is
–Jerry Ragovoy (AKA Jimmy Norman) from the Rolling Stones’ song “Time Is on My Side”
Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.
–Dr. Seuss (AKA Theodor Seuss Geisel) from the book “Happy Birthday to You!”
Related Articles:
- Using Newspaper Birthday Announcements for Genealogy Research
- Tips for Researching Birthdays & Birthday Notices in Newspapers
- Do You Celebrate Birthday Traditions Like Your Ancestors Did?
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