Wise Birthday Quotes

Once I was looking through the kitchen window at dusk and I saw an old woman looking in. Suddenly the light changed and I realized that the old woman was myself. you see, it all happens on the outside; inside one doesn't change. ~ Molly Keane

Sixteen candles make a lovely light But not as bright as your eyes tonight. ~ Luther Dixon

Very early, I knew that the only object in life was to grow. ~ Margaret Fuller

Every age can be enchanting, provided you live within it. ~ Brigitte Bardot

Most of us can remember a time when a birthday - especially if it was one's own - brightened the world as if a second sun has risen. ~ Robert Staughton Lynd

Pleas'd look forward, pleas'd to look behind,And count each birthday with a grateful mind. ~ Alexander Pope

You take away all the other luxuries in life, and if you can make someone smile and laugh, you have given the most special gift: happiness. ~ Brad Garrett

A man is judged by his friends, for the wise and the foolish have never agreed. ~ Baltasar Gracian

Ask the questions. Do not just accept anything without question. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Sure, I've seen people like you before - but I had to pay an admission. ~ Russell Lynes

Choice means saying no to one thing so you can say yes to another. ~ Dan Millman

This author has nothing but imagination ... there are people who claim that imagination has clearer and keener eyes than a wise, old mind.
Translated from: Und Friede auf Erden, (1904) (And Peace on Earth) ~ Karl May

The external rest comes unexpected. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

The one who knows himself isn't deceived by either praise or criticism. ~ Yasmin Mogahed

The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different. ~ Peter Drucker

Three things a wise man will not trust, The wind, the sunshine of an April day, And woman's plighted faith. ~ Robert Southey

Every challenge you conquer, will make you courageous. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Nature contains the elements, in colour and form, of all pictures, as the keyboard contains the notes of all music. But the artists is born to pick, and choose, and group with science, these elements, that the result may be beautiful - as the musician gathers his notes, and forms his chords, until he brings forth from chaos glorious harmony ~ James Whistler

Every county has its sacred culture. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

This book, conceived in sorrow, composed in grief, and constructed at the brink of despair, contains my mind's best thoughts, and my soul's triumph over the powers of darkness. ~ Isaac Mayer Wise

The Emperor of China once sent a messenger to the wise man Lao-tsu to ask how he should rule the kingdom. Lao-tsu replied that he should rule the kingdom in the way you would cook a small fish. How do you cook a small fish? In the steady, cautious, caring way you undress a woman. ~ Chloe Thurlow

Who shall forbid a wise skepticism, seeing that there is no practical question on which anything more than an approximate solution can be had? ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Will is the measure of power. To a great genius there must be a great will. If the thought is not a lamp to the will, does not proceed to an act, the wise are imbecile. He alone is strong and happy who has a will. The rest are herds. He uses; they are used. He is of the Maker; they are of the Made. Will is always miraculous, being the presence of God to men. When it appears in a man he is a hero, and all metaphysics are at fault. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

We think a wise person is someone who solves problems. Truth is, a wise person is someone who avoids problems. ~ Prem Rawat

It was, at last, real life, with my heart safe and condemned to die of happy love in the joyful agony of any day after my hundredth birthday. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I think that my God-given physical attributes, big hands, and big feet, the way that I'm built, proportion-wise, just made basketball the most inviting sport for me to play. ~ Julius Erving

If you don't' know what you want, others will give you what they want. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

I'm not big on dark chocolate, but I do have a sweet tooth, so it gets me in trouble. I love warm chocolate chip cookies with ice cream. Then there's this chocolate pie my mom makes for me every year for my birthday. She's been making it since I was younger, and there's nothing like it. It's really so, so good! ~ Phillip Phillips

( ... ) sensation I've never felt before, bites of cold, hard steel that definitely didn't come with the birthday package. He's pierced. Holy shit. it's always the quiet ones, isn't it? ~ C.M. Stunich

A young fellow ought to be wiser than he should seem to be; and an old fellow ought to seem wise whether he really be so or not. ~ Lord Chesterfield

The wise warrior avoids the battle. ~ Sun Tzu

Wise people prefer to benefit from constructive criticism rather than be ruined by false praise ~ Shiv Khera

If you swim with sharks, make sure you have the appetite of a whale. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

Now Ben Folds is my photography older brother. He was kind enough to give me a photo of his for my 40th birthday. ~ Jason Sudeikis

There are not many persons who know what wonders are opened to them in the stories and visions of their youth; for when as children we learn and dream, we think but half-formed thoughts, and when as men we try to remember, we are dulled and prosaic with the poison of life. But some of us awake in the night with strange phantasms of enchanted hills and gardens, of fountains that sing in the sun, of golden cliffs overhanging murmuring seas, of plains that stretch down to sleeping cities of bronze and stone, and of shadowy companies of heroes that ride caparisoned white horses along the edges of thick forests; and then we know that we have looked back through the ivory gates into that world of wonder which was ours before we were wise and unhappy. ~ H.P. Lovecraft

Maybe it was true that only beauty would save the world, or truth, or some other high-flown garbage; but fear was still more powerful than anything else. Fear destroyed everything: everything born of beauty, the tender shoots of all that was fine, wise, eternal... ~ Lyudmila Ulitskaya

The army slew a thousand and showed little pity
The king ordered fealty from the conquered city
The prince charmed its people with words wise and witty
And the queen sat on a couch, looking very pretty ~ Shannon Hale

I thought of Atargatis, the First, frightening and beautiful. The mermaid goddess who lived on in the soul of every woman who'd ever fallen in love with the ocean.

I thought of Sebastian, my little mermaid queen, how happy he was the day of the parade, just getting the chance to express himself, to be himself.

I thought of Vanessa, the story about how she and her girlfriends became feminist killjoys to get a women's literature core in their school, the way she'd accepted me this summer without question, gently pushed me out of my self-imposed shell. Of her mother, Mrs. James, how she'd grabbed that bullhorn at the parade and paved the way for Sebastian's joy.

I thought of Lemon, so wise, so comfortable in her own skin, full of enough love to raise a daughter as a single mom and still have room for me, for her friends, for everyone whose lives she touched with her art.

I thought of Kirby, her fierce loyalty, her patience and grace, her energy, what a good friend and sister she'd become, even when I'd tried to shut her out. I thought of all the new things I wanted to share with her now, all the things I hoped she'd share with me.

I thought of my mother, a woman I'd never known, but one whose ultimate sacrifice gave me life.

I thought of Granna, stepping in to raise her six granddaughters when my mom died, never once making us feel like a burden or a curse. She'd managed the cocoa estate with her son, personally s ~ Sarah Ockler

All the beauty lies in the sacredness of the heart. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Many sheep but one Shepherd. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

A wise system of education will at least teach us how little man yet knows, how much he has still to learn. ~ John Lubbock

A preschool child does not emerge from your toddler on a given date or birthday. He becomes a child when he ceases to be a wayward, confusing, unpredictable and often balky person-in-the- making, and becomes a comparatively cooperative, eager-and-easy-to-please real human being
at least 60 per cent of the time. ~ Penelope Leach

It is a strange notion that the acknowledgment of a first principle is inconsistent with the admission of secondary ones. To inform a traveler respecting the place of his ultimate destination, is not to forbid the use of land-marks and direction-posts on the way. The proposition that happiness is the end and aim of morality, does not mean that no road ought to be laid down to that goal, or that persons going thither should not be advised to take one direction rather than another. Men really ought to leave off talking a kind of nonsense on this subject, which they would neither talk nor listen to on other matters of practical concernment. Nobody argues that the art of navigation is not founded on astronomy, because sailors cannot wait to calculate the Nautical Almanack. Being rational creatures, they go to sea with it ready calculated; and all rational creatures go out upon the sea of life with their minds made up on the common questions of right and wrong, as well as on many of the far more difficult questions of wise and foolish. And this, as long as foresight is a human quality, it is to be presumed they will continue to do. Whatever we adopt as the fundamental principle of morality, we require subordinate principles to apply it by: the impossibility of doing without them, being common to all systems, can afford no argument against any one in particular: but gravely to argue as if no such secondary principles could be had, and as if mankind had remained till now, and always ~ John Stuart Mill

educated beyond the point considered wise for females ~ Charles Frazier