birthday quotes and pictures

Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy. ~Francois Duc de La Rochefoucauld



He spake well who said that graves are the footprints of angels. ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow



I love the place; the magnificent books; I require books as I require air. ~Sholem Asch



Art is like a border of flowers along the course of civilization. ~Lincoln Steffens



When an American says that he loves his country, he means not only that he loves the New England hills, the prairies glistening in the sun, the wide and rising plains, the great mountains, and the sea. He means that he loves an inner air, an inner light in which freedom lives and in which a man can draw the breath of self-respect. ~Adlai Stevenson



My heart is glass, daily shattered. ~Jaesse Tyler



Self-assurance is contemptible and fatal unless it is self-knowledge. ~George Santayana, Character and Opinion in the United States, 1921



When I look for my existence I do not look for it in myself. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin



Who watches golf on TV? Who calls eight friends over and gets a keg of beer? Landscapers, I guess. They sit around the TV, yelling, "Will you look at that golf path? Pure pea gravel." ~Jeff Cesario



Nationalism is a silly cock crowing on his own dunghill. ~Richard Aldington



Michael W. Fox, vice-president of the Humane Society, said that, "to call an animal with whom you share your life a 'pet,' is reminiscent of men's magazines where you (a figure of speech, don't take it personally) have the Pet of the Month." It is supposed that the continued use of the word "pet" to designate dogs or cats threatens to reduce their level of respect to the current status of twentieth century North American women. Now that's radical. ~The McGill Red Herring



You don�t run against a bloody stop watch, do you hear? A runner runs against himself, against the best that's in him. Not against a dead thing of wheels and pulleys. That's the way to be great, running against yourself. Against all the rotten mess in the world. Against God, if you�re good enough. ~Bill Persons



Flowers have spoken to me more than I can tell in written words. They are the hieroglyphics of angels, loved by all men for the beauty of the character, though few can decipher even fragments of their meaning. ~Lydia M. Child



Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul. ~John Muir



You know what's wrong with you, Miss Whoever-You-Are? You're chicken, you've got no guts. You're afraid to stick out your chin and say, "Okay, life's a fact, people do fall in love, people do belong to each other, because that's the only chance anybody's got for real happiness." You call yourself a free spirit, a wild thing, and you're terrified somebody's going to stick you in a cage. Well, baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somaliland. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself. ~From the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's, 1961, screenplay by George Axelrod, based on the novella by Truman Capote, spoken by the character Paul Varjak You know when I was depressed I said I didn't want to live? Well, I'll tell you something - I didn't want to die. ~Robin Green and Mitchell Burgess, The Sopranos, "Isabella," original airdate 28 March 1999, spoken by the character Tony Soprano



Madness is rare in individuals - but in groups, political parties, nations, and eras it's the rule. ~Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 1886



It used to take me all vacation to grow a new hide in place of the one they flogged off me during school term. ~Mark Twain



Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket. ~George Orwell



The hardest work in the world is being out of work. ~Whitney Young, Jr.



I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours. ~Stephen Roberts