Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Birth; Birthday
He is born naked, and falls a whining at the first.
Burton—Anatomy of Melancholy. Pt. I. Sec. II. Mem. 3. Subsect. 10.
Esaw selleth his byrthright for a messe of potage.
Chapter heading of the Genevan version and Matthew’s Bible of Genesis XXV. (Not in authorized version.)
A birthday:—and now a day that rose
With much of hope, with meaning rife—
A thoughtful day from dawn to close:
The middle day of human life.
Jean Ingelow—A Birthday Walk.
And show me your nest with the young ones in it,
I will not steal them away;
I am old! you may trust me, linnet, linnet—
I am seven times one to-day.
Jean Ingelow—Songs of Seven. Seven Times One.
As this auspicious day began the race
Of ev’ry virtue join’d with ev’ry grace;
May you, who own them, welcome its return,
Till excellence, like yours, again is born.
The years we wish, will half your charms impair;
The years we wish, the better half will spare;
The victims of your eyes will bleed no more,
But all the beauties of your mind adore.
Jeffrey—Miscellanies. To a Lady on her Birthday.
Believing hear, what you deserve to hear:
Your birthday as my own to me is dear.
Blest and distinguished days! which we should prize
The first, the kindest bounty of the skies.
But yours gives most; for mine did only lend
Me to the world; yours gave to me a friend.
Martial—Epigrams. Bk. IX. Ep. 53.
My birthday!—what a different sound
That word had in my youthful ears;
And how each time the day comes round,
Less and less white its mark appears.
Moore—My Birthday.
Lest, selling that noble inheritance for a poor mess of perishing pottage, you never enter into His eternal rest.
Penn—No Cross no Crown. Pt. II. Ch. XX. Sec. XXIII.
Man alone at the very moment of his birth, cast naked upon the naked earth, does she abandon to cries and lamentations.
Pliny The Elder—Natural History. Bk. VII. Sec. II.
Is that a birthday? ’tis, alas! too clear;
’Tis but the funeral of the former year.
Pope—To Mrs. M. B. L. 9.
The dew of thy birth is of the womb of the morning.
The Psalter. Psalms. CX. 3.
“Do you know who made you?” “Nobody, as I knows on,” said the child, with a short laugh. The idea appeared to amuse her considerably; for her eyes twinkled, and she added—
“I ’spect I growed. Don’t think nobody never made me.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe—Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Ch. XXI.
As some divinely gifted man,
Whose life in low estate began,
And on a simple village green;
Who breaks his birth’s invidious bar.
Tennyson—In Memoriam. Canto 64.
When I was born I drew in the common air, and fell upon the earth, which is of like nature, and the first voice which I uttered was crying, as all others do.
Wisdom of Solomon. VII. 3.