32 birthday quotes to celebrate friends and family on their special day (2024)

There's only one day each year that's truly yours: your birthday.

Whether you're turning 29 for the third year in a row (we kid, we kid) or a big milestone, birthdays are a time to pull out all the stops.

Even though you may be excited about the cake and presents, the best part of the day is often reading sentimental messages and cards from the people you love most. But when roles are reversed, you know just how difficult it is to find new ways to articulate the infamous “Happy Birthday." Whether you're filling out a card with heartfelt wishes or writing an Instagram caption, it is important to come up with something unique to the person you're celebrating.

No matter who you're celebrating — your partner, best friend, sister, brother, mom, dad, coworker and so on — here are some very happy birthday quotes to inspire your message.

Inspirational birthday quotes

• “Let us never know what old age is. Let us know the happiness time brings, not count the years.” — Ausonius
• “The way I see it, you should live everyday like it's your birthday.” — Paris Hilton
• “Every year on your birthday, you get a chance to start new.” —Sammy Hagar
• “I like birthday cake. It’s so symbolic. It’s a tempting symbol to load with something more complicated than just ‘Happy birthday!’ because it’s this emblem of childhood and a happy day.” — Aimee Bender
• “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” ― Les Brown
• “The day you’re born is not the day You Grow, it’s the day you evolve. The revolution is up to you.” ― Goitsemang Mvula
• “A birthdate is a reminder to celebrate the life as well as to update the life.” ― Amit Kalantri, "Wealth of Words"
• “Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears.” — John Lennon
• “Youth is the gift of nature, but age is the work of art.” — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
• “You don’t get older, you get better.” — Shirley Bassey

• "When you give someone your time, you are giving them a portion of your life that you’ll never get back. Your time is your life. That is whythe greatest gift you can give someone is your time." — Rick Warren
• “There are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents, and only one for birthday presents, you know.” — Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
• “We grow neither better nor worse as we get old, but more like ourselves.” — Bernard Baruch
• “Why party like it is 1999 when you can party like it is your birthday?” — Prince
• “The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.” — Oprah Winfrey
• “Success is like reaching an important birthday and finding you’re exactly the same.” — Audrey Hepburn
• “Every day is a gift. But some days are packaged better.” ― Sanhita Baruah
• “It takes a long time to grow young.” — Pablo Picasso
• “Each 10 years of a man’s life has its own fortunes, its own hopes, its own desires.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• “Youth has no age.” — Pablo Picasso
• “We turn not older with years, but newer every day.”— Emily Dickinson

Funny birthday quotes

• “All the world is birthday cake, so take a piece, but not too much.” — George Harrison
• “The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age.” — Lucille Ball
• “Birthdays are a great time to stop and appreciate gravity. Sure, it makes things sag as you get older, but it also keeps your cake from flying all over the room, so you don’t have to chase it.” — Greg Tamblyn
• “Life really does begin at forty. Up until then, you are just doing research.” — Carl Jung
• “You know you’re getting old when the candles cost more than the cake.” — Bob Hope
• “To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am.” — Bernard Baruch
• “Wisdom doesn’t necessarily come with age. Sometimes age just shows up all by itself.” —Tom Wilson
• “A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman’s birthday but never remembers her age.” — Robert Frost
• "You’ve logged so many miles in the voyage of life that you’ve been upgraded to first class!” — Evelyn Loeb
• “Eventually you reach a point when you stop lying about your age and start bragging about it.” — Will Rogers
• “Handmade presents are scary because they reveal that you have too much free time.” — Douglas Coupland