No matter how young or old you are, birthdays are always an occasion to celebrate.

Whether you’re commemorating your own big day or preparing a sweet surprise for a close friend, birthdays are often filled with unbridled joy, excitement, and of course, cake.

Birthdays are also a great reminder to show your loved ones just how much you cherish their presence in your life. After all, there’s nothing better than blowing out your birthday candles surrounded by friends and family. 

It can be difficult to put all those feelings into words, so if you’re stumped on what to write in a birthday card, a birthday quote is the perfect way to express your joy.

There’s a birthday quote for every mood or situation, and since you know your loved ones best, we compiled a list of birthday quotes that range from sentimental to straight up hilarious.

As a bonus, if you’re planning to post your adorable birthday party photos on Instagram, a birthday quote makes for the perfect caption.

Beyond the cake, candles, and birthday presents, the greatest gift of all is to be surrounded by loved ones. Your thoughtful birthday wishes just might bring a happy tear to the birthday girl or boy’s eyes.

Read on for birthday quotes and simple birthday wishes that capture every emotion you might experience on the big day.

Inspirational Birthday Wishes

• “They say it’s your birthday / We’re gonna have a good time / I’m glad it’s your birthday / Happy birthday to you.” — The Beatles, “Birthday”
• “The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been.” — Madeleine L’Engle
• “I hope you don’t mind, I hope you don’t mind / That I put down in words / How wonderful life is / While you’re in the world.” — Elton John, “Your Song”
• “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 every day like it's your birthday.” — Paris Hilton
• “Every year on your birthday, you get a chance to start new.” — Sammy Hagar

• “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 why the greatest gift you can give someone is your time.” — Rick Warren
• “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” ― Les Brown
• “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”
• “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
• “Mostly, what I have learned so far about aging, despite the creakiness of one’s bones and cragginess of one’s once-silken skin, is this: Do it. By all means, do it.” — Maya Angelou
• “A birthdate is a reminder to celebrate the life as well as to update the life.” ― Amit Kalantri, “Wealth of Words”

Funny Birthday Quotes

• “I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.” — Henry David Thoreau
• “Although it is generally known, I think it’s about time to announce that I was born at a very early age.” — Groucho Marx
• “Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.” — Mark Twain
• “Eventually you reach a point when you stop lying about your age and start bragging about it.” — Will Rogers
• “The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age.” — Lucille Ball

• “You know you’re getting old when the candles cost more than the cake.” — Bob Hope
• “Wisdom doesn’t necessarily come with age. Sometimes age just shows up all by itself.” —Tom Wilson
• “I know my wife won’t tell her right age. Last week was the anniversary of her birthday; she was twenty-six for the twelfth time. No wonder everybody says she holds her age well.” — Joe Laurie, Jr.
• “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

• “Handmade presents are scary because they reveal that you have too much free time.” — Douglas Coupland
• “But after all, what are birthdays? Here today and gone tomorrow.” — Eeyore, A. A. Milne
• “As I approach my 90th birthday, my friends are asking how it feels like, to have completed 90 orbits around the sun. Well, I actually don’t feel a day older than 89!” — Arthur C. Clarke
• “To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am.” — Bernard Baruch
• “It’s the nicest birthday I’ve ever had. You’ve made a happy man very old.” — Morrissey

• “I have a terrible time remembering exactly when my birthday is. Age is totally boring.” — Diana Vreeland
• “What a childhood I had. Once on my birthday my ol’ man gave me a bat. The first day I played with it, it flew away.” — Rodney Dangerfield
• “Lincoln was known to have walked miles to borrow books, to get the most rudimentary form of education. So what do we do on his birthday? We close the schools!” — Robert Orben
• “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
• “All the world is birthday cake, so take a piece, but not too much.” — George Harrison

Thoughtful Birthday Wishes

• “We turn not older with years, but newer every day.”— Emily Dickinson
• “Age is whatever you think it is. You are as old as you think you are.” — Muhammad Ali
• “The soul is born old but grows young. That is the comedy of life.” — Oscar Wilde
• “Age does not depend upon years, but upon temperament and health. Some men are born old, and some never grow so.” — Tryon Edwards
• “We grow neither better nor worse as we get old, but more like ourselves.” — Bernard Baruch
• “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
• “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
• “It was on my fifth birthday that Papa put his hand on my shoulder and said, Remember, my son, if you ever need a helping hand, you’ll find one at the end of your arm.” — Sam Levenson
• “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
• “The first fact about the celebration of a birthday is that it is a way of affirming defiantly, and even flamboyantly, that it is a good thing to be alive.” — G. K. Chesterton
• “I love to think that the day you’re born, you’re given the world as your birthday present.” — Leo Buscaglia

• “A person’s birthday should be a special day, a wonderful day, a day of pure celebration for the luck of being born!” — Elise Broach, “Shakespeare’s Secret”
• “If life is a birthday cake let my face be smeared with its icing of cognac and kindness.” — Aberjhani
• “Believing, hear, what you deserve to hear: / Your birthday as my own to me is dear / But yours gives most; for mine did only lend / Me to the world; yours gave to me a friend.” — Martial
• “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 had risen.” — Robert Wilson Lynd
• “You continue to learn more and more about yourself every day.” — Bruce Lee
• “If you’re blessed enough to grow older, which is how I look at aging, there’s so much wisdom to be gained from people who are celebrating the process with vibrancy and vigor and grace.” — Oprah Winfrey

• “We become more characteristic of who we are simply by lasting into later years; the older we become, the more our true natures emerge.” — James Hilman
• “Age is a limit we impose upon ourselves.” — Robert Riskin
• “My Birthday! what a different sound / That word had in my youthful ears.” — Thomas Moore
• “My birthday began with the water — birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name.” — Dylan Thomas
• From our birthday, until we die, / Is but the winking of an eye.” — William Butler Yeats
• “Be not afraid of greatness: some men are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.” — William Shakespeare, “Twelfth Night”
• “I don’t believe in aging. I believe in forever altering one’s aspect to the sun. Hence my optimism.” — Virginia Woolf