At Robert Frost’s 80th birthday celebration in 1954, a journalist asked the poet the most important thing he had learned about life. Frost replied, “In three words, I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: It goes on.”
The span of our lives, from the celebration of our arrival to the mourning of our departure, is a distance marked by countless personal milestones. The biggest moments, the ones that herald a significant beginning or ending, call for us to pause and acknowledge their importance.
Finding the right words for a special occasion can be a challenge even for the most eloquent speaker. Whether the occasion is celebratory or somber, these memorable quotes will help you set just the right tone.
Baptism
Every child born into the world is a new thought of God, an ever-fresh and radiant possibility.Kate Douglas Wiggin, educator and writer
It is the nature of babies to be in bliss.Deepak Chopra
Every child begins the world again.Henry David Thoreau
Graduation
It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.E.E. Cummings, poet
For the great doesn’t happen through impulse alone, and is a succession of little things that are brought together.Vincent van Gogh
What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.Jane Goodall
Wedding
What a grand thing it is to be loved! What a far grander thing it is to love!Victor Hugo
You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free.Thich Nhất Hanh
Love is friendship that has caught fire. It is quiet understanding, mutual confidence, sharing and forgiving. It is loyalty through good and bad times.Ann Landers, advice columnist
Anniversary
A happy marriage is a long conversation which always seems too short.André Maurois, writer
A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.Mignon McLaughlin, journalist and author
We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.W. Somerset Maugham, writer
Birthday
Every age can be enchanting, provided you live within it.Brigitte Bardot
There is still no cure for the common birthday.John Glenn, astronaut
One does not get better but different and older and that is always a pleasure.Gertrude Stein
Retirement
To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man’s life.T.S. Eliot
Often when you think you’re at the end of something, you’re at the beginning of something else.Fred Rogers
Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing.Oliver Wendell Holmes
Celebration of Life
When life comes, it cannot be refused, and when it departs, it cannot be detained.Zhuangzi, Taoist philosopher
They that love beyond the World cannot be separated by it. Death cannot kill what never dies.William Penn, writer and religious thinker
People living deeply have no fear of death.Anaïs Nin
Photo credit: Jerome Maurice/ iStock
