Most of us can remember a time when a birthday – especially if it was ones own – brightened the world as if a second sun has risen. – Robert Staughton Lynd

We advance in years somewhat in the manner of an invading army in a barren land; the age that we have reached, as the saying goes, we but hold with an outpost, and still keep open communications with the extreme rear and first beginnings of the march. – Robert Louis Stevenson, “Virginibus Puerisque II,” Virginibus Puerisque, 1881

The first fact about the celebration of birthdays is that it is a good way of affirming defiantly, and even flamboyantly, that it is a good thing to be alive. – G.K. Chesterton, “Our Birthday,” 1935