Forty Quotes

• A woman past forty should make up her mind to be young; not her face.

  Billie Burke

  Past, Mind, Age

  Billie Burke, Cameron Shipp (2016). “With Powder on My Nose”, p.64, Pickle Partners Publishing

  61 Copy quote

  Show source

• We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse.

  Rudyard Kipling

  Success, Failure, Excuse

  Rudyard Kipling (1994). “The Collected Poems of Rudyard Kipling”, p.310, Wordsworth Editions

  49 Copy quote

  Show source
• 

  My wife Mary and I have been married for forty-seven years and not once have we had an argument serious enough to consider divorce; murder, yes, but divorce, never.

  Jack Benny

  Love, Funny, Relationship

  74 Copy quote

• At twenty years of age the will reigns; at thirty, the wit; and at forty, the judgment.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Birthday, Time, Growing Up

  'Poor Richard's Almanac' (1741) June

  78 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you're not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you're not a conservative at forty, you have no brain.

  Winston Churchill

  Wisdom, Heart, Political

  410 Copy quote

• It's better to have loved and lost than to have to do forty pounds of laundry a week.

  Laurence J. Peter

  Love, Relationship, Valentines Day

  16 Copy quote

• My ancestors wandered lost in the wilderness for forty years because even in biblical times, men would not stop to ask for directions.

  Elayne Boosler

  Biblical, Men, Years

  10 Copy quote

• Why one Ad is worth more to a paper than 40 Editorials.

  Will Rogers

  Paper, Advertising, Ads

  "The Illiterate Digest".

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• When you are forty, half of you belongs to the past... And when you are seventy, nearly all of you.

  Jean Anouilh

  Past, Age, Half

  Jean Anouilh (1958). “Jean Anouilh ... plays”

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Once we hit forty, women only have about four taste buds left: one for vodka, one for wine, one for cheese, and one for chocolate.

  Gina Barreca

  Wine, Chocolate, Cheesy

  Gina Barreca (2009). “It's Not That I'm Bitter . . .: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Visible Panty Lines and Conquered the World”, p.13, Macmillan

  55 Copy quote

  Show source

• After forty a woman has to choose between losing her figure or her face. My advice is to keep your face, and stay sitting down.

  Barbara Cartland

  Funny, Birthday, Women

  Quoted in Times (London), 6 Oct. 1993.

  73 Copy quote

  Show source

• I admit, I have a tremendous sex drive. My boyfriend lives forty miles away.

  Phyllis Diller

  Boyfriend, Sex, Miles

  19 Copy quote

• It is the nobility of their style which will make our writers of 1840 unreadable forty years from now.

  Stendhal

  Years, Style, Nobility

  "La Chartreuse de Parme". Book by Stendhal, first edition, marginalia note, 1840.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• I've been in love with the same woman for forty-one years. If my wife finds out, she'll kill me.

  Henny Youngman

  Love, Funny, Anniversary

  19 Copy quote

• When I was as you are now, towering in the confidence of twenty-one, little did I suspect that I should be at forty-nine, what I now am.

  Samuel Johnson

  Time, Age, Twenties

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson (1799). “Life of Johnson: Including Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides and Johnson's Diary of a Journey Into North Wales”, p.375

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• I used to say of him that his presence on the field made the difference of forty thousand men.

  Duke of Wellington

  War, Men, Differences

  Quoted in Philip Henry Stanhope, Notes of Conversations with the Duke of Wellington (1888) (entry for 2 Nov. 1831)

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• This wine is forty years old. It certainly doesn't show its age.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Birthday, Wine, Years

  10 Copy quote

• I have these visions of myself being thirty, thirty-five, forty having a family.

  Nastassja Kinski

  Family, Vision, Thirty

  10 Copy quote

• Forty-five States, as the gentleman just said, have determined by people that were elected by the people of that State that marriage is the definition of one man and one woman.

  Randy Neugebauer

  Marriage, Men, People

  11 Copy quote

• We need to see men and women as equal partners, but its hard to think of movies that do that. When I talk to people, they think of movies of forty-five years ago! Hepburn and Tracy!

  Betty Friedan

  Men, Thinking, Years

  People magazine, p. 49, March 7-14, 1994.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• To be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

  Birthday, Time, Years

  Letter to Julia Ward Howe on her 70th birthday, 27 May (1889)

  51 Copy quote

  Show source

• A man of forty today has nothing to worry him but falling hair, inability to button the top button, failing vision, shortness of breath, a tendency of the collar to shut off all breathing, trembling of the kidneys to whatever tune the orchestra is playing, and a general sense of giddiness when the matter of rent is brought up. Forty is Life's Golden Age.

  Robert Benchley

  Birthday, Fall, Men

  52 Copy quote

• For forty days he went out into the desert - and never shot anything [on Jesus]

  Osbert Sitwell

  Jesus, Desert, Shots

  7 Copy quote

• I can't get my head around the fact that the technology of the first two movies, which are forty years prior to Star Wars, is so much better than any technology they had in Star Wars!

  David Prowse

  Stars, War, Technology

  10 Copy quote

• Forty is the old age of youth; fifty the youth of old age.

  Victor Hugo

  Birthday, Health, Medicine

  50 Copy quote