40th Birthday Quotes

Life begins on your 40th birthday. But so do fallen arches, rheumatism, faulty eyesight, and the tendency to tell a story to the same person, three or four times.

—Helen Rowland

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

—Victor Hugo

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

—Benjamin Franklin

At fifteen, my mind was bent on learning.
At thirty, I stood firm.
At forty, I had no doubts.
At fifty, I knew the decrees of Heaven.
At sixty, my ear was receptive to truth.
At seventy, I could follow my heart’s desires without sin.

—Confucius

Every man over forty is a scoundrel. 

—George Bernard Shaw

When I passed forty I dropped pretense, 'cause men like women who got some sense.

—Maya Angelou

Thanks to modern medical advances such as antibiotics, nasal spray, and Diet Coke, it has become routine for people in the civilized world to pass the age of 40, sometimes more than once.

—Dave Barry

The first forty years of life give us the text: the next thirty supply the commentary.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

You’re not 40, you’re eighteen with 22 years experience.

—Unknown

At the age of twenty, we don't care what the world thinks of us; at thirty, we worry about what it is thinking of us; at forty, we discover that it wasn't thinking of us at all.

—Unknown

Be wise with speed; a fool at forty is a fool indeed.

—Edward Young

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

—Cicero

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

What most persons consider as virtue, after the age of 40 is simply a loss of energy.

—Voltaire

Probably the happiest period in life most frequently is in middle age, when the eager passions of youth are cooled, and the infirmities of age not yet begun; as we see that the shadows, which are at morning and evening so large, almost entirely disappear at midday.

—Thomas Arnold

One of the many things nobody ever tells you about middle age is that it’s such a nice change from being young.

—Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Age is strictly a case of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.

—Jack Benny

At middle age the soul should be opening up like a rose, not closing up like a cabbage.

—John Andrew Holmes

The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which mean never losing your enthusiasm.

—Aldous Huxley