After 40 Years Quotes & Sayings

I'm scared of horses, and I don't know how to shoot them, but that's what excites me. After 40 years old, if you don't do some things that really terrify you, I don't think they're worth doing. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

One of the most difficult things for people who have been successful in sports is adapting to the daily world where you can't get an answer from someone until 5 o'clock tomorrow. There is always an excuse. Living 40 or 50 years like that doesn't get too exciting after a while. — Mark Spitz

A guitar is a piece of wood, and if this piece is resonating in a period of 40 or 60 years, it kind of gets to know what it is after awhile ... the reason violinists play violins that are hundreds of years old. The wood learns to sing. — Dave Genn

After working in cities for nearly 40 years, I am telling you that every city can improve its quality of life in less than three years, no matter the scale or the financial conditions. — Jaime Lerner

I have entered the New Yorker's Cartoon Caption Contest almost weekly virtually since it began and have never even been a finalist. I have done more writing for free for the New Yorker in the last five years than for anybody in the previous 40 years. It's not that I think my cartoon captions are better than anyone else's, although some weeks, understandably, I do. It's that just once I want to see one of my damn captions in the magazine that publishes the best cartoons in the world."
- Roger Ebert
(By the way, in 2011 Ebert finally won, after 107 tries.) — Bob Mankoff

(After meeting her birth mother after more than 40 years) We exchange bunches of orchids, laughing at the coincidence of the flowers. A little unnerving: I wonder if that choice has anything to do with genetics ... I want to take mine home and look after them so that they live for days. I might spray the leaves, and make sure they sit in an easterly window, and keep them out of the direct sun. — Jackie Kay

I don't want to restrict the life of a play to a particular production. The original actors might leave after the first six months, and I want the play to last 30 or 40 years. You write for the character, not the actor on the stage. — Neil Simon

Four Months of War in Cuba
The Spanish-American War lasted less than four months for the United States; however for Cuba this was only a small part of their War of Independence from Spain, which went through many phases starting with the Ten Years' War and lasted almost 20 years. The United States government originally was neutral, but became involved when the Spanish Governor forced thousands of Cubans into concentration camps. Americans joined the Cubans in their fight against the Spaniards after the USS Maine exploded and sank in Havana harbor. During those tumultuous years, 5,180 Cuban insurgents died in battle and over 40,000 died from various diseases such as Yellow Fever. Colon Cemetery in Havana is one of the great historical cemeteries of the world and was built just in time to receive the victims of the Cuban Wars of Independence. — Hank Bracker

Actually, I was born in Las Vegas. My parents moved to Utah when I was eight because, after 40 years in Vegas, they were tired of it. We ended up in Nephi, a really small town in Utah. — Brandon Flowers

After a war of about 40 years, undertaken by the most stupid [Claudius], maintained by the most dissolute [Nero], and terminated by the most timid [Domitian] of all the emperors, the far greater part of the island [of Britain] submitted to the Roman yoke. — Edward Gibbon

I remember as a ranger the first time I stood alone on Inspiration Point over at Canyon Station looking out over this beautiful land. I thought to myself how lucky I was that my parents' and grandparents' generation had the vision and the determination to save it for us. Now it is our turn to make our own gift outright to those who will come after us, 15 years, 40 years, 100 years from now. I want to be as faithful to my grandchildren's generation as Old Faithful has been to ours. What better way can we add a new dimension to our third century of freedom? — Gerald R. Ford

There's a good chance that in 40 years, after the floods, people zipping by on scavenged jetpacks with their scavenged baseball caps on backwards, I will be in my rocking chair saying bitterly, 'I remember when 'all right' was two words.' — Elizabeth McCracken

To pretend you don't feel a certain strangeness after living in England for 40 years is a fallacy. — Trevor McDonald

I'm not obsessed by how I look or with being reed thin, but I do think that as a woman in my 50s, I have 40 years ahead. Looking after yourself goes hand in hand with looking good. — Linda Evans

I've lived in New York for 40 years. I came right after college. — R.L. Stine

I'm still getting thrilled with music even after 40 years of doing it professionally. — Jeff Lynne

After 40, you want to reverse the ageing process. That's complicated for me because I spent so many years wanting to be older. — Sam Rockwell

Life was a fairy-tale, then, it is a tragedy now. When I was 43 and John Hay 41 he said life was a tragedy after 40, and I disputed it. Three years ago he asked me to testify again: I counted my graves, and there was nothing for me to say. I am old; I recognize it but I don't realize it. I wonder if a person ever really ceases to feel young - I mean, for a whole day at a time. — Mark Twain

The football is the worstes game, you are famous because you are okay... but after few years you become 30 or 40 who knows?!
ANd you are out of that sport, alone in the world you are not anymore famous. You are one of them, but after all who has played football knows that you should be an idiot to play that sport, good at football worst in life. But a lot of these days are like them, not like these people, but like them!? — Deyth Banger

People are going to be living quite soon for 100 years. Our idea of how a family works no longer applies. It's no good saying you're going to have children for 15 years and then you're going to retire and have hobbies, because you've got 40 more years to go after 60 and you're in good health until 90 or something. — Theodore Zeldin

Which is - you know, like check it out, I'm pretty young, I'm only about 40 years old. I still have maybe another four decades of work left in me. And it's exceedingly likely that anything I write from this point forward is going to be judged by the world as the work that came after the freakish success of my last book, right? — Elizabeth Gilbert

I didn't think before that I'd done enough to justify publishing an autobiography but after 40 years in show business I'm now ready to tell my story. — Cilla Black

Fifteen years ago, God unequivocally and undeniably gave me Isaiah 22:22 as a life-verse. "Then I will set the key of the house of David on his shoulder, when he opens no one will shut, when he shuts no one will open." After 40 plus confirmations over a two-week period - yes, more than 40 - I became thoroughly convinced this verse was both a promise and a weapon for me. I have since used the verse hundreds of times throughout America - in all 50 states and in Washington DC - to open and close spiritual doors for the Lord. — Dutch Sheets

Manned spaceflight has lost its glamour - understandably so, because it hardly seems inspiring, 40 years after Apollo, for astronauts merely to circle the Earth in the space shuttle and the International Space Station. — Martin Rees

What happened after publication of our paper was that, for the next 40 years, people said, all right, we now know the answer to the capital structure question under ideal conditions. — Merton Miller

Drugs have destroyed many lives, but wrongheaded governmental policies have destroyed many more. I think it's obvious that after 40 years of war on drugs, it has not worked. There should be decriminalization of drugs. — Kofi Annan

Thanks to this availability of suitable wild mammals and plants, early peoples of the Fertile Crescent could quickly assemble a potent and balanced biological package for intensive food production. That package comprised three cereals, as the main carbohydrate sources; four pulses, with 20 - 25 percent protein, and four domestic animals, as the main protein sources, supplemented by the generous protein content of wheat; and flax as a source of fiber and oil (termed linseed oil: flax seeds are about 40 percent oil). Eventually, thousands of years after the beginnings of animal domestication and food production, the animals also began to be used for milk, wool, plowing, and transport. Thus, the crops and animals of the Fertile Crescent's first farmers came to meet humanity's basic economic needs: carbohydrate, protein, fat, clothing, traction, and transport. — Jared Diamond

I feel like somebody who just got out of prison after 40 years for something she didn't do, like I got pardoned by the governor. When dear friends deal with me with mixed emotions, it is a little like being told, 'Well, Jenny, we're glad you got sprung, really, but quite honestly we did kind of like you better when you were in jail. — Jennifer Finney Boylan

I was indeed a snob, if you agree with this definition: 'A person who believes that their tastes in a particular area are superior to those of other people.' I do believe that. Not superior to all other people, but to some, most probably including those who think Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen is a great film. That is not simply ego on my part. It is a faith that after writing and teaching about films for more than 40 years, my tastes are more evolved than those of a fanboy. — Roger Ebert

My mum died of leukemia when I was in high school - she lost her life at 40. It was very hard, and I didn't do that much in Chicago after that. I actually sat around and didn't do anything for three years. I didn't know what I wanted to do anymore because my everything was gone. I was a mama's boy, and I had to turn into a man real quick. — Cory Hardrict

Here are white men poised to run big marijuana businesses, dreaming of cashing in big - big money, big businesses selling weed - after 40 years of impoverished black kids getting prison time for selling weed, and their families and futures destroyed. Now, white men are planning to get rich doing precisely the same thing? — Michel'le

Of course this is Vegas and it is the melting pot for all over the world, but people from all over the world know Donny and Marie. It is amazing. I have been in the business a long time to realize careers can be fleeting. Five years is a long career nowadays for some people, and here we are still going strong after 40 years. — Donny Osmond

One's relationship to time is complicated, and sometimes a day will drag on forever and sometimes it'll be over in a flash. When you look back, "I'm old," after 40 or 60 years, I can't believe I'm as old as I am. — Frederick Wiseman

We needed 40 years to overcome East Germany. Sometimes in history, one has to be prepared for the long haul and not ask after four months if it still makes sense to keep up our demands. — Angela Merkel

So here you are, in your twenties, thinking that you'll have another 40 years to go. Four decades in which to live long and prosper.
Bad news. Read the papers. There are people dropping dead when they're 50, 40, 30 years old. Or quite possibly just after finishing their convocation. They would be very disappointed that they didn't meet their life expectancy.
I'm here to tell you this. Forget about your life expectancy. — Adrian Tan

My breast cancer was caught very early thanks to my doctor a wonderful woman named Elsie Giogi, who just recently passed away after practicing medicine into her 80's. At the time, she had suggested I go for a baseline mammogram before age 40 because I had fibrocystic breasts. The mammogram discovered a tiny tumor, and it was so small that they were able to take it out very easily. I had a lumpectomy. Unfortunately, they did miss a little of the cancer, and two years later I had a mastectomy. But hey, I'm here, I'm alive, and I'm going to live to be 100! — Kate Jackson

It's not easy to play your best for 40 weeks. It happens every year, I don't play well in Rome or Hamburg
I don't know why
but then I play well after that. — Carlos Moya

If someone opens a glorious Scotch or a bottle of wine, it's no more than a whimsy, but after nearly 40 years I'm used to it. I don't find it difficult not being drunk when other people are, but I get uncomfortable because they're uncomfortable with where I am. — Martin Shaw

For too long, we've attached some mythic notion to government solutions, and yet, 40 years after we began the War on Poverty, poverty still abounds. — Rand Paul

I've been watching politics for 35 or 40 years and you just never know. You can have one person win the Iowa caucus and then the whole picture changes ten minutes later. The same thing can happen again after New Hampshire. I have no idea what's going to happen with our country in the future. — Jackie Mason

My feet have been my best friend for the last 40 years. I've just been a dancing fool on stage, and after awhile you just kind of wear them out. — Steven Tyler

After 40 years of not playing, I admit I'm totally in love with my guitar. It's a Froggy Bottom acoustic steel string guitar. All I have to do is hit a couple of clean chords and the endorphins are right there. It's like the top of my head has come off and stardust and magic have fallen in. — April Gornik

You might think that after 40 years of practice you wouldn't need to practice anymore, but sadly it doesn't work that way. You still have to keep chugging away and perfecting. — Joshua Bell

I have never yet gotten entirely over the feeling that a Yankee, on account of his peculiar teachings and bringing-up, is far inferior to the better class of Southern people. I do not believe the world ever saw or will ever again see, unless the millennium comes, such high state of civilization and culture and exalted virtue as was the Southern states prior to the war. I have yet to find one Yankee, thought I do not say there are none, who, when the money test is made, will not for his own interest do some small or little thing, and often mean thing, if it is to his advantage to do so.

Writing as I now do after the lapse of nearly 40 years (and years do soften, and old age ought to) one may somewhat judge my feeling about the Yankees when the war ended. — George Benjamin West

After 40 years of marriage, isn't it amazing when you can look at your partner sound asleep next to you and still believe they have potential. — Kaylin McFarren

My parents have seen their ups-and-downs but are still married after 40 years, so that's something. — Davy Rothbart

My final conclusion after 40 years or more in this business is that the unofficial policy of the World Health Organization and the unofficial policy of the Save the Children's Fund and almost all those organizations is one of murder and genocide. They want to make it appear as if they are saving these kids, but in actual fact they don't — Archie Kalokerinos