Quotes & Sayings About Being Over 40

35 On that day, when evening had come, He told them, "Let's cross over to the other side of the sea." 36 So they left the crowd and took Him along since He was already in the boat. And other boats were with Him. 37 A fierce windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking over the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. 38 But He was in the stern, sleeping on the cushion. So they woke Him up and said to Him, "Teacher! Don't you care that we're going to die? " 39 He got up, rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, "Silence! Be still! " The wind ceased, and there was a great calm. 40 Then He said to them, "Why are you fearful? Do you still have no faith? " 41 And they were terrified and asked one another, "Who then is this? Even the wind and the sea obey Him! " — Anonymous

I know. Love should be easier than this," I complained. "If this were a romantic comedy, it'd be called Love Actually Sucks." "Maybe we should've stuck with Sex and the City." "Tried that. Ended up Knocked Up. I should've gone for being a 40-Year-Old Virgin, but I had way too much of a head start." "We can write a manual on How to Lose a Guy in 10 Weeks." Cary looked at me. "Fucking perfect. — Sylvia Day

Being this side of 40 feels like what I should have felt being this side of 25: in my body, in my heart, happy with my life, and OK with whatever bumps in the road present themselves. — Jennifer Aniston

I have nothing against younger women and older men on screen. What is sad is that so many women over 40 who have so much to give aren't being considered to play opposite men their own age or younger. — Rene Russo

If you do anything for 40 years, you can do it comfortably. And it will always be good. But unless you're willing to risk it being bad, it can never be great. — Arlo Guthrie

My mom is awesome. She's really young. My mom is 40, and she raised me listening to Nirvana and Courtney Love and Coldplay, Gin Blossoms, The Cranberries, and stuff. Like, my early, early memories are of being a little kid running around in floral skirts and Doc Martens when I was, like, three. — Halsey

As Deborah Rhode describes, "When 1,100 Michigan elementary students were asked to describe what life would be like if they were the opposite sex, over 40 percent of the girls saw advantages to being male; they would have better jobs, higher incomes, and more respect. Ninety-five percent of the boys saw no advantage to being female, and a substantial number thought suicide would be preferable." — Deborah Rhode

Feminism is just an idea. It's a philosophy. It's about the equality of women in all realms. It's not about man-hating. It's not about being humorless. We have to let go of these misconceptions that have plagued feminism for 40, 50 years. — Roxane Gay

What do you do when you get a draft notice and you think a war is wrong? And I struggled with that for months prior to my being inducted into the army, and I'm still struggling with it, 40 years later. — Tim O'Brien

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

I'm excited about turning 40. I've been an adult for a long time, but there is a difference between being an adult and being a grown-up. I'm someone's mummy now and I'm enjoying that. I feel as if I'm about to hit my peak. — Jill Scott

So far as we know, no pollster has asked the public, "Are you getting your money's worth for the more than 40 percent of your income being spent on your behalf by government?" But — Milton Friedman

One of the happier ironies of recent history is that even as Tibet is being wiped off the map in Tibet itself, here it is in California, in Switzerland, in Japan. All over the world, Tibetan Buddhism is now part of the neighborhood. In 1968, there were two Tibetan Buddhist centers in the West. By 2000, there were 40 in New York alone. — Pico Iyer

Even the wisest don't know what's hidden in the depths of their being — Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

I turned 40 on the set of the reunion show for 'Sheer Genius,' so it wasn't a hideous birthday because I had everyone on the cast and crew sing 'Happy Birthday' to me, and I won $10,000 for being the fan favorite. It was really liberating to turn 40 and realize that I felt very comfortable with myself and knew who I was. — Tabatha Coffey

The Church's stand on birth control is the most absolutely spiritual of all her stands and with all of us being materialists at heart, there is little wonder that it causes unease. I wish various fathers would quit trying to defend it by saying that the world can support 40 billion. I will rejoice the day when they say: This is right whether we all rot on top of each other or not, dear children, as we certainly may. Either practice restraint or be prepared for crowding ... — Flannery O'Connor

When a writer develops a story, he is confronted with a poison that is inside him. If you don't have that poison, your story will be boring and uninspired. It's like fugu: The flesh of the pufferfish is extremely tasty, but the roe, the liver, the heart can be lethally toxic. My stories are located in a dark, dangerous part of my consciousness, I feel the poison in my mind, but I can fend off a high dose of it because I have a strong body. When you are young, you are strong; so you can usually conquer the poison even without being in training. But beyond the age of 40 your strength wanes, you can no longer cope with the poison if you lead an unhealthy life. — Haruki Murakami

I was being hated for about 40 or 50 years by the whole world, but it did not destroy me, and it did not ruin my health. And the reason is because I just did not answer them. I had my own life. — Yoko Ono

My audience is the baby-boomers, the bulk of the population. This is also a group that is being ignored by most record companies because they're not the Top 40 hit singles market. They forget these people still listen to music. — Helen Reddy

A canon is antithetical to everything the New York art world has been about for the past 40 years, during which we went from being the center of the art world to being one of many centers. — Jerry Saltz

I'm a late bloomer. Being a late bloomer is a problem when you decide at 40 you want to have children. — Daphne Zuniga

Mitt Romney has a history of being a great job creator. Secondly, he was a great governor. He went from billions of dollars in the hole when he became governor to billions of dollars in surplus when he left. And he went from the loss of tens of thousands jobs when he became governor to the creation of 40,000 new jobs when he left office. — John Kasich

At the Emmys, you've got a bunch of people who are used to being on TV on TV. You don't have that at the Oscars. At the Oscars, you have people who are used to having 40 takes. — Jimmy Kimmel

Some economists argue that the apparent paradox rests on an illusion: there is no real 'labor shortage,' only a shortage of people willing to work at the wages currently being offered. You might as well talk about a 'Lexus shortage' - which there is, in a sense, for anyone unwilling to pay $40,000 for a car. — Barbara Ehrenreich

I wouldn't say that processed food, ready meals and even takeaways aren't relevant to modern life, it's just that over the past 40 years there are three generations of people who have come out of school and gone through their home life without ever being shown how to cook properly. — Jamie Oliver

Errors of reductionism and biodeterminism take over in such silly statements as "Intelligence is 60 percent genetic and 40 percent environmental." A 60 percent (or whatever) "heritability" for intelligence means no such thing. We shall not get this issue straight until we realize that the "interactionism" we all accept does not permit such statements as "Trait x is 29 percent environmental and 71 percent genetic." When causative factors (more than two, by the way) interact so complexly, and throughout growth, to produce an intricate adult being, we cannot, in principle, parse that being's behavior into quantitative percentages of remote root causes. The adult being is an emergent entity who must be understood at his own level and in his own totality. The truly salient issues are malleability and flexibility, not fallacious parsing by percentages. A trait may be 90 percent heritable, yet entirely malleable. — Stephen Jay Gould

The best advice I've ever been given is being handed a Bible. That's the blueprint for marriage that we go by, and that's what our marriage is grounded in. We also have other married couples who are examples in our lives. My parents have been married over 40 years, and both sets of grandparents for over 65 years. When you see couples in long-term relationships and you see them go through good times and bad times, you realize it's about being committed enough and loving your partner enough to hang in there regardless. — Candace Cameron

I've known Harvey for over 40 years and I worked with him on the Burnett show for 11 years. I guess you could say we're about as close as you can get to being a comedy team. — Tim Conway

The point of being over 40 is to fulfill the desires you've been harboring since you were 7. — Guillermo Del Toro

When women's parts are being written, they are more and more for under 30s who are nubile and beautiful. Actresses over 40 are finding very little happening. — Samantha Bond

Other perks of working for Disney are primarily in the form of discounts. The money I've saved through Disney discounts is unbelievable. I remember working at Staples and being excited when they finally gave us a 10% discount, which is nothing compared to what Disney offers. I got up to 60% off hotel rooms, 20-40% off merchandise, 20-40% off dining, a variety of discounts on Disney recreational offerings, 20% off quick service meals at Animal Kingdom and the resorts, and a holiday coupon book which included 30%, 40%, and 50% off meal coupons, free popcorn and soda coupons, free PhotoPass downloads, free rounds of mini golf, and extra park tickets. — Brittany DiCologero

I'm Irish as hell: Kelly on one side, Shanley on the other. My father had been born on a farm in the Irish Midlands. He and his brothers had been shepherds there, cattle and sheep, back in the early 1920s. I grew up surrounded by brogues and Irish music, but stayed away from the old country till I was over 40. I just couldn't own being Irish. — John Patrick Shanley

Then I take a dump. Feel better. Take off my clothes and step into the pool. Ice water. But great. I walk along toward the deep end of the pool, the water rising inch by inch, chilling me. Then I plunge below the water. It's restful. The world doesn't know where I am. I come up, swim to the far edge, find the ledge, sit there. It must be about the 9th or 10th race. The horses are still running. I plunge again into the water, being aware of my stupid whiteness, of my age hanging onto me like a leech. Still, it's OK. I should have been dead 40 years ago. I rise to the top, swim to the far edge, get out. — Charles Bukowski

Once you hit 40, being in a band - a committee voting constantly on what you're going to be doing next month - it's more of a challenge. And when you have a kid as well. — Dean Wareham

Being shoved into the top-40 scene was an unusual experience. It was great I'd become accessible to a huge audience but not terribly fulfilling. — David Bowie

In our youths, many of us suspected that being tied down to a partner and family might constrain us. But after 40, even that landscape starts to shift. Many singletons turn inward and start longing for the things so many of us longed to be free of in our 20s. — Sandra Tsing Loh

My letters seeking a job, though truthful, diminished the full truth. Face would blanch if the facts had been complete: "Dear Sir," I thought. "Do you have a position for a journeyman burglar, con man, forger and car thief; also with experience as armed robber, pimp, card cheat and several other things. I smoked marijuana at twelve (in the 40's) and shot heroin at sixteen. I have no experience with LSD and methedrine. They came to popularity since my imprisonment. I've buggered pretty young boys and feminine homosexuals (but only when locked up away from women). In the idiom of jails, prisons and gutters (some plush gutters) I'm a motherfucker! Not literally, for I don't remember my mother. In my world the term, used as I used it, is a boast of being hell on wheels, outrageously unpredictable, a virtuoso of crime. Of course by being a motherfucker in that world I'm a piece of garbage in yours. Do you have a job? — Edward Bunker

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 have found there are real objects under in intelligent control being seen on the ground and in our skies worldwire. The unknowns have varied over the decades from 22 percent in my own civilian files, 30 percent in the University of Colorda Condon Committee scientific studies, to at least 40 percent recently revised found in the U.S. Air Force Project Blue Book military investigations. This is not acceptable, no matter who is doing the investigations. — George Fawcett

I hadn't realized quite how intense the first few years of grad school would be. When you're being assigned 40 books a week ... there's not much room for novels. — Lauren Willig

Knowing God is more than knowing about him; it is a matter of dealing with him as he opens up to you, and being dealt with by him as he takes knowledge of you. Knowing about him is a necessary precondition of trusting in him ('how could they have faith in one they had never heard of?' [Romans 10:4 NEB]), but the width of our knowledge about him is no gauge of the depth of our knowledge of him (pp. 39-40). — J.I. Packer

Most of the books I have are indicators of my insecurity. I really wanted to be an intellectual. I really wanted to understand Sartre. I thought that was what made people smart. I have tried to read Being and Nothingness no fewer than twenty times in my life. I really thought that every answer had to be in that book. Maybe it is. The truth is, I can't read anything with any distance. Every book is a self-help book to me. Just having them makes me feel better. I underline profusely but I don't retain much. Reading is like a drug. When I am reading from these books it feels like I am thinking what is being read, and that gives me a rush. That is enough. I glean what I can. I finish some of the unfinished thoughts lingering around in my head by adding the thoughts of geniuses and I build from there. There are bookmarks in most of the denser tomes at around page 20 to 40 because that was where I said, "I get it." Then I put them back on the shelf. — Marc Maron

To us, the argument for material well-being might seem uncontroversial. But in the eighteenth century, material prosperity was frequently condemned as "luxury" by religious and civic moralists. It was not a morally neutral word but a pejorative one, connoting not comfort but excess, the possession of nonnecessities. The notion of luxury was intricately connected with the existence of a recognized social hierarchy: what was necessary for those of high status was regarded as excessive for those of low status. Luxury meant the enjoyment of material goods not appropriate to one's station in life. Critics of luxury saw it as confounding social ranks. P. 40 — Jerry Z. Muller

When you're 20, you can't imagine being 30. When you're 30, you can't imagine being 40. When you're 40, you can't imagine being 100. — Keith Richards

So, my brother and I, over the last two years, went back through Scripture and pulled every (passage) we could in relation to parenting children, guarding their hearts, teaching them, loving them, being patient. And then we worked through 40 principles and wrote The Love Dare for Parents. — Alex Kendrick

I'm in this absolutely gorgeous manor house with acres of quite beautiful countryside. I've got trout in the river, an organic vegetable garden, I've got my work 40 yards from my home. I don't mind being criticised, but where are they criticising from? Which hut are they criticising me from, exactly? — Jay Kay

I keep these songs in my head until I get behind the microphone. I never spend more than 30 or 40 minutes singing the vocal or it will sound mechanical. There are always mistakes, but it's about feeling more than being perfect. — Brian McKnight

I went to England in the '70s, and I was in my early 20s. There was still a residue of that era of being an underclass or colonial. I assume it must have been a more aggressive and prominent attitude 40 years before that, because Australia internationally wasn't regarded as having much cultural value. We were a country full of sheep and convicts. — Geoffrey Rush

It wasn't not being famous any more, or even not being a recording artist. It was having nobody who needed me, no phones ringing, nothing to do. Because I'm still too young to do nothing. I was only 24 when all that happened. Now, at 40, I feel I've got more to give than I ever have. — Gary Barlow

In 2009, New York Times reporter Matt Richtel earned a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting with a series of articles ("Driven to Distraction") on the dangers of driving while texting or using cell phones. He found that distracted driving is responsible for 16 percent of all traffic fatalities and nearly half a million injuries annually. Even an idle phone conversation when driving takes a 40 percent bite out of your focus and, surprisingly, can have the same effect as being drunk. The — Gary Keller

A lot happens at 50, the best thing being that you just don't care anymore. At 40, you still care. At 30, you care way too much - and your twenties are quite frankly a nightmare. Bring on 60, I say: just imagine the joy of having grandchildren. — Jerry Hall

It doesn't matter whether you have the happiest upbringing ... the young Joe Scot had the most dysfunctional family there could be but it's still a family and it's a really good, strong family. But in spite of that he runs away from home. I relate to all of those things very directly. I hit 40 this year but I still think about being a teenager and hopefully I will for the rest of my life. They are important years. — Daniel Craig

You beat 50 percent of the people in America by working hard. You beat 40 percent by being a person of honesty and integrity and standing for something. The last 10 percent is a dogfight in the free enterprise system. — Arthur L. Williams Jr.

I think, being an actress, you know that you're getting old. I'm 44. I mean, an agent said when I turned 40, "It won't get better." — Charlotte Gainsbourg

I get guilty when I spend money on silly things like clothes and stuff ... Having experienced a completely different extreme of wealth, and I don't mean me being poor or rich, I mean knowing that 40 quid that gets spent on a pair of shoes could go a long way for a family in Georgia for a week or even a month, having experienced that, you're a bit more [guilty]. — Katie Melua

At times we have to step into God's silence and patiently wait. We have to put out the fleece as Gideon did (Judges 6:37-40), and wait for the descent of the divine dew, or some kind of confirmation from God that we are on the right course. That is a good way to keep our own ego drive out of the way.
Yet there are other times when we need to go ahead and act on our own best intuitions and presume that God is guiding us and will guide us. But even then we must finally wait for the divine backup. Sometimes that is even the greater act of faith and courage, and takes even more patience. What if the divine dew does not fall? What do we do then?
When either waiting or moving forward is done out of a spirit of union and surrender, we can trust that God will make good out of it - even if we are mistaken! It is not about being correct, it is about being connected. — Richard Rohr