Forty Quotes

“Now answer me, sincerely, honestly, who lives past forty? I'll tell you who does: fools and scoundrels.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from the Underground

“The paper, the stapler, the staples, the tape. It makes me sick. Physical things. Forty years of loving someone becomes staples and tape.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“Before forty, you think that exhaustion is something like a long-lasting hangover. But at forty you learn all about it. Even your passions exhaust you.”
― Kevin Barry

“And the view was suddenly clear to me. The world opened out to its grim beyonds and I realized that, at forty, one must learn the rigors of acceptance. Capitalize it: Acceptance. I needed to accept what was put before me--be it a watery grave in Ireland's only natural fjord, or a return to the city and its grayer intensities, or a wordless exile in some steaming Cambodian swamp hole, or poems or no poems, or children or not, lovers or not, illness or otherwise, success or its absence. I would accept all that was put in my way, from here on through until I breathed my last.”
― Kevin Barry

“I nearer than I was yesterday and further than I am today, tomorrow I'll be square one.”
― Racquel McDonnell

“I could live this way indefinitely and I'd be all right ... I've done enough living and can now spend my time holding up the memories for contemplation, determining what it all meant. Images flood in: cities I've passed through; rooms where I've slept; friends who put me up or put up with me. In a couple of years I'll turn forty. Schopenhauer wrote that the first forty years are the text, the rest is the commentary. I see that, and yet I feel that I'm somehow at the start of a life, on the cusp, facing a future that's strange and turbulent but not entirely hopeless.”
― Rob Doyle, Autobibliography

“It's been almost forty years that we have been
separated and I still cannot get over you,
You were my first love.
I miss you very much
MY SWEET BARBADOS!!”
― Charmaine J Forde

“If you have ran out of lung ventilators, please give mine to someone under forty with COVID-19.”
― Steven Magee

“At forty a woman's inside comes out on her outside, gradually like the skin has been turned over, and her face reveals at forty what her heart was at twenty.”
― Mantaranjot Mangat, Plotless

“Forty is a fat fort.”
― Mantaranjot Mangat, Plotless

“I told her not to worry and to go back to sleep. There was nothing she could do. Our dreams were part of our destiny, and they would run their course as God willed it. Besides, there must be a reason, I thought, that every night for the last forty days I had been having the same dream.”
― Elif Shafak, The Forty Rules of Love

“He goes to the bathroom again. He seems to have reached the age where he needs to go even though he hasn't drunk anything since the last time, as if his body is inventing its own liquid, when you're approaching forty perhaps you start to melt internally.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Friends

“By writing down all the things you’re grateful for, you will feel more positive, stop negative thought patterns and transform your life.”
― Alexandra Potter, Confessions of a Forty-Something F**k Up

“But somewhere, deep inside this wounded soul of mine, it also ignited a little flicker of hope that maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t over for me yet.”
― Alexandra Potter, Confessions of a Forty-Something F**k Up

“Honestly, no wonder men and women have difficulty communicating. Just because a woman says something, it doesn’t mean she actually means it. If that were the case, when a man asks a woman what’s wrong and she says ‘nothing’, she would actually mean nothing, and not, in fact, that she is furious with him for a variety of reasons.”
― Alexandra Potter, Confessions of a Forty-Something F**k Up

“Differences can make or break a marriage. Often the differences you love in the beginning can be the reasons you want to murder them five years later.”
― Alexandra Potter, Confessions of a Forty-Something F**k Up

“I’m grateful for: Being child-free, so I can spend tomorrow busy sleeping until noon.”
― Alexandra Potter, Confessions of a Forty-Something F**k Up

“The Fear paralyses you. It grips you by the throat so you can’t breathe and makes your heart thump loud and fast in your ears. It makes you feel like you’re going to die and part of you wants to. That’s why it’s so horrible. Because after it’s finished beating you up, you beat yourself up even more. It’s your dirty little secret and I’ve kept mine for years.”
― Alexandra Potter, Confessions of a Forty-Something F**k Up

“Sometimes there are advantages to an eight-hour time difference.”
― Alexandra Potter, Confessions of a Forty-Something F**k Up

“Why is it you always bump into someone when you look terrible and never when you’ve had a blow-dry? It’s like some horrible cosmic law.”
― Alexandra Potter, Confessions of a Forty-Something F**k Up

“So what if there are no sparks or butterflies? Sparks and butterflies break your heart and drive you to the edge of insanity. They give you adrenaline-fuelled highs and desperate-on-the-kitchen-floor lows. I’ve never done heroin but often think it must be like that kind of love. It’s an addiction. A craving followed by a fix.”
― Alexandra Potter, Confessions of a Forty-Something F**k Up

“I’m grateful for: My brave and foolish heart, for refusing to settle for anything less.”
― Alexandra Potter, Confessions of a Forty-Something F**k Up

“The thing is, I know it works for thousands of happy couples, but I’m just not cut out for it.. So I think I’m going to stick with the old-fashioned, crossing-of-paths, fate stuff. If love wants to find me, it will.”
― Alexandra Potter, Confessions of a Forty-Something F**k Up

“But life isn’t a museum. I don’t want to live in the past.”
― Alexandra Potter, Confessions of a Forty-Something F**k Up

“I don’t want to spend whatever time I have left looking backwards. I want to look forwards. To new things. New places. New adventures. Otherwise I’m just living a life where a part of me is missing.”
― Alexandra Potter, Confessions of a Forty-Something F**k Up

“From the outside you’d think everything was perfectly normal, but from the inside it was obvious things were not.”
― Alexandra Potter, Confessions of a Forty-Something F**k Up

“For so long I’ve been keeping this secret, but now I realize it’s been keeping me. Keeping me stuck. Keeping me from changing my narrative from one of fear and failure.”
― Alexandra Potter, Confessions of a Forty-Something F**k Up

“I think she wanted to take control of everyone else’s life because her own life was so out of control.”
― Alexandra Potter, Confessions of a Forty-Something F**k Up

“Life does go on and joy does return, and often it’s in the most unexpected of places,’ she continues, ‘but you never get over losing someone; you just get better at coping with it.”
― Alexandra Potter, Confessions of a Forty-Something F**k Up

“People always talk about happy endings, but I think it should be happy beginnings.”
― Alexandra Potter, Confessions of a Forty-Something F**k Up