forty quotes

Between thirty and forty a man may have reached the height of discretionwithout having tumbledover thetop and into the feather-bed of correctitude.

- (Enoch) Arnold Bennett
  In the Evening Standard, 29 May.

Then was Jesus led up of the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred. And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

-Bible (NewTestament)
St Matthew 4:1^4.

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

- Oliver Wendell Holmes
  Letter to  Julia Ward Howe, 27 May.

Fair, fat, and forty.

- Sir Walter Scott
  St Ronan'sWell, ch.7.

Every man over forty is a scoundrel.

- George Bernard Shaw
  Man and Superman,'Maxims for Revolutionists: Stray Sayings'.

Y si evitas la s|filis, siguiendo la sabia profilaxia, al llegar los cuarenta ira  s sintiendo un principio de ataxia. And if you manage to avoid syphilis by following a wise course of prophylaxis, when you turn forty you will feel the beginnings of ataxia.

- Alan Sillitoe
  Gotas amargas,'Filosof | as' ('Philosophies').

But he was never, well, What I call A Sportsman: For forty days He went out into the desert And never shot anything.

- Sir (Francis) Osbert Sitwell
  Of Jesus Christ.'Old Fashioned Sportsmen'.

This is what forty looks like.We've been lying so long who would know?

- Gloria Steinem
c.1974  Response when complimented by a reporter on not looking forty years old, quoted by Lisa Jardine in'Still Angry AfterAllTheseYears', in the SundayTimes,15 May1994.