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Age Quotations:
40 to 49 Years Old
Welcome to my page of quotations about the specific ages of being in one's forties. Been there, done that!
Age 40. —
...they hear the nail of doom in the number forty... ~Michael McCabe, "40th Birthday," Beyond Midnight, 1969 [Radio program. Episode a.k.a. "Eloise's Whereabouts."
Age 40. —
Neither old nor young. That generally means forty. Is she forty? ~Margaret Wolfe Hamilton Argles Hungerford (1855–1897), "Clarissa's Choice," in The Argosy, September 1879 [Her pseudonym was The Duchess.
Age 40. —
I am forty years old, I have already passed through four professions... I have obeyed and I have commanded; I have had moments of wealth and years of poverty. I have been loved and I have been hated; I have been applauded and I have been ridiculed. I have been a son and a father, a lover and a husband; I have passed through the season of flowers and through the season of fruits, as the poets say... ~Claude Tillier (1801–1844), My Uncle Benjamin: A Humorous, Satirical, and Philosophical Novel, 1843, translated from the French by Benjamin R. Tucker, 1890
Age 40. —
A thing that is excusable in youth, that seems then to be very pretty and delightful, is degrading at forty. ~Honoré de Balzac, The Muse of the Department, 1833, translated from the French by George Burnham Ives, 1909
Age 40. —
It was you, the glowing youth that went forth
Conquering the world with laughter,
And radiantly running after visions.
Now forty years lie on you like a frost:
Disillusionment is in the very handshake you proffer me:
And a crust of habits and troubles has overlaid you...
See deeper:
The real you is that glowing youth:
Pierce back to him.
~James Oppenheim, "At Forty," Songs for the New Age, 1914
Age 40. —
...and the fact that I was no longer young (that's the modern formula for
Age 40. —
Men at forty
Learn to close softly
The doors to rooms they will not be
Coming back to.
At rest on a stair landing,
They feel it moving
Beneath them now like the deck of a ship,
Though the swell is gentle...
~Donald Justice (1925–2004), "Men at Forty," Night Light, 1967
Age 40. —
...a man aged forty years, with moderate understanding, has seen — in light of the uniformity of nature — all that ever was or ever will be. ~Marcus Aurelius (121–180 CE)
Age 40. —
Better one bite, at forty, of Truth's bitter rind,
Than the hot wine that gushed from the vintage of twenty!
~James Russell Lowell, "Two Scenes from the Life of Blondel" [Written at age forty-four, in Autumn 1863.
Age 40. —
While I a Moment name, a Moment's past,
I'm nearer Death in this Verse than the last;
What then is to be done? be wise with speed,
A Fool at forty is a Fool indeed.
~Edward Young, "The Universal Passion: Satire II," 1726
Age 40. —
If we had breathing space, we should take the occasion to modify and adjust; but at this breakneck hurry, we are no sooner boys than we are adult, no sooner in love than married or jilted, no sooner one age than we begin to be another, and no sooner in the fulness of our manhood than we begin to decline towards the grave. It is in vain to seek for consistency or expect clear and stable views in a medium so perturbed and fleeting... we cannot even regard ourselves as a constant; in this flux of things, our identity itself seems in a perpetual variation; and not infrequently we find our own disguise the strangest in the masquerade. In the course of time, we grow to love things we hated and hate things we loved... It is decidedly harder to climb trees, and not nearly so hard to sit still... All our attributes are modified or changed; and it will be a poor account of us if our views do not modify and change in a proportion. To hold the same views at forty as we held at twenty, is to have been stupefied for a score of years, and take rank, not as a prophet, but as an unteachable brat, well birched and none the wiser. ~Robert Louis Stevenson, "Crabbed Age and Youth," in The Cornhill Magazine, 1878
Age 40. —
No one becomes forty without incredulity and a sense of outrage. ~Clifford Bax (1886–1962) [Written at age 39, in 1925.
Age 40. —
When forty winters shall beseige thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field,
Thy youth’s proud livery, so gazed on now,
Will be a tatter’d weed, of small worth held:
Then being ask’d where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,
To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserved thy beauty’s use,
If thou couldst answer ‘This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count and make my old excuse,’
Proving his beauty by succession thine!
This were to be new made when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feel’st it cold.
~William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
Age 40. —
I cherish the loneliness of autumn... I am forty, I have become mortal. I have no further psychic, emotional, or intellectual need to prolong summer seasons, and it is only when autumn begins its play that I can truly focus on the rich and vital life I am living. All of a sudden I grow alert. October is a hallelujah! reverberating in my body year-round... The air is dusty, it smells of dry pine needles; yet I sense imminent ice in the clear blue sky... How I appreciate everything… fully! After all, tomorrow this reprieve will be buried by blizzards, crushed under slabs of doomsday ice. I cannot waste a minute indoors! I must take advantage of this gift, wedged so tentatively between summer's hectic somnolence and winter's harsh apogee... Each perfect day, I know, is going to be the last beautiful day of autumn. ~John Nichols (b.1940), The Last Beautiful Days of Autumn
Age 40. —
I remembered my friends saying to me so often when I was young, "You're lucky. You always know what you want." I thought a person must be crazy not to.
When I was forty years old, I was baffled and confused because I couldn't seem to know what I wanted. In my own terms, I had gone crazy.
In trying to find my way out of this, I went two ways at once: a search inside myself for what had gone wrong, and a search outside myself for something to believe that would set me right. ~Barry Stevens, "From My Life: I," Person to Person, 1967
Age 40. Men. —
In the old days there was perhaps some reason for growing old after 40, or possibly for not even reaching 40 at all. But today, a man of 40 has nothing to worry him but falling hair, inability to button the top button, failing vision, shortness of breath, a tendency of the collar to shut off all breathing, and trembling of the kidneys to the tempo of whatever tune the orchestra is playing. ~Robert Benchley, "Life Begins at (fill in space)," From Bed to Worse, 1934
Age 40. Women. —
"Nearly twenty years since I set out to seek my fortune. It has been a long search, but I think I have found it at last. I only asked to be a useful, happy woman, and my wish is granted: for, I believe I am useful; I know I am happy."
Christie looked so as she sat alone in the flowery parlor one September afternoon, thinking over her life with a grateful, cheery spirit. Forty to‑day, and pausing at that half‑way house between youth and age, she looked back into the past without bitter regret or unsubmissive grief, and forward into the future with courageous patience; for three good angels attended her, and with faith, hope, and charity to brighten life, no woman need lament lost youth or fear approaching age. Christie did not, and though her eyes filled with quiet tears... none fell; and in a moment tender sorrow changed to still tenderer joy... ~Louisa May Alcott, "At Forty," Work: A Story of Experience, 1873
Age 40. Women. —
To say that Mrs. Wentworth was "fair, fat, and forty" would have been to malign her, and give the impression of a caricature in words. She was fair — full-made, as became a matron — she was, if not forty, verging on that age. In fact, she was a handsome woman of a "certain age," eminently lady-like. She had in her face that expression of kindly feeling which is perhaps the greatest charm of the true lady. ~J. Palgrave Simpson, For Ever and Never, 1884 [a little altered
Age 40+. —
Making light of tragedy — celebrating birthdays after forty. ~Dr. Idel Dreimer, lumpenbangenpiano.com
Age 40+. —
And on passing his fortieth year, any man of the slightest power of mind — any man, that is, who has more than the sorry share of intellect with which Nature has endowed five-sixths of mankind — will hardly fail to show some trace of misanthropy. ~Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860), "The Ages of Life," Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit, translated by T. Bailey Saunders, 1891
Age 40+. —
Thanks to modern medical advances such as antibiotics, nasal spray, and Diet Coke, it has become quite routine for people in the civilized world to pass the age of 40, sometimes more than once. ~Dave Barry, "Your Disintegrating Body," Dave Barry Turns 40, 1990, davebarry.com
Age 40+. —
The same truth may be more broadly expressed by saying that the first forty years of life furnish the text, while the remaining thirty supply the commentary; and that without the commentary we are unable to understand aright the true sense and coherence of the text, together with the moral it contains and all the subtle application of which it admits. ~Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860), "The Ages of Life," Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit, translated by T. Bailey Saunders, 1891
Ages 40–45. —
You, men of 40, and you women of 39 who are really 40 — what's all this I hear about your being middle-aged? Why, you're just kids — slightly obese kids — that's all! Don't you realize that you are "standing with reluctant feet" (glasses will correct all that) on the brink of Life's Great Adventure — Hardening of the Arteries?
You are practically only one stage beyond Puberty. First there is Babyhood, then Childhood, then Puberty, then
Age 40 & the 40s. —
Nobody feels well after his fortieth birthday
But the convalescence is touched by glory...
~Peter Porter (1929–2010), "Returning," English Subtitles, 1981
Age 40 & the 40s. —
At 20 years of age the will reigns; at 30 the wit; at 40 the judgment. ~Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanac, 1741 (June)
Age 40 & the 40s. —
My dad has a dental appointment today. Yesterday he went to see an ophthalmologist. The day before he went to see an orthopedist… He considers it all part of his complete physical breakdown since turning forty. ~Charles M. Schulz, Peanuts, 1965 [Violet
Age 40 & the 40s. —
At a period of life when many have been living on the capital of their acquired knowledge and their youthful stock of sensibilities until their intellects are really shallower and their hearts emptier than they were at twenty, Dudley Venner was stronger in thought and tenderer in soul than in the first freshness of his youth, when he counted but half his present years. He was now on the verge of that decade which marks the decline of men who have ceased growing in knowledge and strength: from forty to fifty a man must move upward, or the natural falling off in the vigor of life will carry him rapidly downward. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894), The Professor's Story (Elsie Venner), 1859
Age 40 & the 40s. —
People often say to a boy when he eats between meals: "It will spoil your dinner." But, piecing between meals never spoils your meals until after you pass forty. ~E. W. Howe
The 40s. —
But now that I am thin on top,
And sagging slightly round the crop,
I realise what father meant,
By saying he was quite content,
To be what Time intended he
By all the laws of life should be.
For now I'm neither old nor young,
I'm free to give the subject tongue,
And say that when a man's a sport he's
Sailing in the roaring forties.
~Kenneth Alfred Evelyn Alexander (c.1890–1953), "The Roaring Forties," in The New Zealand Railways Magazine, 1931
The 40s. —
What is more hopeless than an effort to maintain a foothold in the mad whirl and hum of business life after the age of forty? Who can expect to cheerfully chase and easily overtake the almighty dollar when his rheumatism pocket is full of the wild oats of youth and each oat weighting a pound or a pound and a half...? ~Frank Thompson Searight, "The First Flush of Manhood," 1907
The 40s. —
I was cursed or blessed with a prolonged adolescence; I arrived at some seeming maturity when I was past thirty. It was only in my forties that I really began to feel young. By then I was ready for it. ~Henry Valentine Miller (1891–1980), "On Turning Eighty"
The 40s. Women. —
Old ladies, bless their hearts,
Are contented as house-flies
Dozing against the wall.
But you,
Imprisoned in the forties,
Delirious, frenzied, helpless,
Are a fly, drowning in a cocktail~
~Elijah Hay (Marjorie Allen Seiffert), "Of Mrs. Andsoforth" [farce
Mid-40s. —
I was a fourteen-year-old boy for thirty years. ~Mickey Rooney (1920–2014)
Mid-40s. —
A man can speak of his age without regret, when he is only in the mid-forties. ~Max Nordau (1849–1923), "The Art of Growing Old," How Women Love and Other Tales (Soul Analysis), translated from the German by an unnamed translator, 1896
Mid-40s. —
...there were also the Bristol girls — who, after all, were not girls, but they had been some forty years before... ~Edward Payson Powell (1833–1915), "An Old-Time Thanksgiving," 1904
Age 41. —
I am forty-one years of age and feel as if I was just beginning to live. ~“My Schoolmates Are Dead — Died Like Rotten Sheep,” Association Men, December 1916
Age 41. —
It's the standard crisis... When we are forty-one we all think it would be nice to make a fresh start. It's the kind of thing we laugh at when we're forty-two. ~Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, Guerrillas, 1975
Age 41. —
He was now forty-one and already a man of some mark... With increasing years he had grown humble and realised that the reach of one man's arm was short indeed. ~Lloyd Osbourne, "The Stones of Art," 1902
Age 41. —
I am forty-one years of age, and I feel myself begin to change, and to lose my health, natural spirits and strength. ~John Thomas
Age 41. —
So, you see, I am forty-one years old; and every day I feel I am still "beginning." ~Enrico Caruso, "How I Began," in T. P.'s Weekly, 1914
Age 41. —
I am forty-one years of age... and am mentally, sexually, and physically better than ever in my life. ~Anonymous, letter to editor, "At the Shrine of Love," Beauty and Health, January 1904
Age 42. —
Forty-two! Why, it was called the prime of life... until then no one had really begun to live! ~Lloyd Osbourne, "The Awakening of George Raymond," Love, the Fiddler, 1903
Age 42. —
I am forty-two years old; I have grown as lazy as a ground-hog... ~Honoré de Balzac, 1833, The Muse of the Department, translated from the French by George Burnham Ives, 1909
Age 42. —
Instead of bewailing a lost youth, a man nowadays begins to wonder, when he reaches my ripe age of forty-two, if ever his past will subside and be comfortably
Age 42. —
In the country they call themselves old at forty-two, because they feel young. In town they call themselves young at forty-two, because they feel old. ~Charles Reade, Love Me Little, Love Me Long (A New Edition), 1868
Age 42. —
At the age of forty-two I had gone to see the doctor about a pain in my back that interfered with my breathing. He attributed no importance to it: That kind of pain is natural at your age, he said.
"In that case," I said, "what isn't natural is my age."
The doctor gave a pitying smile. I see that you're a philosopher, he said. It was the first time I thought about my age in terms of being old, but it didn't take me long to forget about it. I became accustomed to waking every day with a different pain that kept changing location and form as the years passed. At times it seemed to be the clawing of death, and the next day it would disappear. ~Gabriel García Márquez, Memories of My Melancholy Whores, 2004, translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman, 2005 [¡Qué cierto! Para mí, a mis treinta y nueve años. Usted es sol del alma, señor.
Age 42. —
How old do you suppose you'll be at forty-two? ~Henry Kitchell Webster, An American Family: A Novel of To‑Day, 1918 [This novel appeared serially in Everybody's Magazine, 1917–1918, titled The White Arc.
Age 42. —
In the years from nineteen to forty-two most men have fulfilled their destiny... Those who have something to do are busy doing it. ~Lloyd Osbourne, "The Awakening of George Raymond," Love, the Fiddler, 1903
Age 42. —
Forty-two years ago to-day I did not amount to much. Now what a tiny step I have made out into the eternities! I am, probably, two-thirds through my work here. It remains to the last third to do my very best. ~Edward A. Lawrence, Jr., letter to mother Margaret Woods Lawrence, 1889, Sing Sing
Age 43. —
I am this day forty-three years old: as years increase, may I grow more wise and gracious. ~Hannah Ball (1733–1792), journal, 1777 March 24th
Age 43. —
This Spring-morn I am forty-three years old:
In prime of life, perfection of estate
Bodily, mental, nay, material too, —
My whole of worldly fortunes reach their height.
Body and soul alike on eminence:
It is not probable I ever raise
Soul above standard by increase of worth,
Nor reasonably may expect to lift
Body beyond the present altitude.
~Robert Browning, "Red Cotton Night-Cap Country; or, Turf and Towers," 1873
Age 44. —
My Betsy lo! the year's gone round,
We see this day once more...
I look me back to boyhood's days,
When I was wont to pore
O’er grammar, ’neath a master’s gaze,
Nor thought of forty-four.
The mathematics I began,
Twice two I said was four,
What more know I, tho' time has ran,
And made me forty-four...
If Providence but sends me health,
I'm blest at forty-four.
~H. in Norfolk, "To
Age 44. —
"Oh! no, no, no! You must be mad. I — I am forty-four!" Mary sobbed.
"Forty-four! Brave — courageous little woman," Harry cried, ecstatically, "I don't care if you are fifty-four or sixty-four! I am proud to be begging you — praying you to be my wife. If you could look over my faults, my age, my uncouth ways, I should be the happiest of men." ~George Manville Fenn, One Maid's Mischief, 1887
Age 44. —
The professor, taken aback, said, "Quite right, I am forty-four but what I am interested in is by what psychological train of thought did you arrive at my correct age?" "Well," said the voice, "that was easy. I have a brother in the lunatic asylum and he is twenty-two and I think you're twice as bad as he is." ~Quoted by Walter Scott, address to Rotary International, 1971, Australia
Age 44. —
"His age, if his looks be not deceptive, is somewhere between forty-three and forty-five." A very obscure and elaborated mode of insinuating that I am forty-four. The truth is — though nothing but extreme provocation should induce me to proclaim even truth when age is concerned, — that I am "somewhere between" twenty-seven and sixty-three, or I may say sixty-four; — but I hate exaggeration. ~Samuel Laman Blanchard, George Cruikshank's Omnibus, 1841
Age 44. —
I am forty-four years old... It would be strange, indeed, if I did not know myself pretty well by this time... I love freshness and youth and gaiety, and as I miss them more and more in myself I seek them all the more in others. ~Lloyd Osbourne, "Old Hands and Young Hearts," 1901
Age 44. —
Promise to avoid me in future, as if I, too, were an elderly person of forty-four! ~Lloyd Osbourne, "Old Hands and Young Hearts," 1901
Age 44. —
It is true that I am an old maid. I am forty-four years old. ~M.G.C.L., "Valentine's Day," 1868
Age 44. —
We are no longer boys, we are men, and old men at that. Both of my ankles have gone bad. First one and then the other. I am forty-four years old. ~William Saroyan, Armenians, 1971 [Papazian
Age 45. —
Our world is all too apt to assume that forty-five has nothing but a slight numerical difference from twenty-five. But at forty-five I suggest that an increasing number of people are primary adults no longer, we are secondary adults, we have got to a new level, even if as yet we do not know how to live on it...
Age 45. —
Although I feel thirty, and look but a little older, Father Time insists that I am forty-five, and, after all, forty-five is a comfortable, respectable age. ~Anne Spottswood Young, "The Sign of the Pink Rose," in The Epworth Herald, 1920
Age 45. —
Thrice fifteen summers have their foliage cast... ~Peyton Short Symmes, 1834
Age 45. —
You feel quite sorry for yourself for your fishing days are few;
Time's busy with his nippers and he's pulling out your hair—
You're ALL OF FORTY-FIVE! and aging every minute, too;
Your forehead's getting wrinkled with the furrows plowed by care.
~Joseph Morris, "Fish Stories," Songs for Fishermen, 1922
Age 45. —
Forty-five is the age of recklessness for many men, as if in defiance of the decay and death waiting with open arms in the sinister valley at the bottom of the inevitable hill. ~Joseph Conrad, Victory: An Island Story, 1914 [hashtag midlife crisis!
Age 45. —
Of course... there is hope in fulfillment of dreams and hopes and plans and ambitions after one is forty-five — or after one is sixty-five. There is always time. Years have nothing to do with life. Keep the body healthy and in good working order and forget that you are not in eternity now. ~Della Thompson Lutes, “Parents’ Problems,” reply to M.W.K., in American Motherhood, 1910
Age 45. —
I am forty-five today, my gracious!
It is time I was sobering down,
My life has been, well, say lovely,
It might make a preacher frown.
I have drank of the bowl of pleasure
And the taste sticks still on my tongue,
I have stepped to the merriest of music
And the roughest of songs I have sung...
~Old Tallow Pot, "I Am Forty-Five Today," in Railway Carmen's Journal, 1893
Age 45. —
When I was young and miserable, all change was for the better, but when you're forty-five, almost nothing can be better, so you grieve for every leaf that falls. June sails in on a warm starry night... and then summer is gone in a minute, it's fall, a reminder that we, too, are temporary and can be replaced. ~Garrison Keillor, "Who Do You Think You Are?," We Are Still Married: Stories & Letters, 1989, garrisonkeillor.com
Age 45. —
I am forty-five, my hair is grey, I have lost a tooth or two, but I have good health, and have not spent a day all round the clock in bed for more than twenty years. But I am frightened, for I feel old. Yes, really old. And I am envious of the young. Can you advise me? Has your philosophy no elixir that will restore the spring to my heart? ~Anonymous, letter to Hubert Bland, in With the Eyes of a Man, 1905
Age 45. —
I am forty-five today and I linger
At the mile post that stands on the track;
It is forward that hope points with her finger,
But I cannot help but turn and look back.
I have had my full load of troubles,
My thoughts are no longer a boy's,
And I know that the job for tomorrow
Will be to take rent to my yesterday's spree...
~Old Tallow Pot, "I Am Forty-Five Today," in Railway Carmen's Journal, 1893
Age 45. —
At sixteen I was stupid, confused, insecure and indecisive. At twenty-five I was wise, self-confident, prepossessing and assertive. At forty-five I am stupid, confused, insecure and indecisive. Who would have supposed that maturity is only a short break in adolescence? ~Jules Feiffer, 1974
Age 45. —
And now she was five-and-forty; she had always been five-and-forty; that is to say, she had never been young, for to be young you must be happy. And this was so far an advantage, that when middle-age came on her she felt no difference. ~May Sinclair, Two Sides of a Question, 1901
Age 45 & the 40s. —
There is one other delicate point I wish to speak of with reference to old age. Nature has a foolish habit of taking liberties at five-and-forty, or thereabout. I refer to the use of dioptric media which correct the diminished refracting power of the humors of the eye, — in other words, spectacles. I don't use them. All I ask is a large, fair type, a strong daylight or gas-light, and one yard of focal distance, and my eyes are good as ever. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table [a little altered
Age 46. —
Old age begins at forty-six years, according to the common opinion. ~Roman philosophers, quoted in Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, 1857 [That's the exact time I felt as if I had entered old age! Bodily inconvenienced in my late 30s, mature at 40, and old and fragile at 46.
Age 46. —
Thirty-three was considered to be the "ideal" age by medieval people, the spiritual and intellectual peak of life. Forty-six is regarded as the threshold to "old age" by medieval authors and modern osteologists alike. ~Roberta Gilchrist, Medieval Life: Archaeology and the Life Course, 2012 [paraphrased
Age 46. —
Sire, I am still young — forty-six years of age. ~Luise Mühlbach (Clara Mundt), Berlin and Sans-Souci, 1860, translated from the German by Mrs. Chapman Coleman and her daughters
Age 46. —
I am in my forty-sixth year and already nearly a decade past the better half of life.
Age 46. —
But when you are forty-six, nobody cares. There aren't any signs and celebrations. There you are, all alone, in the middle of middle age, and no one cares... When you are forty-six, your evenings promise alternatives; but most of the time, even those are routine. ~Cliff Schimmels, Winter Hunger, 1985
Age 47. —
He's the same age as I am, forty-seven. Perfect age for a mid-life crisis. ~Milly Johnson, A Summer Fling, 2010
Age 47. —
And while I don't look older than I am — forty-seven — I don't look younger either. You can see my life in every line in my face. ~“Virginia,” quoted in Guy Kettelhack, Sober and Free: Making Your Recovery Work for You, 1996
Age 47. —
At this stage of my life — at the pinnacle of my creative prowess but also at forty-seven years of age and in the eventide of my life... ~Robert Henry Wright, Jr., Ten Percent Marriage, 2006 [Emily
Age 47. —
At the age of forty-seven, which was mine then, I realised thoroughly that Fortune had no more to say to me. She is merciless towards men of a certain age. ~Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798)
Age 47. —
Swift was then about forty-seven, at an age when vanity is strongly excited by the amorous attention of a young woman. ~Samuel Johnson (1709–1784), "Swift. 1667–1745," Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets
Age 47. —
I send no condolements about the departure of your good old Father. He was ready I suppose, and had his passport made out for his Journey. Next comes our little turn to pack up and depart. To stay is well enough, but shall we be very sorry to go? What more is there in life that we haven't tried? I have just come from a beefsteak, potatoes, and bottle of Claret, all excellent but we can part from them without a very severe pang; we shall get no greater pleasures than these from this time to the end of our days. What is a greater pleasure? Gratified ambition? accumulation of money? What? Fruition of some sort of desire perhaps; when one is twenty, yes, but at 47 Venus may rise up from the sea, and I for one should hardly put on my spectacles to have a look. ~William Makepeace Thackeray, letter to Dr. John Brown, 1858 November 4th [a little altered
Age 47. —
And then I am 47: yes; and my infirmities will of course increase. To begin with my eyes. Last year I could read without spectacles, and now I can't read a line (unless held at a very odd angle) without them. What other infirmities? I can hear perfectly; I can walk as well as ever. But then will there not be the change of life? Possibly a difficult and dangerous time, but one can get over it by facing it with common sense — that it is a natural process. These curious intervals in life are the most fruitful artistically — one becomes fertilised — a little madness, and all the little illnesses. ~Virginia Woolf, diary, 1929 September 10th [a little altered
Age 47. —
I'm forty-seven now. Up to a year ago I tried deliberately to pull the wool over my eyes... so that I shouldn't see the realities of life… and I thought I was doing the right thing. But now — if you only knew! I lie awake, night after night, in sheer vexation and anger — that I let time slip by so stupidly during the years when I could have had all the things from which my age now cuts me off. ~Anton Chekhov, Dyadya Vanya, 1897, translated by Elisaveta Fen, 2007 [Voynitsky, Uncle Vanya
Age 47. —
The thing that attracts me to the upper-middle class is not any thought of pomp or glory. It's just that middle age starts later there. I have been reading a report from the University of Chicago... which says that upper-middle-class men believe that middle age starts
Age 47. —
When you're forty-seven years old, you sometimes hear a small voice inside you that says: "Just because you've reached middle age, that doesn't mean you shouldn't take on new challenges and seek new adventures. You get only one ride on this crazy carousel we call life, and by golly you should make the most of it!"
This is the voice of Satan. ~Dave Barry, "Something in the Air," in Miami Herald, 1995, reprinted in Dave Barry is from Mars and Venus, 1997, davebarry.com
Age 47. —
I now realize that the small hills you see on ski slopes are formed around the bodies of forty-seven-year-olds who tried to learn snowboarding. ~Dave Barry, "Something in the Air," in Miami Herald, 1995, reprinted in Dave Barry is from Mars and Venus, 1997, davebarry.com
Age 48. —
I am forty-eight, and I do not consider myself an old man, at all, I consider myself nearer to boyhood than to senility. ~William Saroyan, Armenians, 1971 [Knadjian
Age 48. —
In the bar, seated at tea at the nicest possible little table, drawn close up before the brightest possible little fire, was a buxom widow of somewhere about eight and forty or thereabouts... ~Charles Dickens, The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, 1836
Age 48. Women. —
No matter how long he lives, no man ever becomes as wise as the average woman of forty-eight. ~H. L. Mencken, A Little Book in C Major, 1916
Age 48. —
A thing that no one suspects, not even you, is that I am forty-eight years old
Age 48. —
Tradition says that he willed this in anger at his own fate, for he found himself dying of old age in his forties — dead at forty-eight... ~Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love: The Lives of Lazarus Long, 1973
Age 48. —
I am forty-eight years old, it is time for my life to begin. ~Barbara Wood, Soul Flame, 1987
Age 48. —
My hair, by the by, is not grey. There may be a suggestion of greyness here and there, the natural result of deep thinking... And at forty-eight — or a trifle over — one is not going down into the grave, not straight down. ~Jerome K. Jerome, They and I, 1909
Age 49. —
When you get to my age, forty-nine or fifty, and the physical energies begin to decline, you will need a little liquor now and then to tone you up. ~Unknown officer in the American Civil War, quoted by Jesse Bowman Young, “Moral Perils in Middle
Age 49. —
A man's physical prime is between the ages of thirty and
Age 49. —
I'm like a backward berry
Unripened on the vine,
For all my friends are fifty
And I'm only forty-nine...
~Ogden Nash (1902–1971), "The Calendar-Watchers, or, What's So Wonderful About Being a Patriarch?," 1952
Age 49. —
I go on as I formerly did, designing to be some time or other both rich and wise; and yet cultivate neither mind nor fortune. Do you take notice of my example, and learn the danger of delay. When I was as you are now, towering in the confidence of twenty-one, little did I suspect that I should be at forty-nine, what I now am. ~Samuel Johnson, letter to Bennet Langton, January 1759
Age 49. —
I'd like to stop at forty-nine,
But pontificate like fifty.
~Ogden Nash (1902–1971), "The Calendar-Watchers, or, What's So Wonderful About Being a Patriarch?," 1952
Age 49. —
The twelfth chakra opens at age forty-nine. This energy center channels spiritual energies found outside of the aura and is surrounded by the energetic field that regulates the linkage between the spiritual realms and the physical body. ~Cyndi Dale, The Subtle Body, 2009 [paraphrased
Ages 49–50. Women. —
I am middle-aged. Fifty is upon me. And I am faced by a grim reaper. But it is not youth I want. It is time. And there's too little left. What shall I do about it? Shall I waste these remaining years on people who bore me, squander them on employments that satisfy no desires, sacrifice them to the ideas of others? No. I have wasted hours upon hours on nothing but waiting, days upon days on routine that led nowhere, and a tally of weeks on nonsense and
I had an idea that in middle age somehow I should reach a hill and beyond it would lie a promised land. Enough merely to be climbing up. Suddenly now I realize the crown of that hill is age fifty. And I know that if there is a promised land it has got to be in front of me. If I don't find it now I never shall. So I had better face this fifty, acknowledge it is gone — whether squandered or treasured — forever, and plan what to do with this promised land, how to spend these last precious years left to me.
From the brow of that fifty hill, suddenly I am beginning to compute time. Do I wish to spend so much of it in my remaining years on the pursuit of youthful looks, on this cult of youth? Perhaps I am a miser with my years, but I must confess that I can no longer see value received from pursuing youth. It will bring me no higher price for my work. It will make my husband no fonder; for affection after fifty rests on something other than complexion. It will not add to my emotional satisfaction nor to the pleasures of my mind. No, I shall not waste any of my remaining years on the pursuit of smooth pink cheeks. Nor will I waste my time or worry with weight, counting calories, or other such psychological-gastronomic engagements!
Frankly, I do not feel the same as I did twenty years ago. Moreover, I do not want to feel the same. These new feelings — may they not be an asset instead of a liability? I will not be satisfied if my remaining years are a mere repetition of those that have gone before. I want something different. I will not spend this time in an effort to produce an illusion to myself. I will be content to look my age, to dress my age, to live my age. I will appreciate all that life has brought me. I will face fifty cheerfully.
Do not take this to mean that I am negating its challenges. Fifty does not mean freedom from family demands nor from the things that we are tied to by duty. Fifty brings no alchemy that enables one to plan one's life as one might try an uncharted sea. We will always have personal and financial limitations, and we can only alter our course according to the wheel in our hands, the craft under us, the shoals and currents around us. But what we may do is decide which direction to steer and how to get the maximum of enjoyment in the steering.
I must be economical of time. Each day must count. I must plan for the satisfaction that is possible here, now. In youth, always before us was that will-o'-the-wisp, perfection, because there was always the hope of time to reach it. That it was always to be
May the acceptance of the truth of fifty bring its own joys. No longer do I need to pretend. I may say things frankly. I can accept myself as middle-aged, and therefore enjoy myself. I can squeeze the utmost out of what I am and what I have. I can relax from the struggle. I shall no longer punish myself. Instead of competing, I can create. I may choose what I like, including the colors that please me — that do something to my brain, if not indeed to my soul — rather than attempting to express the best in taste and fashion. No longer do I need to try to take everything as it comes, but select what I want. And please understand: I am not retiring — I am attaining. ~Emily Newell Blair (1877–1951), "I Prepare to Face Fifty," 1926 [abridged
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published 1999 Feb 16
revised Feb 2016, Feb 2017
last saved 2024 Sep 8
www.quotegarden.com/ages-40-49.html