Turning 40 is definitely a milestone. Though not always one that people are excited about. Are you looking for happy 40th birthday quotes, wishes and sayings? You’ve come to the right place! Whether it’s your own birthday or a friend’s, these turning 40 quotes can help, especially if you’re at loss for words.
Scroll through to find the best quote or 40th birthday message.
Happy 40th Birthday Quotes
“As you get older, three things happen: The first is your memory goes, and I can’t remember the other two.” — Norman Wisdom
“Today is the oldest you have been, and the youngest you will ever be. Make the most of it!” – Nicky Gumbel
“To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am.” — Bernard Baruch
At twenty years of age, the will reigns; at thirty, the wit; and at forty, the judgement. — Benjamin Franklin
“Wisdom doesn’t necessarily come with age. Sometimes age just shows up all by itself.” – Tom Wilson
“Your age isn’t you. Use today to feel your best, celebrate and be your very happiest.” — M. Rivers
“Everything I know I learned after I was 30.” — Georges Clemenceau
“Life begins at 40.”—Walter Pitkin
“Life really does begin at forty. Up until then, you are just doing research.” — Carl Gustav Jung
“The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age.” — Lucille Ball
“Age is a case of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it don’t matter.” — Satchel Paige
“Middle age is when you still believe you’ll feel better in the morning.” — Bob Hope
“Inside every older person is a younger person wondering what the hell happened.” — Cora Harvey Armstrong
“Every birthday is a gift. Every day is a gift.” — Aretha Franklin
“When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice.” — Cherokee proverb
“You don’t get older, you get better.” — Shirley Bassey
“May you receive many gifts, and may your day be joyous, and best of all may you be surrounded by family and friends. May all you wish for come true.” — Theodore W. Higginsworth
“Let us never know what old age is. Let us know the happiness time brings, not count the years.” — Ausonius
“Another year comes to a close, and another begins. May the coming year be one that will be filled with laughter of friends, love of family, and the life that you dream of.” — Catherine Pulsifer
“Every year on your birthday, you get a chance to start new.” — Sammy Hagar
Funny 40th Birthday Quotes
“You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred.” — Woody Allen
“The old believe everything; the middle-aged suspect everything; the young know everything.” — Oscar Wilde
“I intend to live forever. So far, so good.” — Steven Wright
“Please don’t retouch my wrinkles. It took me so long to earn them.” — Anna Magnani
“I still think of myself as I was 25 years ago. Then I look in a mirror and see an old bastard and I realize it’s me.” – Dave Allen
“Middle age is when your classmates are so gray and wrinkled and bald they don’t recognize you.” — Bennett Cerf
“Aging seems to be the only available way to live a long life.” – Kitty Collins
“There are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents, and only one for birthday presents, you know.” — Lewis Carroll
“You are only young once, but you can be immature for a lifetime.” – Germaine Greer
“Handmade presents are scary because they reveal that you have too much free time.” — Douglas Coupland
“Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.” – Mark Twain
“I think all this talk about age is foolish. Every time I’m one year older, everyone else is too.” — Gloria Swanson
“Why party like it is 1999 when you can party like it is your birthday?” — Prince
“Birthdays are good for you. Statistics show that the people who have the most live the longest.” — Larry Lorenzoni
Short Turning 40 Quotes
“My life is better with every year of living it.” — Rachel Maddow
“Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you’ve got to start young.” — Fred Astaire
“We turn not older with years, but newer every day.” – Emily Dickinson
“Just remember, once you’re over the hill you begin to pick up speed.” — Charles Schulz
“A birth-date is a reminder to celebrate the life as well as to update the life.” — Amit Kalantri
“The way I see it, you should live every day like it’s your birthday.” — Paris Hilton
“Whatever with the past has gone, the best is always yet to come.” — Lucy Larcom
“Every age can be enchanting, provided you live within it.” — Brigitte Bardot
“There is still no cure for the common birthday.” — John Glenn
“You were born an original. Don’t die a copy.” — John Mason
“To me a birthday means celebrating the presence of an individual in our lives.” – Meena Bajaj
“We are always the same age inside.” – Gertrude Stein
“Last year my birthday cake looked like a prairie fire.” – Rodney Dangerfield
“We grow neither better nor worse as we get old, but more like ourselves.” — Bernard Baruch
“Celebrate your journey of life.” — Lailah Gifty Akita
“Today you are you! That is truer than true! There is no one alive who is you-er than you!” — Dr. Seuss
“Go, go, go, go go, go, go, shawty. It’s your birthday. We gon’ party like it’s yo birthday.” — 50 Cent
“Youth is the gift of nature, but age is the work of art.” — Garson
40th Birthday Quotes for Women
“A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman’s birthday but never remembers her age.” — Robert Frost
“When a man has a birthday, he takes a day off. When a woman has a birthday, she takes at least three years off.” – Joan Rivers
“Like many women my age, I am 28 years old.” — Mary Schmich
“Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you are aboard, there is nothing you can do about it.” — Golda Meir
“The older you get the better you get, unless you are a banana.” – Betty White
“The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.” — Oprah Winfrey
“I believe that no matter what condition you are in when someone close to your heart remembers your birthday and wishes you a happy birthday, you feel happy.” – A. Singla
“Success is like reaching an important birthday and finding you’re exactly the same.” — Audrey Hepburn
“May you live as long as you want and never want as long as you live.” – Irish blessing
“The best way to remember your wife’s birthday is to forget it once.” — H. V. Prochnow
“A friend never defends a husband who gets his wife an electric skillet for her birthday.” – Erma Bombeck
“Life seems to fade our memory, so on this birthday I will forget yours if you forget mine!” – Kate Summers
40th Birthday Quotes for Men
“Old age deprives the intelligent man only of qualities useless to wisdom.” – Joseph Joubert
“No wise man ever wished to be younger.” — Jonathan Swift
“Each ten years of a man’s life has its own fortunes, its own hopes, its own desires.” — Goethe
“You’ve heard of the three ages of man—youth, age, and “you are looking wonderful.” — Francis Cardinal Spellman
“Few women admit their age. Few men act theirs.” — John Glenn
“Men are like wine: some turn to vinegar, but the best improve with age.” — Pope John XXIII
“If we could be twice young and twice old we could correct all our mistakes.” – Euripides
“The first hundred years are the hardest.” — Wilson Mizner
“I was brought up to respect my elders, so now I don’t have to respect anybody.” — George Burns
“Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be.” — Robert Browning
“Live long and prosper.” — Mr. Spock
“Let us respect gray hairs, especially our own.” — J. P. Sears
“Age is a high price to pay for maturity.” — Tom Stoppard
“Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you have not committed.” – Anthony Powell
“Live not one’s life as though one had a thousand years, but live each day as the last.” – Marcus Aurelius
“They say it’s your birthday. We’re gonna have a good time. I’m glad it’s your birthday. Happy birthday to you.” – The Beatles
“I wish people would stop talking about my birthday.” – George Bernard Shaw
- “Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears.” — John Lennon
- “A birthday is not a day to fear. It is a day to celebrate and look forward to the coming year.” —Byron Pulsifer
- “How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?” — Satchel Paige
- “Cherish all your happy moments; they make a fine cushion for old age.” — Booth Tarkington
- “No great thing is created suddenly.” – Epictetus
- “Today you have added another candle of knowledge and wisdom to your life. May it give you the power to enlighten the whole world. On your birthday, I wish you joy and happiness.” – Debasish Mridha
- “And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.” — Abraham Lincoln
- “Our birthdays are feathers in the broad wings of time.” – Jean Paul Richter
- “Most of us can remember a time when a birthday – especially if it was one’s own – brightened the world as if a second sun has risen.” — Robert Staughton Lynd
- “Don’t regret another birthday, the good news is that you are alive and can celebrate it.” – Catherine Pulsifer
- “Youth has no age.” — Pablo Picasso
“You were born and with you endless possibilities, very few ever to be realized. It’s okay. Life was never about what you could do, but what you would do.” — Richelle E. Goodrich
“In other words, live vicariously, beautifully, and excitingly, discover, love, dare and act as there is nothing to lose.” — Andy Hertz
“Birthdays are inevitable, beautiful and very particular moments in our lives! Moments that bring precious memories back, celebrate the present times and give hope for the future.” — Babe Arish
“To know how to grow old is the masterwork of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.” — Henri Frederic Amiel
“We do not remember days, we remember moments.” – Cesare Pavese
“From our birthday, until we die, is but the winking of an eye.” — William Butler Yeats
“All the world is birthday cake, so take a piece, but not too much.” — George Harrison
“Our wrinkles are our medals of the passage of life. They are what we have been through and who we want to be.” — Lauren Hutton
“There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.” – George Santayana
“Your birthday is the beginning of your own personal new year. Your first birthday was a beginning, and each new birthday is a chance to begin again, to start over, to take a new grip on life.” — Wilfred Peterson
“A birthday is like a new year and my wish for you, is a great year full of happiness and sunshine!” — Catherine Pulsifer
“Birthdays come but once a year, celebrate and be of good cheer.” — Robert Rivers
“Because time itself is like a spiral, something special happens on your birthday each year: The same energy that God invested in you at birth is present once again.” — Menachem Mendel Schneerson
“To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent – that is to triumph over old age.” — Thomas Bailey Aldrich
“Each new year of life added to your past, changing the way you viewed every new day, influencing how you reacted to everything from the simplest daily routines to complex events touching you, your family, and the world you lived in.” — Paul Snyder
“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” — George Bernard Shaw
“Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive.” – Elbert Hubbard
“A child whose birthday is coming up is so excited, they count down the days. But as we get older we seem to lose the excitement. We need to rethink and be happy we have reached another birthday.” — Theodore W. Higginsworth
“A birthday is just another day where you go to work and people give you love. Age is just a state of mind, and you are as old as you think you are. You have to count your blessings and be happy.” — Abhishek Bachchan
“The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been.” — Madeleine L’Engle
“Don’t just count your years, make your years count.” – George Meredith
“Today you are another year older, and we know how fast time flies as we get older, therefore, live each day and be happy!” – Kate Summers
“Let us celebrate the occasion with wine and sweet words.” — Plautus
“We should celebrate every year that we made it through and every year that we’re happier and healthier.” — Ellen DeGeneres
Quotes for 40th Birthday Cake
“Birthdays are a great time to stop and appreciate gravity. Sure, it makes things sag as you get older, but it also keeps your cake from flying all over the room, so you don’t have to chase it.” – Greg Tamblyn
“Why is a birthday cake the only food you can blow on and spit on and everybody rushes to get a piece?” – Bobby Kelton
“Birthdays are nature’s way of telling us to eat more cake.” — Edward Morykwas
“Put candles in a cake, it’s a birthday cake. Put candles in a pie, and somebody’s drunk in the kitchen.” – Jim Gaffigan
“You know you’re getting old when you get that one candle on the cake. It’s like, ‘See if you can blow this out.’” — Jerry Seinfeld
“I like birthday cake. It’s so symbolic. It’s a tempting symbol to load with something more complicated than just ‘Happy birthday!’ because it’s this emblem of childhood and a happy day.” — Aimee Bender
“My policy on cake is pro having it and pro eating it.” – Boris Johnson
“You know you’re getting old when the candles cost more than the cake.” — Bob Hope
“When the candles on your cake burn down before they are all lit you know you are getting up there.” – Catherine Pulsifer
“Let them eat cake.” — Marie Antoinette
“For me, the end of childhood came when the number of candles on my birthday cake no longer reflected my age, around 19 or 20. From then on, each candle came to represent an entire decade.” — Yotam Ottolenghi
“Cakes are special. Every birthday, every celebration ends with something sweet, a cake, and people remember. It’s all about the memories.” — Buddy Valastro
Happy 40th Birthday Wishes
- “Count your life by smiles, not tears. Count your age by friends, not years. Happy 40th birthday!”
- “A wish for you on your birthday, whatever you ask may you receive, whatever you seek may you find, whatever you wish may it be fulfilled on your birthday and always. Happy birthday!”
- “You are only young once, but you can be immature for a lifetime. Happy 40th birthday!”
- “May the joy that you have spread in the past come back to you on this day. Wishing you a very happy 40th birthday!”
- “May you be gifted with life’s biggest joys and never-ending bliss. After all, you yourself are a gift to earth, so you deserve the best. Happy birthday.”
- “Count not the candles…see the lights they give. Count not the years, but the life you live. Wishing you a wonderful time ahead. Happy 40th birthday.”
- “Turning 40 is a piece of cake and a few candles.”
- “Your birthday is the first day of another 365-day journey. Be the shining thread in the beautiful tapestry of the world to make this year the best ever. Enjoy the ride.”
- “Happy birthday! May your Facebook wall be filled with messages from people you never talk to.”
- “You’re older today than yesterday but younger than tomorrow, happy 40th birthday!”
- “Older? Definitely. Wiser?…Mmm debatable. Happy Birthday!”
- “Cheers on your birthday. One step closer to adult underpants.”
- “Happy Birthday! You know, you don’t look that old. But then, you don’t look that young, either.”
- “Don’t get all weird about getting older! Our age is merely the number of years the world has been enjoying us!”
- “Just wanted to be the first one to wish you happy birthday so I can feel superior to your other well-wishers. So, happy birthday!”
- “Congratulations on being even more experienced. I’m not sure what you learned this year, but every experience transforms us into the people we are today. Happy 40th birthday!”
40th Birthday Messages
- “Age is but a number that you don’t have to reflect on the outside.”
- “Turning 40 is a piece of cake and a few extra candles.”
- “Yesterday is gone, tomorrow is not here, so live today and enjoy the year.”
- “With age comes wisdom…and wrinkles.”
- “There were a lot of famous people born on your birthday. Too bad you’re not one of them.”
- “If your candles cost more than your cake, then definitely you are getting older.”
- “You’re 14,600 days old, but who’s counting?”
- “You’re like a fine wine, you keep getting better with age.”
- “Time to start crossing things off that bucket list.”
- “Every year of life is a gift, even 40.”
- “A birthday is a day to celebrate your achievements, your accomplishments, and your future.”
- “40 is fun, fabulous, and absolutely fantastic. It’s your time in the sun.”
- “Everything you have worked for begins to fall into place when you turn 40.”
- “Another birthday means your life journey is incomplete. May your path be paved with success and guided by love.”
- “Best wishes on your 40th birthday. I’m so proud to have you as a friend… even if you are old.”
- “Just be grateful you’re not forty in dog years.”
- “You are definitely forty if you notice that all your sentences start from ‘When I was younger…’.”
- “You have accomplished so much these past 4 decades and so many more opportunities as headed your way.”
- “Look forward to all that this next decade has to hold.”
- “Happy Birthday to someone who’s Talented, Terrific, Tremendous, and Top-notch! Welcome to your four T’s!”
- “See age as the gift that it is and you will always be grateful on your birthday.”
- “Let this birthday bring peace to your soul and happiness to your heart.”
- “Life is a book and your forties are the chapters when it all starts making sense.”
- Look forward to all that this next decade has to hold.
- You have accomplished so much these past 3 decades and so many more opportunities as headed your way.
- Take a deep breath and step on through. This is your new chapter.
- At least you’re not as old as you will be next year.
- Don’t get all weird about getting older! Our age is merely the number of years the world has been enjoying us!
- A wish for you on your birthday, whatever you ask may you receive, whatever you seek may you find, whatever you wish may it be fulfilled on your birthday and always. Happy birthday!
- See age as the gift that it is and you will always be grateful on your birthday.
- Time to start crossing things off that bucket list.
40th Birthday Sayings
- “Life’s milestones are not supposed to be counted, they’re supposed to be celebrated.”
- “Take a deep breath and step on through. This is your new chapter.”
- “Forget the past. Look forward to the future. For the best things are yet to come.”
- “The older you get, the older I feel. So please stop getting older.”
- “At least you’re not as old as you will be next year.”
- “You don’t look a day over 29!”
- “May your makeup conceal your wrinkles, and may your hair dye not fade.”
- “It’s great to have a friend to grow old with… glad you’re first.”
- “There is still so much life to be lived at the ripe age of 40.”
- “Who said you’re done living life at 40? It’s merely just begun.”
- “39 was so last year. Happy Birthday!”
- “Today, you’re a little more beautiful, smart, witty, and awesome. You happen to be a little older, too.”
- “The candles on your cake remind me of the encouraging light you shine on all those around you.”
- “40 never looked so good!”
- “Sure, your 30s are over. Good riddance, I say. The 40s are going to be so much better…in every way.”
- “Turning 40 is not the end of your story. It’s a fresh start.”
- “Wrinkles are tally marks of our birthdays. Here’s to another one!”
- “You’re just as good looking as two 20-year-olds.”
- “Welcome to 40, an age when you’re still young at heart, but other body parts are starting to falter.”
- “They say 40 is the new 30. However, it should be noted that they often lie.”
- “No one holds a candle to you, especially on your birthday. You already have enough candles on your cake as it is.”
- “I hate to call you the F word, but… you’re forty!”
- “Congratulations to your 21 years (with 19 years of experience). Happy 40th Birthday!”
- “Happy 39th birthday for the second year in a row.”
- “The first 40 years of childhood are always the hardest.”
- “40 is when your body gives your brain a list of things it’s not going to do anymore.”
- “No matter how hard it is to get out of bed, let 40 be the year you conquer it all.”
- “Strive to be a 40 year old that makes people go, ‘I wanna be like that when I turn forty’.”
- “40 and Fabulous!”
- “FORTY – Flirty, Optimistic, Risky, Teasing and Youthful.”
- “Don’t worry, I’ll still tell people you’re 39.”
- “Your forties are just four you.”
Well, there you have it! Hopefully, we were able to help you find the best 40th birthday wish or 40th birthday saying you were looking for.
Now get out there and celebrate 40!
About the Author
Laynni Locke
I am Laynni Locke, a Canadian writer, reader and traveller with a passion for sharing life’s moments on social media. Keeping friends and family in the loop of our lives though photos and videos has become an essential activity for most.
And it doesn’t matter if you are travelling, celebrating a special occasion or just appreciating day-to-day life, when you take that perfect photo you are going to need the perfect caption or quote before you share it. Which is why we started Routinely Shares, providing comprehensive lists of quotes and captions to cover every occasion, adventure or loved one.
With extensive experience as a travel writer, social media specialist and grant writer, I have made it my mission to curate the best and easiest to use lists for your next post.
