“"I wish to become a teacher of the Truth."
"Are you prepared to be ridiculed, ignored and starving till you are forty-five?"
"I am. But tell me: What will happen after I am forty-five?"
"You will have grown accustomed to it."”

“"Nasruddin, four years ago you were here, and I asked that time also what is your age, and you told me forty years. Now this is absolutely inconsistent – how can you still be forty?"
Nasruddin said, "I am a man of consistency. Once forty, I remain forty always. When I have answered once, I have answered forever! You cannot lead me astray. I am forty, and whenever you ask you will get the same answer."”

“I am resolved to grow fat, and look young till forty.”

“Her handwriting in these pencilled jottings, made forty-five years ago, is exactly as it is today: this makes me suspect, when I am not with her, that she is a closet intellectual.”

“When your life has been spent in one war after another for forty-five years, you have to be pretty handy to survive.”

“If you want me to give you a two-hour presentation, I am ready today. If you want only a five-minute speech, it will take me two weeks to prepare.”

“…I was born lazy. I am no lazier now than I was forty years ago, but that is because I reached the limit forty years ago. You can't go beyond possibility.”

“If I give you a forty five percent chance at lethal injection, a fifty percent chance at the electric chair, and a five percent chance for escape which are you going to vote for? The electric chair, because you're likely to win?”

“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.”

“I am not telling you to embrace the truth,
I am telling you to embrace yourself.”