Famous quotes containing the word forty:
“If forty million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one, but the wise man is foolish to give them the lie.”
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1966)
“To value the tradition of, and the discipline required for, the craft of fiction seems today pointless. The real Arcadia is a lonely, mountainous plateau, overbouldered and strewn with the skulls of sheep slain for vellum and old bitten pinions that tried to be quills. It’s forty rough miles by mule from Athens, a city where there’s a fair, a movie house, cotton candy.”
—Alexander Theroux (b. 1940)
“Punishment followed on a grand scale. For ten days, an unconscionable length of time, my father blessed the palms of his child’s outstretched, four-year-old hands with a sharp switch. Seven strokes a day on each hand; that makes one hundred forty strokes and then some. This put an end to the child’s innocence.”
—Christoph Meckel (20th century)