It was actually hard to find 30 quotes about being in your 30’s. I mean, there are a ton of sayings about being over the hill and ‘older than dirt’ at 30, but I didn’t really enjoy those so I didn’t bother listing them. If you google ‘being 30’ or look at any birthday greeting card, you’ll easily find the negatives, though.  They’re the majority…ah, we live in such an ageist society.

I ended up having to broaden my list to include more funny quotes, thought-provoking quotes, book quotes, quotes from current celebrities and inspirational speakers. That helped. Attention writers: the world needs more quotes about being 30! (Update: We actually made a coloring book with our favorite thirties quotes!) Here’s a list of my favorites in no particular order:

1. 30 is three perfect 10’s. -Anonymous
2. 30 was the best year of my life until the next year and then the next. Every year since 30 has been the best year. -Bonnidette Lantz
3. Everything I know I learned after I was thirty. -Georges Clemenceau.
4. A woman over 30 will never wake you in the middle of the night to ask, “What are you thinking?”. She doesn’t care what you think.  -Andy Rooney.
5. At 20 years of age the will reigns, at 30 the wit, at 40 the judgement. – Benjamin Franklin
6. 30 was so strange for me. I really had to come to terms with the fact that I’m now a walking, talking adult. -CS Lewis
7. I didn’t write any fiction until I was past thirty. -Grace Paley
8. Hollywood called just as I crested thirty. My novels did not and still do not interest them, but my writing ability did. -Rita Mae Brown
9. There’s an ‘Everything must go!’ emotional liquidation feel to the end of your twenties, isn’t there? What will happen if we turn thirty and we’re not ‘ready?’ You don’t feel entirely settled in any aspect of your life, even if you are on paper. -Sloane Crosley
10. Many a man who has known himself at ten forgets himself utterly between ten and thirty. – Catherine Drinker Bowen
11. At age 30, one receives strength. -Talmud
12. Thirty five is a very attractive age; London society is full of women who have of their own free choice remained thirty-five for years. -Oscar Wilde
13. “It doesn’t have to be on Valentine’s Day. It doesn’t have to be by the time you turn eighteen or thirty-three or fifty-nine. It doesn’t have to conform to whatever is usual. It doesn’t have to be kismet at once, or rhapsody by the third date.It just has to be. In time. In place. In spirit. It just has to be.” -David Levithan
14. I wish I was a woman of about thirty-six dressed in black satin with a string of pearls. -Daphne Du Maurier (Rebecca)
15. You can be gorgeous at thirty, charming at forty, and irresistible for the rest of your life. -Coco Channel
16. There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag-and never, never reading anything because you feel you ought, or because it is part of a trend or a movement. Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty-and vise versa. Don’t read a book out of its right time for you. -Doris Lessing
17. The truth is, part of me is every age. I’m a three-year-old, I’m a five-year-old, I’m a thirty-seven-year-old, I’m a fifty-year-old. I’ve been through all of them, and I know what it’s like. I delight in being a child when it’s appropriate to be a child. I delight in being a wise old man when it’s appropriate to be a wise old man. Think of all I can be! I am every age, up to my own. -Mitch Albom (Tuesdays With Morrie)
18. Thirty-nine is a sweet number. It’s thirteen times three. It’s also the sum of five prime numbers in a row – 3,5,7,11,13. And if you add the first three powers of three, 3 to the first, 3 to the second, and s to the third, you get thirty-nine. -Rick Riordin (The Maze of Bones)
19. Thirty was a big deal for me. It was the age where I reevaluated everything – how I approached life and how I thought about myself. – Amy Adams
20. I just came into my own sexuality at thirty. I don’t think it’s something you can deeply experience at 18 or any time before that. -Eva Longoria
21. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a thirty-something woman in possession of a satisfying career and fabulous hairdo must be in want of very little. -Shannon Hale (Austenland)
22. Travel is “Maybe I don’t have to do it that way when I get back home.” It’s nostalgia for studying abroad that one semester. Travel is realizing that “age thirty” should be shed of its goddamn stigma.” -Nick Miller
23. I was thirty-seven years old and still discovering who I was.” -Julia Child
24. Some we know to be dead even though they walk among us; some are not yet born though they go through all the forms of life; other are hundreds of years old though they call themselves thirty-six. -Virginia Woolf
25. They were all in their early thirties. An age at which it is sometimes hard to admit that what you are living is your life. -Alice Munro
26. I prefer sinners and madmen, who can learn, who can change, who can teach-or people like myself, if I may say so, who are not afraid to eat a lobster alone as they take on their shoulders the monumental weight of thirty years. -James Baldwin
27. When I turned 30, I was done with Thousand Island dressing. I have moved on to Island Number 1001.
 -Jarod Kintz
28. The Master said, At fifteen I set my heart upon learning.
    At thirty, I had planted my feet firm upon the ground.
    At forty, I no longer suffered from perplexities.
    At fifty, I knew what were the biddings of Heaven.
    At sixty, I heard them with docile ear.
    At seventy, I could follow the dictates of my own heart; for what I desired no longer overstepped the boundaries of right. -Confucious
29. Basically, I realized I was living in that awful stage of life between twenty-six to and thirty-seven known as stupidity. It’s when you don’t know anything, not even as much as you did when you were younger, and you don’t even have a philosophy about all the things you don’t know, the way you did when you were twenty or would again when you were thirty-eight. -Lorrie Moore
30. She didn’t feel thirty. But then again again, what was being thirty supposed to feel like? When she was younger, thirty seemed so far away, she thought that a woman of that age would be so wise and knowledgeable, so settled in her life with a husband and children and a career. She had none of those things. She still felt as clueless as she had felt when she was twenty, only with a few more gray hairs and crow’s feet around her eyes.- Cecilia Ahern

We’ve recently (July 2017) made a coloring book with all 30 of these quotes! If you’re looking for a gift for your thirty-something year old friends, the book is beautiful, fun, and a perfect birthday present! Here’s a link to the 30 Quotes About the 30’s coloring book. And this is a link to a black background version of the book. Enjoy!