A Quote by W. Somerset Maugham

A man who is a politician at forty is a statesman at three score and ten. It is at this age, when he would be too old to be a clerk or a gardener or a police-court magistrate, that he is ripe to govern a country.

W. Somerset Maugham

Quote Topics

Age Clerk Country Court Forty Gardener Govern Magistrate Man Old Police Politician Ripe Score Statesman Ten Three Too Would Would Be

Quote Author

W. Somerset Maugham
British - Novelist
January 25, 1874 - December 16, 1965

A politician thinks of the next election; a statement of the next generation. A politician looks for the success of his party; a statesman for that of his country. The statesman wishes to steer, while the politician is satisfied to drift.

James Freeman Clarke

Twenty-three is said to be the prime of life by those who have reached so far and no farther. It shares this distinction with every age, from ten to three-score and ten.

Stella Benson

And now I am eking out my days in my corner, taunting myself with the bitter and entirely useless consolations that an intelligent man cannot seriously become anything; that only a fool can become something. Yes, sir, an intelligent nineteenth-century man must be, is morally bound to be, an essentially characterless creature; and a man of character, a man of action - an essentially limited creature. This is my conviction at the age of forty. I am forty now, and forty years - why, it is all of a lifetime, it is the deepest of old age. Living past forty is indecent, vulgar, immoral!

Fyodor Dostoevsky

A politician is a man who understands government, and it takes a politician to run a government. A statesman is a politician who's been dead 10 or 15 years.

Harry S. Truman

Until he is forty, a man is too young to marry; and after he is forty, he is too old.

Molly Elliot Seawell

A politician is a man who understands government. A statesman is a politician who's been dead for 15 years.

Harry S Truman

The difference between a politician and a statesman is that a politician thinks about the next election while the statesman think about the next generation

Hillary Clinton

Giving birth to triplets at the age of forty-three is no walk in the park, but I had little choice. I got married at the young age of forty, and both my husband, Shirish, and I were keen to start a family soon.

Farah Khan

The history of man for the nine months preceding his birth would, probably, be far more interesting and contain events of greater moment than all the three score and ten years that follow it.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I would like to live to a ripe old age and raise watermelons in Wyoming.

Lou Reed

My Bubbie lived to 104, which is probably a little too old to consider a ripe old age, because she had already started to turn. I still say she died young.

Gilbert Gottfried

Youth is too tumultuous for felicity; old age too insecure for happiness. The period most favorable to enjoyment, in a vigorous, fortunate, and generous life, is that between forty and sixty.

Christian Nestell Bovee

Those who are born of parents broken with old age, or of such as are not yet ripe or are too young, or of drunkards, soft or effeminate men, want a great and liberal ingenuity or wit.

Thomas Willis

For Age is not alone of time, or we should never see men old and bent at forty and men young at seventy-three.

Edgar Guest

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.