When I was young, I was amazed at Plutarch’s statement that the elder Cato began at the age of eighty to learn Greek. I am amazed no longer. Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.

—W. Somerset Maugham

learning curiousity age youth Greek ambition

About W. Somerset Maugham

Portrait of W. Somerset Maugham

William Somerset Maugham ( MAWM; 25 January 1874 – 16 December 1965) was an English writer, known for his plays, novels and short stories.

More quotations from W. Somerset Maugham

There was an immeasurable distance between the quick and the dead: they did not seem to belong to the same species; and it was strange to think that but a little while before they had spoken and moved and eaten and laughed.

—W. Somerset Maugham

Follow your inclinations with due regard to the policeman round the corner.

—W. Somerset Maugham

The dead look so terribly dead when they're dead.

—W. Somerset Maugham

Charm and nothing but charm at last grows a little tiresome. It's a relief then to deal with a man who isn't quite so delightful but a little more sincere.

—W. Somerset Maugham

It is cruel to discover one's mediocrity only when it is too late.

—W. Somerset Maugham

More quotations tagged with “ambition”

Routine in an intelligent person is a sign of ambition.

intelligence ambition routine

Virtue is choked with foul ambition.

—William Shakespeare

Lowliness is young ambition's ladder,
Whereto the climber-upward turns his face;
But when he once attains the upmost round,
He then unto the ladder turns his back,
Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
By which he did ascend

—William Shakespeare

I hold ambition of so light a quality that is is but a shadow's shadow.

—William Shakespeare

I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself, and falls on the other.

—William Shakespeare

History

4 May 2013 Added