Aging & Wisdom Quote by W. Somerset Maugham

A Maugham jab that lands because it flips the expected insult: youth isn’t the problem, it’s premature old age. The line pretends to scold “young writers,” then reveals the real target is their temperament - cautious, respectable, already embalmed in other people’s rules. “In their sixties” isn’t a birth certificate; it’s a posture. He’s mocking the kind of debut author who writes like they’re protecting a pension: tidy sentences, approved subjects, safe emotions, the literary equivalent of dressing for a job you don’t have yet.

The intent is partly aesthetic, partly social. Maugham came up in a culture where the gatekeepers prized polish and propriety, and he made a career out of being readable, worldly, and unsentimental - successful enough to be resented, clear-eyed enough to notice how quickly writers internalize the tastes of editors, critics, and “serious” society. The subtext is: you can be young and already colonized by prestige. You can produce work that’s technically competent and spiritually ancient.

As a playwright, Maugham also understood timeliness. Theater punishes stiffness; an audience hears fear. So “sixties” doubles as stage direction: loosen up, take the risk, let the work breathe in public. It’s wit with a warning - the fastest way to fail at being new is to write as if you’re already being judged by posterity.