Retirement Quotes
Retirement does not have a Wikiquote page, so this one borrows from three that do: work, time and age. The result suits a card or a send-off speech better than a close reading. There are lines about labour well done, about the years running on, and about being old that are rueful more often than sentimental.
As elsewhere on the site, each quote links to its own page with the source and the editors’ notes. If you want to put a name under a line in a card, check for a flag first.
Most quoted on retirement:
Heaven makes sport of human affairs, and the present hour gives no sure promise of the next.
In the hour's short space comes swift death, or joyful victory.
Old age is a tyrant who forbids, upon pain of death, all the pleasures of youth.
May I not so much be lost as would have
No time to look at myself
Ever.
We do not count a man's years until he has nothing else to count.
Each natural agent works but to this end,—
To render that it works on like itself.
Our image of happiness is indissolubly bound up with the image of the past.
I am the angel of reality,
Seen for a moment standing in the door.
Who well lives, long lives; for this age of ours
Should not be numbered by years, daies, and hours.
Time was the enemy never to be conquered and there were no reserves to help stay the tide.
Time, like a flurry of wild rain,
Shall drift across the darkened pane!