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:
Time steals on and escapes us, like the swift river that glides on with rapid stream.
Day follows on the murkiest night, and, when the time comes, the latest fruits will ripen.
No time is too short for the wicked to injure their neighbors.
We hope to grow old and we dread old age; that is to say, we love life and we flee from death.
Eternity gives nothing back of what one leaves out of the minutes.
In the great inconstancy and crowd of events, nothing is certain except the past.
I would like to offer one short poem you can recite from time to time, while breathing and smiling
Do not think
I’ve reached where I am now
by slipping like a landslide
or evaporating like a cloud.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But an old age serene and bright,
And lovely as a Lapland night,
Shall lead thee to thy grave.