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:
No spring, nor summer beauty hath such grace,
As I have seen in one autumnal face.
Endure the hardships of your present state,
Live, and reserve yourselves for better fate.
Growing old is no more than a bad habit which a busy man has no time to form.
Age too shines out: and, garrulous, recounts the feats of youth.
Turn money into time – especially important for people with kids.
Now I was stuck and could feel the tide of years suddenly beginning to rise around me.
Time is the school in which we learn, Time is the fire in which we burn.
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of eternity.
All my life I've been taught how to die, but no one ever taught me how to grow old.