Time shall unfold what plighted cunning hides;
Who cover faults, at last shame them derides.
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, as he passes us, has a dove's wing,
Unsoil'd, and swift, and of a silken sound.
Old age deprives the intelligent man only of qualities useless to wisdom.
There is an old poor man
Oppressed with two weak evils, age and hunger.
Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else.
Get leave to work
In this world,—'tis the best you get at all.
He that well his warke beginneth
The rather a good ende he winneth.
One thing alone not even God can do,
To make undone whatever hath been done.
Now that I've met you,
Would you object to
Never seeing each other again?