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:
Nought treads so silent as the foot of Time;
Hence we mistake our autumn for our prime.
Time's fatal wings do ever forward fly;
To every day we live, a day we die.
See Time has touched me gently in his race,
And left no odious furrows in my face.
To the true teacher, time's hour-glass should still run gold-dust.
No one is so old that he does not think he could live another year.
Old age is not so fiery as youth, but when once provoked cannot be appeased.
Old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.
Give me a staff of honor for mine age,
But not a sceptre to control the world.
We feel and experience ourselves to be eternal. (Latin: "Sentimus experimurque nos æternos esse.")
For the things seen are temporary, but the things unseen are everlasting.