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:
Six hours in sleep, in law's grave study six,
Four spend in prayer, the rest on Nature fix.
We shall forget by day, except
The moments when we choose to play
The imagined pine, the imagined jay.
All that we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.
Swift speedy Time, feathered with flying hours,
Dissolves the beauty of the fairest brow.
And write whatever Time shall bring to pass
With pens of adamant on plates of brass.
Time, eftsoon will tumble
All of us together like leaves in a gust,
Humbled indeed down into the dust.
Time is lord of thee:
Thy wealth, thy glory, and thy name are his.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow.
Therefore fear not to assay
To gather, ye that may,
The flower that this day
Is fresher than the next.
Oh, for one hour of blind old Dandolo,
Th' octogenarian chief, Byzantium's conquering foe!