When Youth and Pleasure meet
To chase the glowing Hours with flying feet.
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:
The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decay'd,
Lets in new light through chinks that Time has made.
And let its meaning permeate
Whatever comes, This too shall pass away.
Set is the sun of my years;
And over a few poor ashes,
I sit in my darkness and tears.
Nowher so besy a man as he ther was,
And yet he semed bisier than he was.
By ignoring the past, we are encouraged to repeat its mistakes.