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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.

Random quote on Retirement

Most quoted on retirement:

It seems only the old are able to sit next to one another and not say anything and still feel content. The young, brash and impatient, must always break the silence. It is a waste, for silence is pure. Silence is holy. It draws people together because only those who are comfortable with each other can sit without speaking. This is the great paradox.

Nicholas Sparks The Notebook (1996)

For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts.

T. S. Eliot

The spiritual man is not conscious of time, once he is separated from the physical body. Time is the sequential registration by the brain of states of awareness, and of progressive contacts with phenomena. There is no such thing as time on the inner planes, as humanity understands it. There are only cycles of activity or of non-activity.

Alice Bailey The Rays and the Initiations (1960)

Brothers and sisters, is that the time is short. From now on those who have wives should live as if they do not; 30 those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not; those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep; 31 those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away.

Paul of Tarsus

My way of life
Is fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf,
And that which should accompany old age,
As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have; but, in their stead,
Curses not loud, but deep, mouth-honor breath,
Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not.

William Shakespeare Macbeth (1605)

We might better read the entire life cycle as a division of labor, with larvae as feeding and growing stages, and the adult as a short-lived reproductive machine. In this sense, we could well view the adult fly's day as the larva's clever and transient device for making a new generation of truly fundamental feeders.

Stephen Jay Gould Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

But if one will wholly apply himself to the making of Bows and Arrows, whilst another provides Food, a third builds Huts, a fourth makes Garments, and a fifth Utensils, they not only become useful to one another, but the Callings and Employments themselves will in the same Number of Years receive much greater Improvements, than if all had been promiscuously followed by every one of the Five.

Bernard Mandeville

For the first time, I am ashamed to be a German.

Wilhelm II, German Emperor

You are fifty years old and would worship a day[old statue!

Abraham

The sky itself is the eighth color of the rainbow, spread over the whole sky for us, all the time.

Kim Stanley Robinson Galileo's Dream (2009)

Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space.

Margaret Atwood Cat's Eye (1988)

It is not enough to be in the right place at the right time. You should also have an open mind at the right time.

Paul Erdős My Brain Is Open : The Mathematical Journeys of Paul Erdos (1998)

God buries his workmen, but carries on his work.

Charles Wesley

There is no immortality that is not built on friendship and work done with care.

Robin Sloan Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (2012)

Every age needs men who will redeem the time by living with a vision of the things that are to be.

Adlai Stevenson II What I Think (1956)

People here argue about religion interminably, but it appears that they are competing at the same time to see who can be the least devout.

Montesquieu Lettres Persanes (1721)

It is all a matter of time scale. An event that would be unthinkable in a hundred years may be inevitable in a hundred million.

Carl Sagan Cosmos (1980)

I don't think time matters much if you're a Breaker.

Stephen King Hearts in Atlantis (1999)

My view is that this is the beginning, not the end, of what is going to be a journey that takes some time.

Barack Obama

Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.

Margaret Atwood The Handmaid’s Tale (1985)

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