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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:

The hope lives on age after age,
Earth with its beauty might be won
For labor as a heritage,
For this has Ireland lost a son.

George William Russell To the Memory of Some I knew Who are Dead and Who Loved Ireland (1917)

We’re going to see an inflation uptick, and we’re going to see a weaker labor market as a result of all that has already been done.

Natasha Sarin

What I know at sixty, I knew as well at twenty. Forty years of a long, a superfluous, labor of verification.

Emil Cioran The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Ah, what heights of contempt I was capable of in those days! Now, in old age, I have largely lost that faculty, and I miss it, for it was passion of a sort.

John Banville The Untouchable (1997)

The labor and delivery ward needed to have a false eye-lash policy

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Zikora (2020)

On Marx’s view an individual is flourishing when … he labors freely, meaning that work is an end-in-itself, and not merely a means to “earn a living.”

Brian Leiter

It is only by labor, incessant labor, in season and out of season, that we can create such a public sentiment as we need

Abby Kelley Foster The Overthrow of Slavery (1863)

How poor is the memory of those right wing leaders that are blind to reason — who refuse to see that the interests of labor and the people are one

Luisa Moreno Address to California CIO (1949)

I'd build a wall. In fact, I'd hire illegal immigrants to build the wall. And throw out the illegals who are here. … It's cheap labor.

Ann Coulter

At any given time, if you live long enough, old age catches you...the only choices we have in life are either the impairment of old age or early death.

Rosa Montero Interview with rain taxi (2017)

"I went to the labor office to submit my maternity leave papers, "Two men there told me to wait outside while they handled it for me."

Chibesa Kankasa

There’s no shortcut in this sport. I do not support doping, and I never will. If you want to enjoy the fruits of your labor, you must do it right

Edwin Soi

Reforming the hukou system... would allow the flow of talent across regions... improve... allocation of labor... [and] reduce regional disparities.

Keyu Jin The New China Playbook (2023)

They still had the last mile to go, but they were directionally there. The labor market was strong. And then President Trump took office.

Natasha Sarin

Madness. Old age is a massacre. No place for sissies. No place for love songs. No place for dreaming. No place for dreaming erotic dreams

Sarah Ladipo Manyika Like A Mule Bringing Ice Cream To The Sun (2016)

Don’t Mistake Old Age for Longevity, Be Careful of What You Do in Your Youth

Kanayo O. Kanayo

Remember that time slurs over everything, let all deeds fade, blurs all writings and kills all memories. Except are only those which dig into the hearts of men by love.

Aristotle Disputed

What a sublime doctrine it is, that goodness cherished now is eternal life already entered on!

William Ellery Channing Attributed Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

A teacher affects eternity: he can never tell where his influence stops.

Hans Hofmann Misattributed

Nothing can be done at once hastily and prudently.

Publilius Syrus Disputed

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