Retirement Quotes (8 quotes)
[Retirement] is a dangerous experiment, and generally ends in either drunkenness or hypochrondriacism.
Letter to Robert Darwin, October 1792. Quoted in Desmond King-Hele, Erasmus Darwin: A Life of Unequalled Achievement (1999), 274.
Doctor Thomas …
Said, “Cancer’s a funny thing.
Nobody knows what the cause is,
Though some pretend they do;
It’s like some hidden assassin
Waiting to strike at you.
Childless women get it.
And men when they retire;
It’s as if there had to be some outlet
For their foiled creative fire.”
Said, “Cancer’s a funny thing.
Nobody knows what the cause is,
Though some pretend they do;
It’s like some hidden assassin
Waiting to strike at you.
Childless women get it.
And men when they retire;
It’s as if there had to be some outlet
For their foiled creative fire.”
In 'Miss Gee', in Collected Shorter Poems, 1930-1944 (1950), 242.
HIBERNATE, v. i. To pass the winter season in domestic seclusion. There have been many singular popular notions about the hibernation of various animals. Many believe that the bear hibernates during the whole winter and subsists by mechanically sucking its paws. It is admitted that it comes out of its retirement in the spring so lean that it has to try twice before it can cast a shadow.
The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce (1911), Vol. 7, The Devil's Dictionary, 137.
My main reason for not relaxing into contented retirement is that like most of you I am deeply concerned about the probability of massively harmful climate change and the need to do something about it now.
From a talk at Geological Society of London, 'Conjectures of an Independent Scientist' (5 May 2011). As quoted on jameslovelock.org website.
My second fixed idea is the uselessness of men above sixty years of age, and the incalculable benefit it would be in commercial, political, and in professional life, if as a matter of course, men stopped work at this age.
In farewell address, Johns Hopkins University, 'The Fixed Period', as quoted in Harvey Cushing, The Life of Sir William Osier (1925), vol. 1, 666. He was reflecting on his own intention to retire (now age 55) because he felt a teacher should have a fixed period of service. The title of his address was from an Anthony Trollope novel The Fixed Period which discussed the retiring of college teachers at age 60.
Take the sum of human achievement in action, in science, in art, in literature—subtract the work of the men above forty, and while we should miss great treasures, even priceless treasures, we would practically be where we are today. … The effective, moving, vitalizing work of the world is done between the ages of twenty-five and forty.
In farewell address, Johns Hopkins University, 'The Fixed Period', as quoted in Harvey Cushing, The Life of Sir William Osier (1925), vol. 1, 666.
Tuesday, November Third = Many Voted, Bush Retired
[The date of the election of Bill Clinton over incumbent George H.W. Bush.]
[The date of the election of Bill Clinton over incumbent George H.W. Bush.]
— Anagram
From 'The Anagram Hall of Fame' on the wordsmith.org website.
You ask whether I am going over to the history of science... no, I am not as old as that.
Said on his retirement c.1969.