Quotes & Sayings About Retired Life

'm so fortunate to have done what I love to do for so long, but the day I retired was one of the best days of my life. Not because I was happy to get away from the sport, but because it was clear in my mind that I had done all I possibly could, and that it was time to go. — Carl Lewis

One retired pastor, who felt that he was being called to write a book about homosexuality, interviewed me. He said he wanted his book to be pastorally compassionate toward gay people while exhorting the church to remain firm in holding to a traditional, biblical sexual ethic. He said, "You have to be careful to not love people too much. Loving people changes you." Indeed, loving people does change you. Loving people who are different than you changes you. But it seems to me that such change is consistent with the call of Christ. Allowing your heart to enter the beauty and brokenness of another's life (which really isn't so different from your own), to hear hopes and dreams and disappointments, fears and hurts and joys does change you. One ought not be afraid of that. — Wendy Vanderwal-Gritter

I was a teacher most of my life, which I loved. I had a very happy working life, and when I retired, I thought I must do something, and I've always read a lot of fiction - you learn so much from fiction. My sentimental education came mostly from fiction, I should say, so I thought I'd try. — Anita Brookner

As a retired educator I have seen first-hand the impact a great education can have on a young person's life. I will always be a champion for public schools, our teachers, and our children. — Alma Adams

His father in law, who was as old as the century, had just retired and was living in a country house in Gelderland. He would be coming by car. Saskia called and suggested that he pick them up--then they could get coffee together first. A typical country dweller, he replied that he wouldn't be caught dead in Amsterdam; what did they think, that he wanted to be attacked by a gang of hippie Provos? He laughed as he said it, but he didn't come, though God knows he'd faced worse dangers in his life. — Harry Mulisch

I don't like being retired. It's like announcing an end to your worth, whatever that worth was, and the longer you go on, the more you realize that that worth wasn't worth anything like you once thought it was, and that just makes it worse. — Steven Erikson

If a woman is fair and amiable, she is praised for both qualities, but especially the former, by the bulk of mankind: if, on the other hand, she is disagreeable in person and character, her plainness is commonly inveighed against as her greatest crime, because, to common observers, it gives the greatest offence; while, if she is plain and good, provided she is a person of retired manners and secluded life, no one ever knows of her goodness, except her immediate connections — Anne Bronte

If I just got up in the morning and had no place to go and was retired or something, I would sit there and I would be thinking, "Gee, what is the purpose of life? Why are we all finite? Why do we get old and die? Is there nothing out there? Why is it so tragic? Why do our loved ones perish? Why do we generate?" So who wants to think about that stuff? — Woody Allen

To live a remote, retired, secluded life is the antipodes of spirituality as Jesus Christ taught it. The test of our spirituality comes when we come up against injustice and meanness and ingratitude and turmoil, all of which have the tendency to make us spiritual sluggards. — Oswald Chambers

I came up with this really crazy idea, this really small personal story that takes place in a universe that we are familiar with. Rocky is retired, kind of set adrift. He's very lonely in his world. His life has gone by waiting for the inevitable. It's not 'Rocky 7.' — Ryan Coogler

From the time I was twelve years old until I retired last year at the age of fifty-seven, the Army was my life. I loved commanding soldiers and being around people who had made a serious commitment to serve their country. — Norman Schwarzkopf

One of the problems in the Navy is that tradition of being captain of the ship. And an awful lot of people can be retired in the Navy, get over it, get a life, and go on. But there's a lot who can't. And when they have to give up the ship, they got to be captain of something, every single day. — Patricia Schroeder

In what other business can a guy my age drink martinis, smoke cigars and sing? I think all people who retire ought to go into show business. I've been retired all my life. — George Burns

I do not believe that Mr. Jefferson ever hated me. On the contrary, I believe he always like me: but he detested Hamilton and by whole administration. Then he wished to be President of the United States, and I stood in his way. So he did everything that he could to pull me down. But if I should quarral with him for that, I might quarrel with every man I have had anything to do with in life. This is human nature ... I forgive all my enemies and hope they may find mercy in Heaven. Mr. Jefferson and I have grown old and retired from public life. So we are upon our ancient terms of goodwill. — John Adams

For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. — Smedley Butler

I often would think about how we have built our society, and when you describe it out loud, it sounds rather insane. The idea of being funnelled through a conventional life progression of education, work, career, marriage, kids, divorce, retirement and then death doesn't seem that inspiring to me.
Then we're told we have to struggle to make a living, sacrifice enjoyment to have a family, delay our happiness until we're retired, fight the next person for a job, climb the ladder of success to get an even more stressful job,
spend more money than we earn, go into debt, live in fear of being blown up by some terrorist and then have TV passed off as the only way to escape it all. And when all of this gets too much and you can't keep up, you get prescribed antidepressants and made to feel like you've failed. — Josh Langley

Throughout his life, General Wesley Clark has stood up to some tough opponents. He battled the Viet Cong, and went toe-to-toe with Slobodan Milosevic. But today the retired four-star general capitulated to the fiercest enemy he's ever confronted: the American voter. — Jon Stewart

[T]he entire conversation was about how much money we needed to put away in order to have a certain income when we retired. The conversation boiled down to this (from my point of view): "Right now, restrict every pleasurable aspect of your life that costs money. Scrimp and save. For the next 30 years. Then--and only then--will you be able to live well once you retire." What I heard was this: Put your life on hold now. Live later. — Kate Northrup

relinquish the desire for children and wealth and live the life of 'Vanaprastha,' that is, one retired from the household cares. — Fulton J. Sheen

No matter what job you do, we all have a much different life than our parents had. My parents' generation had one job and then they retired. Now, people have many different jobs. — Kate Walsh

I retired at twenty-nine, bought a life-time pass on American Airlines and my only goal in life was to party like a mad man and get drunk with as many people as possible. And I was happy right there. But when we started the streaming business, I knew it could be something big. — Mark Cuban

I'm not studying the heroes who lead navies - and armies - and win wars. I'm studying ordinary people who you wouldn't expect to be heroic, but who, when there's a crisis, show extraordinary bravery and self-sacrifice. Like Jenna Geidel, who gave her life vaccinating people during the Pandemic. And the fishermen and retired boat owners and weekend sailors who rescued the British Army from Dunkirk. And Wells Crowther, the twenty-four-year-old equities trader who worked in the World Trade Center. When it was hit by terrorists, he could have gotten out, but instead he went back and saved ten people, and died. I'm going to observe six different sets of heroes in six different situations to try to determine what qualities they have in common. — Connie Willis

He's retired, he's just turned sixty, you know. And on the actual day of his retirement it turned out he wasn't a radiologist at heart at all, he didn't want to spend another day of his life on medicine. He'd always wanted to be a beekeeper, and now bees are the only thing he'll take an interest in. How do these things happen, do you think? If you're really a beekeeper, how is it that you waste the best years of your life doing something else? — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I've got to make a new life for myself, I'm out to learn how to enjoy my leisure now that I'm retired. I've been doing things people expected of me always. I want to feel free. I want to sit under a linden tree with nothing more important to worry about than the temperature of the beer, if there is anything more important. — Walter Huston

I made my first Australian senior team when I was 16, first Olympics when I was 19, and I retired. I'm 32, I retired four years ago, so a good third of my life or nearly a third of my life has been all about running. — Cathy Freeman

I lived the baseball life as a kid, with my dad in it. And I lived the baseball life as an adult, because I was in it. When I retired, I wanted the opportunity to be a little bit more flexible and home-based for my kids. — Cal Ripken Jr.

Some of today's men and women give the impression that they have grown lazy, weary and out of love. Physically, they might entice you with their youthful looks, However, on the inside, they possess a dying spirit; a spirit which has retired from active love life engagements'. — Francis Otieno

As a professional athlete and someone who has spent almost his entire life in boxing, not a day goes by when I don't think about coming back, but I am retired, and after speaking to my family and following a great deal of introspection, I have decided to stay retired. — Oscar De La Hoya

The coast redwood is a so-called relict species. It is a tiny remnant of a life form that once spread in splendor and power across the face of nature. The redwood has settled down in California to live near the sea, the way many retired people do. — Richard Preston

Just when summer gets perfect-fresh nights, soft sun, casual breezes, crushingly full and quietly cooling trees, empty beaches, and free weekends- it ends. Life is like that too. Just when we get it right, it starts to change. The job gets easy and we know just how to do it, and they tell us we're retired. The children grow up and get reasonable and they leave home, just when it's nice to have them around ... That's life on the edge of autumn. And that's beautiful-if we have the humility for it. — Joan D. Chittister

But this gives no proper idea of my feelings at all; and no one that has not lived such a retired stationary life as mine, can possibly imagine what they were: hardly even if he has known what it is to awake some morning, and find himself in Port Nelson, in New Zealand, with a world of waters between himself and all that knew him. — Anne Bronte

My grandmother wanted my father to be a teacher because she was a teacher. He didn't go down that road until much later in life; he just kind of retired after almost 20 years as being a visiting lecturer at Stanford, where he got his graduate degree. — John Morgridge

For the author there is nothing but his pen, till that and life are worn to the stump: and then, with good fortune, perhaps on his death-bed he receives a pension and equals, it may be, for a few months, the income of a retired butler! — Samuel Laman Blanchard

GLOBAL WHITE HAIR LIFE AFFAIR'S EXPERIENCED ELDERS,PARENTS AND SOCIETY WELL-WISHER'S HAVE TO DO ASSIST&SUGGEST OUR GLOBAL YOUTH TO WED WITH SUITABLE PARTNER TO SETTLE IN LIFE LATE TENURE.EVEN THOUGH, THEY ALL ARE WELL EDUCATED AND ECONOMICALLY SOUND IN HIGH CIRCLES DRIVE MOVE AROUND THE GLOBAL ACTIVITIES 24/7 IT IS AN UN-FORTUNATE LIFE SHOCK . HOWEVER, UNIVERSAL TIME IS RUNNING VERY FAST DAY BY DAY.SO, ALL LIFE ENJOYED SCHOLAR'S ,RETIRED HUMAN GOD SOUL'S HAVE TO DO SOMETHING MAGIC-STICK WONDER TO PLEASE OUR DEAREST INNOCENT LIFE ENACT JUNIOR'S OF PRESENT WORLYOUNG GENERATION OF 21ST.CENTURY. — Various

Once more, one who lives in the spirit of prayer will spend much time in retired and intimate communion with God. It is by such a deliberate engagement of prayer that the fresh springs of devotion which flow through the day are fed. For, although communion with God is the life-energy of the renewed nature, our souls "cleave to the dust" and devotion tends to grow formal- it becomes emptied of its spiritual content, and exhausts itself in outward acts. The Master reminds us of this grave peril, and informs us that the true defense against insincerity in our approach to God lies in the diligent exercise of private prayer. — David Macintyre

Was that a tragedy? Two lives, driven by one great passion, namely, to be spent in unheralded service to the perishing poor for the glory of Jesus Christ - even two decades after most of their American counterparts had retired to throw away their lives on trifles. No, that is not a tragedy. That is a glory. These lives were not wasted. And these lives were not lost. "Whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it" (Mark 8:35). — John Piper

He was one of those persons whom one loves not because of some lustrous streak of talent (this retired businessman possessed none), but because every moment spent with them fits exactly the gauge of one's life. There are friendships like circuses, waterfalls, libraries; there are others comparable to old dressing gowns. You found nothing especially attractive about Maximov's mind if you took it apart: his ideas were conservative, his tastes undistinguished: but somehow or other these dull components formed a wonderfully comfortable and harmonious whole. — Vladimir Nabokov

In the year of Christ 1571, at the age of thirty-eight, on the last day of February, anniversary of his birth, Michel de Montaigne, lon weary of the servitude of the court and of public employments, while still entire, retired to the bosom of the learned Virgins [Muses], where in calm and freedom from all cares he will spend what little remains of his life now more than half run out. If the fates permit, he will completethis abode, this sweet ancestral retreat; and he has consecrated it to his freedom, tranquility, and leisure. — Michel De Montaigne

An old man, having retired from active life, regains the gaity and irresponsibility of childhood. He is ready to play, he cannot run with his son, but he can totter with his grandson. Our first and last steps have the same rhythm. — Andre Maurois

I think about that centurion from time to time and wonder, had he retired to a farm in Campagna, happy with his harvest of grapes and grandchildren, or had he fallen amongst his comrades on some distant, ruined field, defending the honor and the ever-expanding borders of the Republic? What we foreigners have failed to comprehend over the centuries is that the proud centurion would have found either fate equally satisfying. This is why Rome grows, and the rest of the world shrinks. — Andrew Levkoff

As a subconscious attempt to add meaning or purpose to their life: The unemployed pray for a job; the retired pray for grandchildren. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

When I retired from tennis I wanted to do other things with my life. — Bjorn Borg

Everything already in place: the retired hit man currently sleeping with Maura; his supernatural-obsessed ex-boss currently sleeping in Boston; the creepy entity buried in rocks beneath the ley line; the unfamiliar creatures crawling out of a cave mouth behind an abandoned farmhouse; the ley line's growing power; the magical sentient forest on the ley line; one boy's bargain with the magical forest; one boy's ability to dream things to life; one dead boy who refused to be laid to rest; one girl who supernaturally amplified 90 percent of the aforementioned list. — Maggie Stiefvater

The teacher's life should have three periods, study until twenty-five, investigation until forty, profession until sixty, at which age I would have him retired on a double allowance. — William Osler

I've been active all my life. In 1990 I retired from my firm, I.M. Pei & Partners, and for two years I didn't do much. Then I started to get kind of antsy, so I decided, I'm going to do some more work. And I chose to do work outside the U.S. because I've spent 45 years here and I wanted to learn more about what's happening in the rest of the world. — I.M. Pei

Flambeau, once the most famous criminal in France and later a very private detective in England, had long retired from both professions. Some say a career of crime had left him with too many scruples for a career of detection. Anyhow, after a life of romantic escapes and tricks of evasion, he had ended at what some might consider an appropriate address; a castle in Spain. [ ... ] Flambeau had casually and almost abruptly fallen in love with a Spanish lady, married and brought up a large family on a Spanish estate, without displaying any apparent desire to stray again beyond its borders. — G.K. Chesterton

I am not only retired from all public employments, but I am retiring within myself, and shall be able to view the solitary walk and tread the paths of private life with heartfelt satisfaction. — George Washington

Few men have led a more active life - bodily or mentally - from a constitutional anxiety for regularity, precision, and order, during fifty years' business career, from which I had retired. — William Banting

Historically, philanthropy has been something that you do when you turn 65, and you are retired, and you have spent your life accumulating your financial resources, and now you finally have time to do it. But because of the Internet revolution, that in turn revolutionized economic growth and wealth generation. — Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen

Now that I look back on it, having retired from being a reporter, it was kind of romantic. It was a wonderful way to live one's life, just as I imagined it would be when I was 6 or 7. — Charles Kuralt

In life, you gotta do something. And the medical journals keep on saying if you've got a goal or some passion in life, you'll outlive all the other guys who - the bank manager that retired. They gave him a rocking chair and he rocked himself to death. So you gotta have a passion, whatever it happens to be. Whether it's this or something else, it doesn't matter, as long as it's a reason to get out of bed every morning, as my accountant of 50 years keeps on saying. — James Wright

Far from being freaks, the Hell's Angels are a logical product of the culture that now claims to be shocked at their existence. The generation represented by the editors of Time has lived so long in a world full of Celluloid outlaws hustling toothpaste and hair oil that it is no longer capable of confronting the real thing. For twenty years they have sat with their children and watched yesterday's outlaws raise hell with yesterday's world ... and now they are bringing up children who think Jesse James is a television character. This is the generation that went to war for Mom, God and Apple Butter, the American Way of Life. When they came back, they crowned Eisenhower and then retired to the giddy comfort of their TV parlors, to cultivate the subtleties of American history as seen by Hollywood. — Hunter S. Thompson

When I retired, I felt that I lived more in that year than I had the previous 27 years of my life. — Ricky Williams

From 1983 to 2000, William Goren stole more than $30 million from investors on Long Island and in Queens. His favorite targets were widows and retired couples, like Helga and Simon Novack, Holocaust survivors who gave Mr. Goren their life savings. — Alex Berenson

I see all these old people who don't have anything to do but eat, drink and sleep. I will never say 'retired' because that's such a finality that I don't want to be part of my life. I'll work until they throw me in a box. — Mario Andretti

Since I retired to Cold Mountain I've lived by eating mountain fruits What is there to worry about? Life passes according to karma The months pass like a flowing stream Days and nights like sparks from flint Heaven and earth endlessly change While I sit happily among these cliffs — Hanshan

You should have more time for you during all of your life - not when you're 65 and retired. — Carlos Slim

My dad is an ob-gyn - he's retired now - and he wanted to come to the States to make a better life, for opportunity. My mom said that, on the plane ride here, I did not want to speak a word of English - I spoke Tagalog. And then, after the first day of school, I didn't want to speak anything but English. — Reggie Lee

Architecture adds dimensions to my life that would be impossible to acquire if I retired. The beautiful thing about architecture is that every project is brand new. I am forced to renew myself with every project. Isn't that wonderful? — Cesar Pelli

The rare, delicate flavor of a life after retiring in one's sixties, whatever one has "retired" from, the pleasure I experienced beyond my job at Columbia, is a gift of life in the last decades. but it is not easily learned ... But sometimes, the only way to live is to get out, or at least seriously to contemplate getting out, doing the impossible,flinging the conventional tea. — Carolyn G. Heilbrun

I retired when the Supreme Court rose for the summer recess in 2009, and a couple of weeks later I drove north from Washington with no regrets about the prior 19 years or about the decision to try living a more normal life for whatever time might remain. — David Souter

Later in life, when I'm retired and have a family of my own and will be able to send my kids to college, that's when I'll start spending. Way too many athletes go broke these days, and I like saving my money so that I can ensure my family and friends currently and after me will never have to endure some of the things I did when I was a kid. — Victor Ortiz

Like many athletes, I played in college for the chance to play in the pros. In the years since I retired, I've come to realize that the education I got in college was for life. I will have it forever and for that I am incredibly grateful. — Pat Toomay

Remember this. Bear Bryant retired at age 69, and he died 28 days after he stopped coaching. If you don't have something, and a purpose in your life, you're gonna die. — Lou Holtz

Everyone in life has a story to tell, and sometimes there are things in our past we spend our lives running from. This book is dedicated to those who have retired their running shoes and found a piece of happiness they can call home. — Dannika Dark

Like many others who have gone into prisons and jails with us, Chuck and Carol Middlekauff demonstrate what our ministry is all about. We train Christian 'teammates' to share the good news and love of Christ with 'the least of these' so they can continue to do it with others they encounter as they go along. In this book, Carol has written the stories of some of those encounters so you can appreciate how easy it is to tell people about Jesus. It happens when you realize God does all the work, and all you have to do is show up. I hope you will be encouraged by reading the book and then join us soon for a Weekend of Champions to find out for yourself."
Bill Glass, retired NFL all-pro defensive end, evangelist, founder of Bill Glass Champions for Life prison ministries, and author of numerous books, including The Healing Power of a Father's Blessing and Blitzed by Blessings — Bill Glass