Retirement quotes for a card, a speech, or a sign

Published 2026-10-13 · Updated 2026-10-13

For a party sign, start with Browning's Grow old along with me, or Longfellow's line that age is opportunity. For a card, start with Fosdick's something to retire to. For a toast, start with Goethe's new role on life's stage. Sharper lines about death, burial, or a wish not to retire are lower down. Read that section before you use one.

Short lines for a sign or a poster

A sign has to be readable from the door. Use one celebratory line, in this wording, and leave the rest of the board for the name.

Robert Browning's poem "Rabbi ben Ezra," on the Wikiquote page on old age, includes "Grow old along with me!" and "The last of life, for which the first was made"

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, on the old-age page, includes "For age is opportunity no less" and "Than youth itself, though in another dress"

The same poem, on that old-age page, includes "And as the evening twilight fades away" and "The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day."

Warren Buffett's Wikiquote page records this statement: "Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago."

W. Somerset Maugham, on the old-age page, wrote "Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth."

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote this line in the essay Old Age: "We do not count a man's years until he has nothing else to count." His Wikiquote page records it.

A line this short can also sit on a party invitation. The rest of the invite is in retirement party invitation wording.

The Retirement Career Timeline Poster is a centerpiece poster guests stop and read at a retirement party: the retiree's working life, by the numbers, and a poster to sign. It includes a sign-the-poster page for guests and a next-chapter line. It comes only as a digital download, so nothing is printed or mailed.

The story and the numbers on that poster are yours to supply. A checked line can go in the sign-page wording. One line is enough. A second sentence will not read from across the room.

Quotes that fit inside a retirement card

A card has room for the quote and one memory. The quote is the borrowed line. The memory is yours. If you would rather write the whole note in your own words, use what to write in a retirement card.

Harry Emerson Fosdick is the speaker of this card line: "Don't simply retire from something; have something to retire to." His Wikiquote page records the line as quoted in Wisdom for Our Time.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich, on the old-age page, wrote "To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent—that is to triumph over old age."

Will Rogers's Wikiquote page records this line: "Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save."

Joanna Lumley said this: "You never lose who you were, you just grow around you, like a tree." The old-age page records the line.

W. Somerset Maugham, on that old-age page, also wrote "The beauty of the morning and the radiance of noon are good, but it would be a very silly person who drew the curtains and turned on the light in order to shut out the tranquillity of the evening."

Doris Lessing said "The great secret that all old people share is that you really haven't changed in seventy or eighty years." The old-age page places the line in a Sunday Times interview. It belongs in a card to someone you know well, not on a banner.

A checked line for a retiring teacher

Henry Adams wrote this line in The Education of Henry Adams: "A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops." His Wikiquote page records it. It fits a card from a class, or a small sign by a guest book. It is about the work, not about age.

Lines to read in a toast or a short speech

Read one next-chapter line, then one story, then sit down. A toast is not a second career talk. For a joke instead of a quotation, see funny retirement quotes and messages.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, on the Wikiquote retirement page, is translated this way: "the very fact of growing older means taking up a new business; all our circumstances change, and we must either stop doing anything at all or else willingly and consciously take on the new role we have to play on life’s stage."

Horace, on that retirement page, is translated this way: "Let me keep what I have now—or less even—so that I may live the rest of my life for myself (if the gods grant me any more life to live)."

Charles Lamb, on that retirement page, wrote "I have indeed lived nominally fifty years, but deduct out of them the hours which I have lived to other people, and not to myself, and you will find me still a young fellow. For that is the only true time, which a man can properly call his own, that which he has all to himself; the rest, though in some sense he may be said to live it, is other people’s time, not his."

The same retirement page gives Michel de Montaigne's library inscription: "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, long weary of the servitude of the court and of public employments, while still entire, retired to the bosom of the learned Virgins, where in calm and freedom from all cares he will spend what little remains of his life now more than half run out."

The Marquise de Lambert, on the old-age page, wrote "One of the duties of old-age, is the management of time. The less that remains to us, the more valuable we ought to consider it."

G. Stanley Hall, on that old-age page, wrote that he might have added "men grow old because they stop playing, and not conversely" The popular shorter form is in the misattributed list below, under a different name.

Wry and reflective lines (read the room)

These lines are checked, and several name death, burial, or a wish not to retire. Read one to the person in your head before it goes on a card, a sign, or into a toast.

Margaret Mead's Wikiquote page records this birthday line: "Sooner or later I'm going to die, but I'm not going to retire."

Bernard Baruch's Wikiquote page records this birthday line: "To me, old age is always fifteen years older than I am."

Leon Trotsky's diary line, on the old-age page, is "Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that can happen to a man."

Benjamin Disraeli's Wikiquote page records this novel line: "When a man fell into his anecdotage, it was a sign for him to retire."

Anne Bradstreet's Wikiquote page records this meditation: "Youth is the time of getting, middle age of improving, and old age of spending."

Billy Graham, on the old-age page, said "All my life I've been taught how to die, but no one ever taught me how to grow old."

Seneca the Younger is quoted this way: "Retirement without the love of letters is a living burial." The Wikiquote retirement page gives the line from a book of aphorisms.

Simone de Beauvoir, on the old-age page, wrote "There is only one solution if old age is not to be an absurd parody of our former life, and that is to go on pursuing ends that give our existence a meaning."

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, on that old-age page, wrote "The secret of a good old age is simply an honorable pact with solitude."

Oscar Wilde, on that old-age page, wrote "The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young."

Honorat de Bueil de Racan, on the retirement page, is translated this way: "Tircis, it's time to think of retiring: Over half our journey is done. Old age insensibly leads us toward death. ... It's time to enjoy the delights of the port." The English on that page is a translation, so read it as a translation.

Virgil, on that retirement page, is given this way: "Liberty, which, though late, yet cast an eye upon me in my inactive time of life, after my beard began to fall off with a greyish hue when I shaved: yet on me she cast her eye, and after a long period of slavery came at last."

Ernest Hemingway's Wikiquote page records this line: "The worst death for anyone is to lose the center of his being, the thing he really is. Retirement is the filthiest word in the language. Whether by choice or by fate, to retire from what you do - and makes you what you are - is to back up into the grave."

Judi Dench's Wikiquote page records this interview line: "As long as there is a possibility of working I'm not going to retire because if I retire nothing will work any more, and it's hard enough as it is."

George Foreman is the speaker of this pair of lines: "I don't even think about a retirement program because I'm working for the Lord, for the Almighty. And even thought the Lord's pay isn't very high, his retirement program is, you might say, out of this world." His Wikiquote page records them, including the spelling "thought" in the second sentence. Keep that spelling if you use the second sentence.

H. L. Mencken, on the old-age page, wrote "The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom."

Dave Allen's Wikiquote page records this line: "We spend our lives on the run: we get up by the clock, eat and sleep by the clock, get up again, go to work - and then we retire. And what do they give us? A fucking clock." The captured wording is blunt. Keep it off a card and a sign. A softer last word is a different line.

Euripides, on the old-age page, is given this way: "Old men's prayers for death are lying prayers, in which they abuse old age and long extent of life. But when death draws near, not one is willing to die, and age no longer is a burden to them."

Lord Byron, on that old-age page, wrote "It was one of the deadliest and heaviest feelings of my life to feel that I was no longer a boy. From that moment I began to grow old in my own esteem — and in my esteem age is not estimable."

Lines the quote roundups get wrong

These lines travel on gift lists with famous names attached. The pages below file them as misattributed, or name a different speaker. Leave the famous name off the card.

The job-you-love line is this one: "Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life." The Confucius page files it under Misattributed. That page says the line has been misattributed to Confucius, and that the real origin is dubious.

The never-too-old line is commonly attached to C. S. Lewis. "You are never too old to set another goal, or to dream a new dream." His Wikiquote page calls the line unknown and also attributes it to Les Brown. "You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream." Quote Investigator records that wording. The earliest match it reports is Les Brown, not Lewis.

The years-in-your-life line is this one: "And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years." The Abraham Lincoln page files it as often misattributed. Quote Investigator records the same line. The earliest strong match it reports is a newspaper advertisement for a book on aging by Edward J. Stieglitz. Leave Lincoln's name off the card.

The playing line that gift lists give to George Bernard Shaw or to Benjamin Franklin is this one: "We do not quit playing because we grow old, we grow old because we quit playing." The Franklin page files it under Misattributed and calls it an anonymous modern quip, a variant of G. Stanley Hall. Hall's own wording is in the speech section above. Use Hall's name with Hall's words, or drop the line.

Anne Bradstreet did write "If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome." Her Wikiquote page places it in Meditations Divine and Moral, as a later meditation. It is a real Bradstreet sentence. It is not a retirement quote.

A checked quote is still someone else's sentence. Add one memory, or the card sounds borrowed. That is the limit of a list like this: the wording can be right, and the note can still miss the person.