Retirement

"The land of easy mathematics where he who works adds up and he who retires subtracts."

"[Most retired business people] know how to work but they don't know how to play; they are completely devoid of the spirit of relaxation and recreation. Such forced idleness is ruinous to the morale of many of the more capable men of affairs."

"Man sagt sich oft im Leben, daß man die Vielgeschäftigkeit, Polypragmosyne, vermeiden, besonders, je älter man wird, sich desto weniger in ein neues Geschäft einlassen solle. Aber man hat gut reden, gut sich und anderen rathen. Älter werden heißt selbst ein neues Geschäft antreten; alle Verhältnisse verändern sich, und man muß entweder zu handeln ganz aufhören oder mit Willen und Bewußtsein das neue Rollenfach übernehmen."

"Let’s put a limit to the scramble for money. … Having got what you wanted, you ought to begin to bring that struggle to an end."

"Sit mihi quod nunc est, etiam minus, et mihi vivam Quod superest aevi, si quid superesse volunt di."

"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 remnant of my poor days, long or short, is at least multiplied for me three-fold. My ten next years, if I stretch so far, will be as long as any preceding thirty."

"Let us cut loose from all the ties that bind us to others; let us win from ourselves the power to live really alone and to live that way at our ease."

"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. If the fates permit, he will complete this abode, this sweet ancestral retreat; and he has consecrated it to his freedom, tranquility, and leisure."

"Tircis, il faut penser à faire la retraite; La course de nos jours est plus qu’à demi faite; L’âge insensiblement nous conduit à la mort; ... Il est temps de jouir des délices du port."

"Retirement without the love of letters is a living burial."

"Libertas, quae sera, tamen respexit inertem, Candidior postquam tondenti barba cadebat Respexit tamen, etlongo post tempore venit."