The notion of making money by popular work, and then retiring to do good work, is the most familiar of all the devil's traps for artists. - Logan Pearsall Smith
Don't think of retiring from the world until the world will be sorry that you retire. I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drives into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark. - Samuel Johnson
I have the consolation of having added nothing to my private fortune during my public service, and of retiring with hands clean as they are empty. - Thomas Jefferson