Legend Retirement Quotes

ARTICLE 41 A Bro never cries.   EXCEPTIONS: Watching Field of Dreams, E.T., or a sports legend retire.*

The story of liberalism, as liberals tell it, is rather like the legend of St. George and the dragon. After many centuries of hopelessness and superstition, St. George, in the guise of Rationality, appeared in the world somewhere about the sixteenth century. The first dragons upon whom he turned his lance were those of despotic kingship and religious intolerance. These battles won, he rested for a time, until such questions as slavery, or prison conditions, or the state of the poor, began to command his attention. During the nineteenth century, his lance was never still, prodding this way and that against the inert scaliness of privilege, vested interest, or patrician insolence. But, unlike St. George, he did not know when to retire. The more he succeeded, the more he became bewitched with the thought of a world free of dragons, and the less capable he became of ever returning to private life. He needed his dragons. He could only live by fighting for causes—the people, the poor, the exploited, the colonially oppressed, the underprivileged and the underdeveloped. As an ageing warrior, he grew breathless in his pursuit of smaller and smaller dragons—for the big dragons were now harder to come by.

I was thinking of retiring after tonight,” he replied. “Retiring? This is just the beginning. Tonight, a ballroom legend will be born!” It’s official! thought Ben. My mum is bonkers!

The first question, of course, is whether there ever was such a creature as Man. At the moment, in the absence of positive evidence, the sober consensus must be that there was not, that Man, as presented in the legend, is a figment of folklore invention. Man may have risen in the early days of Doggish culture as an imaginary being, a sort of racial god, on which the Dogs might call for help, to which they might retire for comfort.

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) was not only an extraordinary physicist, but also an extraordinary figure, a swash-buckling personality the likes of which theoretical physics has not seen before or hence. Occasionally theoretical physicists will while away an idle moment comparing the contributions of Feynman and Schwinger, both nice Jewish boys from New York and almost exact contemporaries. This senseless discussion serves no purpose, but it is a fact that while Julian Schwinger was a shy and retiring person (but rather warm and good-hearted behind his apparent remoteness), Dick Feynman was an extreme extrovert, the stuff of legends. With his bongo drums, showgirls, and other trappings of a carefully cultivated image enthusiastically nurtured by a legion of idolaters, he is surely the best-loved theoretical physicist next to Einstein.

Hardy reinforces his narrative with stories of heroes who didn’t have the right education, the right connections, and who could have been counted out early as not having the DNA for success: “Richard Branson has dyslexia and had poor academic performance as a student. Steve Jobs was born to two college students who didn’t want to raise him and gave him up for adoption. Mark Cuban was born to an automobile upholsterer. He started as a bartender, then got a job in software sales from which he was fired.”8 The list goes on. Hardy reminds his readers that “Suze Orman’s dad was a chicken farmer. Retired General Colin Powell was a solid C student. Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks, was born in a housing authority in the Bronx … Barbara Corcoran started as a waitress and admits to being fired from more jobs than most people hold in a lifetime. Pete Cashmore, the CEO of Mashable, was sickly as a child and finished high school two years late due to medical complications. He never went to college.” What do each of these inspiring leaders and storytellers have in common? They rewrote their own internal narratives and found great success. “The biographies of all heroes contain common elements. Becoming one is the most important,”9 writes Chris Matthews in Jack Kennedy, Elusive Hero. Matthews reminds his readers that young John F. Kennedy was a sickly child and bedridden for much of his youth. And what did he do while setting school records for being in the infirmary? He read voraciously. He read the stories of heroes in the pages of books by Sir Walter Scott and the tales of King Arthur. He read, and dreamed of playing the hero in the story of his life. When the time came to take the stage, Jack was ready.

Altogether he made a most noble, respectable appearance, and I really think him the first man in the world. After hav- ing had the management and care of the whole Continental army, he has now retired without receiving any pay for his trouble. he knows how to prefer solid happiness in his retirement. I admire him as superior to even the Roman heroes themselves. I am told during the war he was never seen to smile. he had only the good of his country at heart. his greatest pride now is, to be thought the first farmer in America. He is quite a Cincinnatus, and often works with his men himself—— strips off his coat and labors like a common man ..375

This blend of truth and evasion was to characterise future legend. Todd did encounter words like blades but, as mouthpiece for the family, never mentions this, any more than Jane Austen’s family saw fit to mention her sarcasms. Nineteenth-century families project an image of an authoress as retiring lady whose gift shades into an uneventful life. Nothing could be said of sickness, love, adultery or the rising fire of the feud.

Jill Ellis maintained a positive attitude in her postgame press conference, saying that she was “pleased” with the win—but that only added fodder for the loudest critics of the team. Michelle Akers, the retired legend who won the Golden Boot in the national team’s 1991 World Cup win, told reporters: “If she is pleased with the way we played tonight, then what the hell is she doing coaching our U.S. team?

LEGENDS ARE NEVER TIRED AND NEVER RETIRED

Biff said they should stay in the shade, to avoid getting sunstroke. “I dunno why you worry about sunstroke,” said Boff. “You sound just like Boop.” “What happened to Boop?” asked Porkins. “Let me guess,” said Carl. “He died of sunstroke?” “No,” said Boff, “he retired to spend more time with his wife.” “Oh,” said Carl.

KIRKUS REVIEWS BOOK REVIEW A retired professor explores the life and writings of Carl Sandburg in this debut book. “During the first half of the twentieth century,” Quinley writes, “Carl Sandburg seemed to be everywhere and do everything.” Though best known for his Pulitzer Prize–winning poetry and multivolume biography of Abraham Lincoln, Sandburg had a wide-ranging career as a public intellectual, which included stints in journalism as a columnist and investigative reporter, in musicology as a leading advocate and performer of folk music, and in the nascent movie industry as a consultant and film critic. He also dabbled in political activism, children’s literature, and novels. Not only does Quinley, a retired college administrator and professor, hail Sandburg as a 20th-century icon (“If my grandpa asks you a question,” his grandchildren joke, “the answer is always Carl Sandburg”), but much of his own life has been adjacent to that of the poet as well. Born in Maywood, Illinois, a “few blocks” from Sandburg’s home 30 years prior, Quinley would eventually move to the Appalachian Mountains. He lived just a few miles from Sandburg’s famed residence in Hendersonville, North Carolina. As a docent for the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site, the author was often asked for literature about the luminary’s life. And though much has been written about Sandburg, biographies on the iconoclast are either out of print or are tomes with more than 800 pages. Eschewing comprehensiveness for brevity, Quinley seeks to fill this void in the literary world by offering readers a short introduction to Sandburg’s life and writings. At just 122 pages, this accessible book packs a solid punch, providing readers with not just the highlights of Sandburg’s life, but also a sophisticated analysis of his passions, poetry, and influence on American culture. This engaging approach that’s tailored to a general audience is complemented by an ample assortment of historical photographs. And while its hagiographic tone may annoy some readers, this slim volume is backed by more than 260 endnotes and delivers an extensive bibliography for readers interested in learning more about the 20th century’s “voice of America.” A well-written, concise examination of a literary legend Kirkus Indie, Kirkus Media LLC, 2600 Via Fortuna Suite 130 Austin, TX 78746 indie@kirkusreviews.com

There are national championship banners, Final Four banners, ACC Tournament championship banners, ACC regular season championship banners, NCAA Tournament banners, NIT banners, and “honored”—not retired—numbers. It appears that about half the players who ever put on a Carolina uniform are “honored.” Valvano looked at all the banners and pointed at one that said “ACC Champions” in huge letters. “What’s that writing at the bottom?” he asked. “I can’t read it.” The writing at the bottom said “Regular Season Tie.” “So let me get this straight,” Valvano said. “They tie for a regular season title and they put up a banner?” When this was confirmed, Valvano smiled. “Okay, now I’ve figured out what I’m going to do. I’m going to put up a banner for 1985 that says ‘National Champions!’ Then at the bottom, in tiny little letters, I’ll put ‘almost.’ After that, I’ll do the same thing for 1986. Damn, I just won my third national championship…almost.

The Yankees handed out numbers based upon a player’s spot in the batting order, which is how Babe Ruth acquired the number 3. His teammate, Lou Gehrig, hit cleanup, and his number, 4, became the first ever retired by any team on July 4, 1939, the day he called himself “the luckiest man on the face of the earth.

Everyone had believed Cadsuane Melaidhrin dead somewhere in retirement until she reappeared at the start of the Aiel War, and a good many sisters probably wished her truly in her grave. Cadsuane was a legend, a most uncomfortable thing to have alive and staring at you. Half the tales about her came close to impossibility, while the rest were beyond it, even among those that had proof.

Madden stayed at Stingley’s bedside to offer him whatever comfort he could. Eventually, the tragedy was too much for Madden and he retired from coaching for good to become a broadcasting, video game, and foot-powder pitchman legend. Those who disliked Madden when he was coaching the Raiders had perhaps never been more wrong in their judgment of another human being than they were about him.

Irv pivoted their way, his posture ramrod straight and nostrils flaring. "I may have suggested that putting up a lookout post, and manning it with glorified vigilantes, may not be the preferable option to the current situation facing the town. And that our resources may be better utilized employing more bodies to patrol the streets as legally hired, paid law enforcement." "I take it the message was not well-received?" Ichabod said, biting the insides of his cheeks to stifle a laugh. A wad of pumpkin innards fell from Irving's hair, slapped against the tip of his nose, and landed on the polished floor with a wet squish. "Not as well as one would hope. I am going to retire for the night to scraoe and bathe this off. Good night." "Night!" Ichabod and Katrina chorused, letting their amusement spring forth in a chorus of giggles.

During NASA’s first fifty years the agency’s accomplishments were admired globally. Democratic and Republican leaders were generally bipartisan on the future of American spaceflight. The blueprint for the twenty-first century called for sustaining the International Space Station and its fifteen-nation partnership until at least 2020, and for building the space shuttle’s heavy-lift rocket and deep spacecraft successor to enable astronauts to fly beyond the friendly confines of low earth orbit for the first time since Apollo. That deep space ship would fly them again around the moon, then farther out to our solar system’s LaGrange points, and then deeper into space for rendezvous with asteroids and comets, learning how to deal with radiation and other deep space hazards before reaching for Mars or landings on Saturn’s moons. It was the clearest, most reasonable and best cost-achievable goal that NASA had been given since President John F. Kennedy’s historic decision to land astronauts on the lunar surface. Then Barack Obama was elected president. The promising new chief executive gave NASA short shrift, turning the agency’s future over to middle-level bureaucrats with no dreams or vision, bent on slashing existing human spaceflight plans that had their genesis in the Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush White Houses. From the starting gate, Mr. Obama’s uncaring space team rolled the dice. First they set up a presidential commission designed to find without question we couldn’t afford the already-established spaceflight plans. Thirty to sixty thousand highly skilled jobs went on the chopping block with space towns coast to coast facing 12 percent unemployment. $9.4 billion already spent on heavy-lift rockets and deep space ships was unashamedly flushed down America’s toilet. The fifty-year dream of new frontiers was replaced with the shortsighted obligations of party politics. As 2011 dawned, NASA, one of America’s great science agencies, was effectively defunct. While Congress has so far prohibited the total cancellation of the space agency’s plans to once again fly astronauts beyond low earth orbit, Obama space operatives have systematically used bureaucratic tricks to slow roll them to a crawl. Congress holds the purse strings and spent most of 2010 saying, “Wait just a minute.” Thousands of highly skilled jobs across the economic spectrum have been lost while hundreds of billions in “stimulus” have been spent. As of this writing only Congress can stop the NASA killing. Florida’s senior U.S. Senator Bill Nelson, a Democrat, a former spaceflyer himself, is leading the fight to keep Obama space advisors from walking away from fifty years of national investment, from throwing the final spade of dirt on the memory of some of America’s most admired heroes. Congressional committees have heard from expert after expert that Mr. Obama’s proposal would be devastating. Placing America’s future in space in the hands of the Russians and inexperienced commercial operatives is foolhardy. Space legend John Glenn, a retired Democratic Senator from Ohio, told president Obama that “Retiring the space shuttles before the country has another space ship is folly. It could leave Americans stranded on the International Space Station with only a Russian spacecraft, if working, to get them off.” And Neil Armstrong testified before the Senate’s Commerce, Science & Transportation Committee that “With regard to President Obama’s 2010 plan, I have yet to find a person in NASA, the Defense Department, the Air Force, the National Academies, industry, or academia that had any knowledge of the plan prior to its announcement. Rumors abound that neither the NASA Administrator nor the President’s Science and Technology Advisor were knowledgeable about the plan. Lack of review normally guarantees that there will be overlooked requirements and unwelcome consequences. How could such a chain of events happen?

Let me give you one of my favorite examples of the difference between trying and endeavoring. When a new motorway was built, taking passing traffic away from Colonel Sanders’ restaurant, his business crumbled. About to retire with just a paltry military pension, he was facing a bleak future. But the one thing he knew he had that was of value was a mighty fine chicken recipe. He didn’t have the money to open a new restaurant, but he figured he could franchise his chicken recipe to other restaurateurs and earn a slice of every chicken meal sold. After all, he had been selling his special chicken recipe for years in his own small restaurant: how hard could it be? The answer was: very. The first restaurant he went to politely asked him to leave with the words: ‘We have a good chicken recipe of our own already; why would we want to pay you for another?’ The same thing happened at the next place he endeavoured to persuade. And the next. But he persisted. Guess how many no’s he got before someone agreed to give his ‘finger-licking’ recipe a ‘try’? The elderly Colonel Sanders had to knock on 1,009 doors before someone gave him a yes and the legend and business empire that became Kentucky Fried Chicken was finally born. Now, how many of us, after the first 50 no’s, might have thought that maybe we should quit (or at least check our chicken recipe!)? What about after ONE THOUSAND no’s? I reckon most people wouldn’t even have got to the hundredth door, and long before they rang the 1,009th doorbell they would have given up. ‘Well, we tried our best’ would have been a fair assessment. But not for the good colonel! Colonel Sanders - he really was an army veteran with some great military doggedness - had that spirit of determination, that endeavor , not to quit until he had found the thing he was looking for. Trying often comes before failure. Endeavour more often leads to success. But they are just words, I hear you say. Why does it matter whether we say ‘try’ or ‘endeavour’? It matters, believe me. Our words become our attitudes and our attitudes become our life.

L. Wilson, editor of the Chicago Evening Journal; and General Henry Eugene Davies, who wrote a pamphlet, Ten Days on the Plains, describing the hunt. Among the others rounding out the group were Leonard W. and Lawrence R. Jerome; General Anson Stager of the Western Union Telegraph Company; Colonel M. V. Sheridan, the general's brother; General Charles Fitzhugh; and Colonel Daniel H. Rucker, acting quartermaster general and soon to be Phil Sheridan's father-in-law. Leonard W. Jerome, a financier, later became the grandfather of Winston Churchill when his second daughter, jenny, married Lord Randolph Churchill. The party arrived at Fort McPherson on September 22, 1871. The New York Herald's first dispatch reported: "General Sheridan and party arrived at the North Platte River this morning, and were conducted to Fort McPherson by General Emery [sic], commanding. General Sheridan reviewed the troops, consisting of four companies of the Fifth Cavalry. The party start[s] across the country tomorrow, guided by the renowned Buffalo Bill and under the escort of Major Brown, Company F, Fifth Cavalry. The party expect[s] to reach Fort Hays in ten days." After Sheridan's review of the troops, the general introduced Buffalo Bill to the guests and assigned them to their quarters in large, comfortable tents just outside the post, a site christened Camp Rucker. The remainder of the day was spent entertaining the visitors at "dinner and supper parties, and music and dancing; at a late hour they retired to rest in their tents." The officers of the post and their ladies spared no expense in their effort to entertain their guests, to demonstrate, perhaps, that the West was not all that wild. The finest linens, glassware, and china the post afforded were brought out to grace the tables, and the ballroom glittered that night with gold braid, silks, velvets, and jewels. Buffalo Bill dressed for the hunt as he had never done before. Despite having retired late, "at five o'clock next morning . . . I rose fresh and eager for the trip, and as it was a nobby and high-toned outfit which I was to accompany, I determined to put on a little style myself. So I dressed in a new suit of buckskin, trimmed along the seams with fringes of the same material; and I put on a crimson shirt handsomely ornamented on the bosom, while on my head I wore a broad sombrero. Then mounting a snowy white horse-a gallant stepper, I rode down from the fort to the camp, rifle in hand. I felt first-rate that morning, and looked well." In all probability, Louisa Cody was responsible for the ornamentation on his shirt, for she was an expert with a needle. General Davies agreed with Will's estimation of his appearance that morning. "The most striking feature of the whole was ... our friend Buffalo Bill.... He realized to perfection the bold hunter and gallant sportsman of the plains." Here again Cody appeared as the