Every position must be held to the last man: there must be no retirement.With our backs to the wall, and believing in the justice of ourcause, each one of us must fight on until the end.

-Haig (of Bemersyde), Douglas Haig, 1st Earl
  Order to British troops facing the German offensive across the Somme battlefields,12  Apr. Quoted in  A Duff Cooper Haig (1936), vol.2, ch.23.

For solitude sometimes is best society, And short retirement urges sweet return.

-Milton,John
  Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.9, l.249^50.