Literal translation
At a hundred years, nothing but Sundays.
Meaning
at a hundred, every day is Sunday
Explanation
The saying links great age, symbolised by the round figure of a hundred years, to an existence reduced to Sundays, the day traditionally set aside for rest, church, and freedom from work in the old agricultural calendar. The image suggests that at a very advanced age, one is excused from every obligation and every task, as though each day became a day of celebration and rest, a kind of perpetual Sunday. The proverb carries a double reading: on one hand a form of consolation before old age, viewed as a release from daily constraints, on the other a touch of irony about the forced inactivity that very old age imposes regardless of choice. The construction rèn que, nothing but, stresses the exclusivity of this condition: nothing left besides Sunday rest, no room for labour. It is used in ordinary register, often with a smile, to evoke advanced old age or to console oneself about one's own advancing years.