It’s hard to believe that another school year is coming to an end. Through good times and bad times, we’ve found new ways to show our love and support in our classrooms. We’ve found pockets of joy and overcome challenges with our students to cross the finish line together. Here are some of the best end-of-school-year quotes to honor this moment.
Once you’ve finished reading these great quotes for the end of the year and the last day of school, be sure to check out our list of favorite all-time classroom quotes!
Our Favorite End-of-Year Quotes
1. “Do what you have to do until you can do what you want to do.” — Oprah Winfrey
2. “It is never too late to be what you might have been.” — Unknown
3. “Sunsets are proof that endings can be beautiful.” — Beau Taplin
4. “Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education.” — Martin Luther King Jr.
5. “Your education is a dress rehearsal for a life that is yours to lead.” — Nora Ephron
6. “Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.” — Robert Collier
7. “What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the human soul.” — Joseph Addison
8. “So often you find that the students you’re trying to inspire are the ones that end up inspiring you.” — Sean Junkins
9. “They may forget what you said but they will never forget how you made them feel.” — Carl W. Buehner
10. “The greatest sign of success for a teacher … is to be able to say, ‘The children are now working as if I did not exist.’” — Maria Montessori
11. “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” — Unknown
12. “It always seems impossible until it’s done.” — Nelson Mandela
13. “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” — President John F. Kennedy
14. “Someone once told me not to bite off more than I could chew. I’d rather choke on greatness than nibble on mediocrity.” — Unknown
15. “Always find time for the things that make you feel happy to be alive.” — Matt Haig
16. “It’s never crowded along the extra mile.” — Wayne Dyer
17. “Just because the past didn’t turn out like you wanted it to doesn’t mean your future can’t be better than you ever imagined.” — Anonymous
18. “You don’t want to look back and know you could’ve done better.” — Unknown
19. “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” — Thomas Edison
20. “You can. End of story.” — Cory Lewis
21. “Every time you tear a leaf off a calendar, you present a new place for new ideas.” — Charles Kettering
22. “What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.” — T.S. Eliot
23. “We all learn by experience, but some of us have to go to summer school.” — Peter De Vries
24. “What I remember most about high school are the memories I created with my friends.” — J.J. Watt
25. “No matter what happens in life, be good to people. Being good to people is a wonderful legacy to leave behind.” — Taylor Swift
26. “How paramount the future is to the present when one is surrounded by children.” — Charles Darwin
27. “Promises are the uniquely human way of ordering the future.” — Hannah Arendt
28. “Life—a culmination of the past, an awareness of the present, an indication of a future beyond knowledge, the quality that gives a touch of divinity to matter.” — Charles Lindbergh
29. “I attribute my success to this—I never gave or took any excuse.” — Florence Nightingale
30. “Discipline is the soul of an army. It makes small numbers formidable; procures success to the weak, and esteem to all.” — President George Washington
31. “Achieve success in any area of life by identifying the optimum strategies and repeating them until they become habits.” — Charles J. Givens
32. “People seldom see the halting and painful steps by which the most insignificant success is achieved.” — Annie Sullivan
33. “There is power in thinking. And you can use that power to enhance your success potential if you spend some time every day thinking of yourself as a success.” — Joyce Brothers
34. “A desire to be in charge of our own lives, a need for control, is born in each of us. It is essential to our mental health, and our success, that we take control.” — Bob Bennett
35. “Great success in examinations does naturally not as a rule go with originality of thought.” — Edward Carpenter
36. “Year’s end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us.” — Hal Borland
37. “We may be together for another six months—a year—there’s no knowing. At the end we’re certain to be apart. Do you realize how utterly alone we shall be?” — George Orwell
38. “We don’t see the end of the tunnel, but I must say I don’t think it is darker than it was a year ago, and in some ways lighter.” — President John F. Kennedy
39. “It is reasonable that a man should be something worthier at the end of the year than he was at the beginning.” — Henry David Thoreau
40. “Change your life today. Don’t gamble on the future, act now, without delay.” — Simone de Beauvoir
41. “Education and admonition commence in the first years of childhood, and last to the very end of life.” — Plato
