65 of Our Favorite Teacher Retirement Quotes

As the end of the school year approaches, many of us are preparing for summer break. Some of our colleagues, however, are preparing for retirement. It’s important to celebrate the teachers among us who have given so much of their lives to this profession. With that in mind, we gathered some inspiring retirement quotes for teachers that you can print, send, sign in a card, and more! Thank you for all that you’ve done and continue to do.

Funny Retirement Quotes

1. I enjoy waking up and not having to go to work. So I do it three or four times a day. —Gene Perret

2. You have to put off being young until you can retire. —Unknown

3. Retirement is wonderful. It’s doing nothing without worrying about getting caught at it. —Gene Perret

4. Retirement is the beginning of the time when you can sit back and give advice to others, even though you never followed it in your own life. —Unknown

5. Old teachers never die; they just grade away! —Unknown

6. What do you call a person who is happy on Monday? Retired! —Unknown

7. Life is just what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans. —John Lennon

Retirement Quotes To Highlight the Impact Teachers Have on Others

8. A fundamental concern for others in our individual and community lives would go a long way in making the world the better place we so passionately dreamt of. —Nelson Mandela

9. Service doesn’t have to be big and grandiose to be meaningful and make a difference. —Cheryl Esplin

10. Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world. —Desmond Tutu

11. How lovely to think that no one need wait a moment, we can start now, start slowly changing the world! —Anne Frank

12. Somewhere along the way, we must learn that there is nothing greater than to do something for others. —Martin Luther King Jr.

Retirement Quotes To Remind Teachers of Their Accomplishments

13. Education is what survives when what has been learned is forgotten. —B.F. Skinner

14. If [the teacher] is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind. —Kahlil Gibran

15. A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. —Henry Brooks Adams

16. The teacher is one who makes two ideas grow where only one grew before. —Elbert Hubbard

17. The best teacher lodges an intent not in the mind but in the heart. —Anne Michaels

18. The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires. —William Arthur Ward

19. 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

20. Education is for improving the lives of others and for leaving your community and world better than what you found it. —Marian Wright Edelman

21. Being a teacher is an essential connection between what is and what can be. —Teresa Thayer Snyder

22. Teaching is the greatest act of optimism. —Colleen Wilcox

23. One child, one teacher, one book, and one pen can change the world. —Malala Yousafzai

24. The influence of a good teacher can never be erased. —Unknown

25. Teaching is the profession that teaches all the other professions. —Unknown

Retirement Quotes To Say Goodbye to an Amazing Colleague

26. Often when you think you’re at the end of something, you’re at the beginning of something else. —Fred Rogers

27. Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end. —Dan Wilson

28. Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending. —Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

29. It’s time to say goodbye, but I think goodbyes are sad and I’d much rather say hello. Hello to a new adventure. —Ernie Harwell

30. You and I will meet again / When we’re least expecting it / One day in some far off place / I will recognize your face / I won’t say goodbye, my friend / For you and I will meet again. —Tom Petty

31. There is nothing to regret with a job well done. —Joe Garcia

32. Be well, do good work, and keep in touch. —Garrison Keillor

Retirement Quotes for Teachers’ Next Big Adventure

33. We do not remember days, we remember moments. —Cesare Pavese

34. And in the end it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years. —Edward J. Stieglitz

35. To appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded. —Bessie A. Stanley

36. Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life. —Eleanor Roosevelt

37. In all of living, have much fun and laughter. Life is to be enjoyed, not just endured. —Gordon B. Hinckley

38. [We] never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born. —Albert Einstein

39. The longer I live, the more beautiful life becomes. —Frank Lloyd Wright

40. Count your age by friends, not years. —Unknown

41. Retire from work but not from life. —Unknown

42. I see retirement as just another of these reinventions, another chance to do new things and be a new version of myself. —Walt Mossberg

43. I am once more seated under my own vine and fig tree … and hope to spend the remainder of my days in peaceful retirement, making political pursuits yield to the more rational amusement of cultivating the earth. —George Washington

44. Keep the town for occasions, but the habits should be formed in retirement. —Ralph Waldo Emerson

45. Retirement, it seems, is the final fling. The love boat, the trip-around-the-world. —Klaus H. Carl

46. Your retirement identity is of a successful person who creatively and efficiently manages your money and lifestyle to adapt to the ever-changing economic and personal conditions of our time. —Lee Johnson

More Retirement Quotes

47. Art is one of the few careers without a mandatory retirement age. —Julia Cameron

48. Such to me is the new image of aging; growth in self, and service for all mankind. —Ethel Percy Andrus

49. I want to take retirement rather than feel as if it’s taking me unawares. Maybe even seize it joyously. But at least behold it without looking back so longingly that I turn into a pillar of regret. —Klaus H. Carl

50. Singularity is only pardonable in old age and retirement; I may now be as singular as I please, but you may not. —Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

51. I don’t believe in aging. I believe in forever altering one’s aspect to the sun. Hence my optimism. —Virginia Woolf

52. An elegant sufficiency, content,
Retirement, rural quiet, friendship, books,
Ease and alternate labour, useful life,
Progressive virtue, and approving Heaven!
—James Thomson

53. The only true retirement is that of the heart; the only true leisure is the repose of the passions. To such persons it makes little difference whether they are young or old; and they die as they have lived, with graceful resignation. —William Hazlitt

54. When the end of the world comes, I want to be living in retirement. —Karl Kraus

55. In retirement, the passage of time seems accelerated. Nothing warns us of its flight. It is a wave which never murmurs, because there is no obstacle to its flow. —Sophie Swetchine

56. It is one of the enjoyments of retirement that you are able to drift through the day at your own pace, easy in the knowledge that you have put hard work and achievement behind you. —Kazuo Ishiguro

57. I have one life and one chance to make it count for something. … My faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I can, whenever I can, for as long as I can with whatever I have, to try to make difference. —Jimmy Carter

58. Retirement is not the end of the road. It is the beginning of the open highway. —Unknown

59. If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story. —Orson Welles

60. Retirement is the only time in your life when time no longer equals money. —Unknown

61. All lovely things will have an ending,
All lovely things will fade and die,
And youth, that’s now so bravely spending,
Will beg a penny by and by.
—Conrad Aiken

62. He who laughs last at the boss’s jokes probably isn’t far from retirement. —Unknown

63. If you’re blessed enough to grow older, which is how I look at aging, there’s so much wisdom to be gained from people who are celebrating the process with vibrancy and vigor and grace. —Oprah Winfrey

64. A good marriage is like an incredible retirement fund. You put everything you have into it during your productive life, and over the years it turns from silver to gold to platinum. —Willard Scott

65. Retirement, I feel, means a new adventure in living—not a stopping. —Marion Hilliard

Looking for even more great teacher quotes? Check out our all-time favorite teacher quotes.

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