Retirement is a huge milestone in a person’s life. This new season is marked with excitement, relief and maybe a little uncertainty. A lifetime of preparation goes into this life changing decision, and it is certainly grounds for celebration. If you know someone that is retiring, send them the perfect retirement gift and a note to honor and encourage them as they start this next chapter.
Sometimes no matter how hard you try, you can’t come up with the right words. To help you write the perfect celebratory retirement card, we’ve compiled a list of retirement quotes for every person. Whether you want to make your loved one laugh or feel inspired, there is sure to be the perfect sentiment for you!
Funny Retirement Quotes
- “The trouble with retirement is that you never get a day off.” – Abe Lemons
- “The best time to start thinking about your retirement is before the boss does.” – Unknown
- “Funny thing about retirement, it kills more people than work ever did.” – Malcolm Forbes
- “My parents didn’t want to move to Florida, but they turned sixty and that’s the law.” – Jerry Seinfeld
- “When some people retire, it’s going to be hard to be able to tell the difference.” – Virginia Graham
- “Working people have a lot of bad habits, but the worst of these is work.” – Clarence Darrow
- “Retirement: No Job, No Stress, No Pay!” – Unknown
- “I’m not just retiring from the company; I’m also retiring from my stress, my commute, my alarm clock, and my iron.” – Hartman Jule
- “He who laughs last at the boss’s jokes probably isn’t far from retirement.” – Unknown
- “Retirement: When you stop lying about your age and start lying around the house.” – Unknown
- “I have never liked working. To me a job is an invasion of privacy.” – Danny McGoorty
- “I enjoy waking up and not having to go to work. So I do it three or four times a day.” – Gene Perret
- “We spend our lives on the run: we get up by the clock, eat and sleep by the clock, get up again, go to work – and then we retire. And what do they give us? A bloody clock!” – Dave Allen
- “A retired husband is often a wife’s full-time job.” – Ella Harris
- “Retirement: The pay sucks but the hours are great.” – Unknown
- “It’s a good, quiet retirement. Most days I do nothing, but it takes me all day to do it.” – Barry Wilkin
- “Retirement: World’s longest coffee break.” – Unknown
- “There are some who start their retirement long before they stop working.” – Robert Half
- “Retirement: That’s when you return from work one day and say, Hi, Honey, I’m home—forever.”
– Gene Perret - You know you’re ready to retire when you think “getting lucky” means finding your car in the parking lot. – Unknown
- “My retirement plan is to get thrown into a minimum security prison in Hawaii.” – Julius Sharpe
- “You’re retired – goodbye tension, hello pension!” – Unknown
- “When you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go!” – Unknown
- “Retirement: It’s nice to get out of the rat race, but you have to learn to get along with less cheese.” – Gene Perret
- “There is no sense in being pessimistic about your retirement. It wouldn’t work anyway.” – Unknown
- “The company gave me an aptitude test and I found out the best work I was best suited for was retirement” – Unknown
- “Fear no more the heat o the sun, nor the furious winter’s rages. Thou thy worldly task hast done, home art gone and taken thy wages.” – William Shakespeare
Inspirational Retirement Quotes
- “Don’t act your age in retirement. Act like the inner young person you have always been.”
– J. A. West - “There is a whole new kind of life ahead, full of experiences just waiting to happen. Some call it retirement. I call it bliss.” – Betty Sullivan
- “Retirement is not the end of the road. It is the beginning of the open highway.” – Unknown
- “Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.” – Will Rogers
- “Retirement, a time to enjoy all the things you never had time to do when you worked.”
– Catherine Pulsifer - “When you ‘retire,’ you’re on your own. No longer is most of your life ahead. You don’t have forever to fulfill promises. But there’s also good news: Now, going forward, can be the most important part of your life, when it all comes together – your experience, wisdom, and successes.” ~ Michael Jeans
- “Often when you think you’re at the end of something, you’re at the beginning of something else.”
– Fred Rogers - “For many, retirement is a time for personal growth, which becomes the path to greater freedom.” – Robert Delamontague
- “The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender.” – Vince Lombardi
- “… believe that your greatest contribution is always ahead of you. You might retire from a job, but never retire from making contributions. Indeed, life is about contribution, not accumulation.”
– Hyrum W. Smith - “Retire the word ‘retirement’ from your vocabulary. Look it up: it means to ‘withdraw’ or ‘retreat.’ Words can shape reality, and it’s time for this one to go. Doesn’t ‘renaissance’ or ‘graduation’ or ‘transition’ better describe your post-career life?” – Marika Stone
- “Retirement has been a discovery of beauty for me. I never had the time before to notice the beauty of my grandkids, my wife, the tree outside my very own front door. And, the beauty of time itself.”
– Hartman Jule - “Don’t think of retiring from the world until the world will be sorry that you retire.” – Samuel Johnson
- “Retirement’s the most wonderful thing. I get to enjoy all the things I never stopped to notice on the way up. After an extraordinary life, it’s time to enjoy my retirement.” – Patrick Macnee
- “There’s one thing I always wanted to do before I quit… retire!” – Groucho Marx
- “Retirement is wonderful if you have two essentials — much to live on and much to live for.”
– Unknown - “Retirement is a blank sheet of paper. It is a chance to redesign your life into something new and different.” – Patrick Foley
Happy Retirement Quotes
- “Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself. Go forward and make your dreams come true.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.” – J. Lubbock
- “For retirement brings repose, and repose allows a kindly judgment of all things.”
– John Sharp Williams - “You can retire, but you can’t retire from being great!” – Unknown
- “Retirement is when having a good time is your only job.” – Unknown
- “And in the end it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.” – Abraham Lincoln
- “Retirement is when you stop living at work and start working at living.” – Unknown
- “Happy days are here at last, the days of nine to five are past, you’ve worked your life and paid your dues, now you can do just what you choose!” – Unknown
- “Time spent in laughter when one is retired is well invested.” – Unknown
- “As your life changes, it takes time to recalibrate, to find your values again. You might also find that retirement is the time when you stretch out and find your potential.” – Sid Miramontes
- “Retirement, a perfect time to do what you want to, when you want to, where you want to do it, and, exactly how you want to do it.” – Catherine Pulsifer
Short Retirement Quotes
- “Retirement is wonderful. It’s doing nothing without worrying about getting caught at it.”
– Gene Perret - “I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy living, or get busy dying.”
– The Shawshank Redemption - “Stay young at heart, kind in spirit, and enjoy retirement living.” – Danielle Duckery
- “The key to retirement is to find joy in the little things.” – Susan Miller
- “There’s never enough time to do all the nothing you want.” – Bill Waterson, Calvin & Hobbes
- “Life starts at retirement.” – Unknown
- “Retirement means doing whatever I want to do. It means choice.” – Dianne Nahirny
- “Don’t simply retire from something; have something to retire to.” – Harry Emerson Fosdick
- “Retirement brings the ball to your court, where you make the rules.” – Unknown
- “In retirement it’s not the years in your life. It’s the life in your years.” – Unknown
- “Retire from work, but not from life.” – M.K. Soni
- “Retiring from work does not mean retiring from life! It is just the beginning not the end!” – Unknown
- “RETIREMENT – now life begins.” – Catherine Pulsifer
- “You have to put off being young until you can retire.” – Unknown
- “Retirement itself is the best gift. No gold watch could ever top it.” – Abigail Charleson
- “What do you call someone who’s happy on Mondays? Retired!” – Unknown
- “You can’t retire from being great!” – Unknown
- “Retirement is when you start working at living and quit living at work.” – Unknown
- “Retirement is a time to enjoy what you have been working so hard for.” – Unknown
- “Don’t just retire from something; have something you retire to.” – Unknown
- “The challenge to retirement is spending more time without spending more money.” – Unknown
Retirement Quotes for Your Boss
- “The boss inspires fear; the leader inspires enthusiasm.” – John C. Maxwell
- “A good boss realizes that they can also learn from those they work with no matter the level, title or position. Learning is a continuous habit and is one of the best lessons demonstrated by a good boss.” – Byron Pulsifer
- “All these years you may have been the boss, but now all that goes out for a toss. Retirement marks the end of your reigning thunder, because without your job title you’re no more than a mere commoner” – Unknown
- “A good manager is a man who isn’t worried about his own career but rather the careers of those who work for him.” – H. S. M. Burns
- “Until now you may have thought that life’s biggest battles are fought in the boardroom… but now as you retire and spend more time at home, you’ll realize that they’re actually fought in the kitchen.”
– Unknown - “He who laughs last at the boss’s jokes probably isn’t far from retirement.” – Unknown
- “We have had many good times, and now as you retire you will make new memories.” – Unknown
- “Enjoy every day and don’t forget us!, unfortunately we will be here for awhile!” – Kate Summers
- Throughout your career you have been someone’s boss. Retirement is your chance to be your own.” – Unknown
- “Retirement is when you switch bosses from the one who hired you to the one who married you.”
– Gene Perret
Retirement Quotes for Teachers
- “The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind.” – Kahlil Gibran
- “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.” – Henry Brooks Adams
- “The task of the excellent teacher is to stimulate apparently ordinary people to unusual effort. The tough problem is not in identifying winners: it is in making winners out of ordinary people.”
– K. Patricia Cross - “What the teacher is, is more important than what he teaches.” – Karl Menninger
- “I’m not a teacher: only a fellow-traveller of whom you asked the way. I pointed ahead- ahead of myself as well as you.” – George Bernard Shaw
- “A teacher is one who makes two ideas grow where only one grew before.” – Elbert Hubbard
- “The best teacher lodges an intent not in the mind but in the heart.” – Anne Michaels
- “One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.” – Carl Jung
- “The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” – William Arthur Ward
- “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
- “I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well.” – Alexander of Macedon
- “The test of a good teacher is not how many questions he can ask his pupils that they will answer readily, but how many questions he inspires them to ask him which he finds it hard to answer.”
– Alice Rollins - “Old teachers never die; they just grade away” – Anonymous
- “There are three things to remember when teaching: know your stuff; know whom you are stuffing; and then stuff them elegantly.” – Lola May
- “Someone once said, There are two good reasons to be a teacher — July and August. In fact, there are three good reasons to be a teacher. The third reason is retirement.” – Unknown
How to Congratulate Someone on Their Retirement
It is time to celebrate! If you are looking for ways to honor your friend or loved one as they enter this next phase of life, check out these celebration ideas!
- Thoughtful card: A card is the perfect way to congratulate your loved one. Be sure to include one of the retirement quotes above in your note!
- Personalized gift: Include a personalized retirement gift with your card to make your loved one feel extra special.
- Throw a party: Retirement can be a bittersweet time for many people. The next stage of life is exciting, but saying goodbye can be hard. Make sure to let the person know that reaching retirement is a celebration and give a toast in their honor.
Retirement is an outstanding achievement that people work for their entire lives. If you can’t celebrate this exciting time with your loved one in person, send them a thoughtful note or retirement gift to show how happy you are for them.
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