This guide collects the best retirement quotes across three registers: sincere, wry, and short enough for a frame. It also covers how to use them: in a card, in a speech, or as the centrepiece of a personalised retirement quote print.
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Their name, their profession, their years of service and where they worked, set in type beneath a Happy Retirement line.
See all sizes and pricesHeartwarming retirement quotes, for the career that deserves proper recognition
These work for long service, significant careers, or anyone who would wince at a joke on the day. Where a line can be traced to a printed source, the source is given. Where it cannot, the entry says so, because most retirement quotations circulate with a name attached that nobody has ever checked.
"Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, the last of life for which the first was made.": Robert Browning, Rabbi Ben Ezra, in Dramatis Personae, 1864
The one line here with an address you can go and look up. It is spoken by an old man who thinks the second half of a life is the point of the first, which is a better thing to say to someone retiring than anything about rest. Too long for the print; right for the inside of a card, or the last sentence of a speech.
"Don't simply retire from something; have something to retire to.": widely attributed to Harry Emerson Fosdick
Practical: it asks the retiree to think about the chapter ahead, not the one closing, and it lands well in a card from a friend who knows them. Fosdick was a real and much-quoted preacher, but we could not find the sermon or the book it comes from, only quotation collections repeating one another.
"The time to enjoy a European trip is about three weeks after you unpack.": widely attributed to George Ade
Gentle and true: the pleasure of freedom arrives a little after the moment itself. Ade was an American humorist who died in 1944, and the line sounds like him, but nothing we checked names the piece it came from.
"The best time to start thinking about your retirement is before the boss does.": Anonymous
Wry but not unkind. Good for someone who has navigated a long career with good humour.
Funny retirement quotes: for the person who wants a send-off with a smile
These are for the colleague who would rather be roasted than honoured, or for a leaving speech that needs a moment of laughter before the sincerity.
"Retirement is the time when you never do all the things you intended to do when you were still working.": Anonymous
The truest retirement quote of them all. Gets a laugh from everyone in the room because everyone knows it's true.
"Retirement: when you stop living at work and start working at living.": Anonymous
Warm, slightly pointed, and good for almost any occasion.
"I'm not just retiring from the job, I'm also retiring from my alarm clock.": Anonymous
Simple and universally relatable. Works in a card, on a print, or as an opener in a speech.
"The trouble with retirement is that you never get a day off.": older than the man it is usually credited to
Nearly every list gives this to the basketball coach Abe Lemons, who was certainly using it by 1987. The quotation researcher Barry Popik finds it in print thirteen years earlier, in the Corbin, Kentucky Times Tribune of 27 October 1974: "One of the troubles with retirement is that you never get a day off." Use the line in the speech; leave the name off it.
"Retirement is wonderful. It's doing nothing without worrying about getting caught at it.": widely attributed to Gene Perret
Perret wrote for Bob Hope and Carol Burnett, so the shape of the joke is plausible, though we could not trace it to a script or a book. Irreverent, and best for a close colleague or a genuinely funny leaving card.
Short retirement quotes: for a frame or a card with limited space
When the card is small or the print needs a single line to carry the design, these work.
- "So much road ahead.": simple, hopeful, forward-looking.
- "Now the real work begins.": wry twist, works for someone with ambitions for their next chapter.
- "Free at last.": short, a little bold; for someone who has been counting the days.
- "Your time now.": two words that carry real weight in the right context.
- "The best chapter yet.": optimistic, card-ready, genuinely kind.
How to use a retirement quote in a card
A quote works best when it connects to something you know about the person. Don't open a card with "As [Famous Person] once said...": start with a sentence about them, then let the quote follow.
For example: "You've given 32 years to this place and done it with more patience than most of us could manage. We thought this summed up what comes next: [QUOTE]."
That structure (personal observation, then quote) is what makes a retirement card memorable, not generic.
How to use a retirement quote in a leaving speech
The same principle applies. The quote is a punctuation mark, not the speech itself. Build to it: talk about the person, their contribution, a specific memory, then let the quote land as the conclusion.
ACAS has practical guidance on how to manage retirement from an employment perspective: useful context if you're a manager or HR professional organising the send-off alongside the card and speech.
Putting a quote on a print
A quote on a wall is a different commitment from a quote in a card. Cards get kept; very few retirement cards survive a decade. A framed print does. That means the quote you choose for a print should be one the recipient would actually want to re-read: something sincere or hopeful, not purely comic.
Before committing to that, read what a print will actually hold. There is no field for a quotation on ours. One line can take a short one, capped at 50 characters, and it displaces their employer, and most of the quotations above are longer than that. The long ones belong in the card.
For a broader gift, you can combine a quote print with a personalised piece from the framed retirement art collection.
The one thing to avoid
Don't choose a quote that subtly implies the person is old, tired, or finished. Even the wry quotes on this list are about freedom and time, not about winding down or reaching an end. The distinction matters.
This piece sits in the next chapter, the last stage of the path: the send-off itself. The two pages beside it are what to write in a retirement card, which is where a longer quotation actually fits, and retirement party ideas, for the day the words get read out. If you have settled on a line and want to see whether it will print, retirement quote prints has the character count and the trade it costs you.