Thoughts on Gratitude

Here are some great thoughts on gratitude. Many thinkers throughout time have written down their thoughts and theories on why its important to be grateful for what you have and gratitude for where you are in life. Enjoy these nuggets of wisdom and think about things in your life that you are grateful for:

• God gave you a gift of 86,400 seconds today. Have you used one to say “thank you?” ~William A. Ward
• The Pilgrims made seven times more graves than huts. No Americans have been more impoverished than these who, nevertheless, set aside a day of thanksgiving. ~H.U. Westermayer
• Think about what you want, not what you don’t want. Be grateful for what you got, and you will get more to be grateful for. ~Travis Wright
• Gratitude is the memory of the heart. ~Jean Baptiste Massieu, translated from French
• Silent gratitude isn’t much use to anyone. ~G.B. Stern
• If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, “thank you,” that would suffice. ~Meister Eckhart
• If you have lived, take thankfully the past. ~John Dryden
• When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs? ~G.K. Chesterton
• The only people with whom you should try to get even are those who have helped you. ~John E. Southard
• [G]ratitude is happiness doubled by wonder. ~G.K. Chesterton
• You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink. ~G.K. Chesterton
• For each new morning with its light,
  For rest and shelter of the night,
  For health and food, for love and friends,
  For everything Thy goodness sends.
  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

• The unthankful heart… discovers no mercies; but let the thankful heart sweep through the day and, as the magnet finds the iron, so it will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings! ~Henry Ward Beecher
• Grace isn’t a little prayer you chant before receiving a meal. It’s a way to live. ~Jackie Windspear
• If you count all your assets, you always show a profit. ~Robert Quillen
• What a miserable thing life is: you’re living in clover, only the clover isn’t good enough. ~Bertolt Brecht, Jungle of Cities, 1924
• Gratitude is the best attitude. ~Author Unknown
• Not what we say about our blessings, but how we use them, is the true measure of our thanksgiving. ~W.T. Purkiser
• We thank Thee, O Father of all, for… all the soul-help that sad souls understand. ~Will Carleton
• We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures. ~Thornton Wilder
• There is not a more pleasing exercise of the mind than gratitude. It is accompanied with such an inward satisfaction that the duty is sufficiently rewarded by the performance. ~Joseph Addison
• I feel a very unusual sensation - if it is not indigestion, I think it must be gratitude. ~Benjamin Disraeli
• Who does not thank for little will not thank for much. ~Estonian Proverb
• Thou hast given so much to me,
  Give one thing more, - a grateful heart;
  Not thankful when it pleaseth me,
  As if Thy blessings had spare days,
  But such a heart whose pulse may be Thy praise.
  ~George Herbert
• The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings. ~Eric Hoffer, Reflections On The Human Condition
• When our perils are past, shall our gratitude sleep? ~George Canning
• As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them. ~John Fitzgerald Kennedy
• We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude. ~Cynthia Ozick
• Only a stomach that rarely feels hungry scorns common things. ~Horace
• The grateful person, being still the most severe exacter of himself, not only confesses, but proclaims, his debts. ~Robert South
• Gratitude is merely the secret hope of further favors. ~François Duc de La Rochefoucauld
• When eating bamboo sprouts, remember the man who planted them. ~Chinese Proverb
• Thanks are justly due for boons unbought. ~Ovid
• In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican. ~H.L. Mencken
• Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it. ~William Arthur Ward
• Hem your blessings with thankfulness so they don’t unravel. ~Author Unknown

List compiled at http://authorsden.com

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