Gratitude Quotes

Gratitude is a feeling of recognition and appreciation for what is good in your life.  Gratitude as a practice expresses that feeling in words and deeds.  What’s the opposite of gratitude? The opposite might include taking good experiences for granted, accepting those good experiences grudgingly, or regretting the past.  Gratitude is a result of and contributor to personal happiness and to rewarding and stable relationships.

Sometimes our inner light goes out but is blown again into flame by an encounter with another human being. Each of us owes the deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this inner light.

All looks yellow to a jaundiced eye that habitually compares everything to something better. But by changing that habit to comparing everything to something worse, even making it a game, that person can find gratitude, relief and happiness where-ever they go and whatever they experience, guaranteed!

Gratitude is one of the sweet shortcuts to finding peace of mind and happiness inside. No matter what is going on outside of us, there’s always something we could be grateful for.

If our religion is based on salvation, our chief emotions will be fear and trembling. If our religion is based on wonder, our chief emotion will be gratitude.

There shall be eternal summer in the grateful heart.”

Reflect upon your present blessings — of which every man has many — not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.

For all that has been,
Thank you.
For all that is to come,
Yes!

Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn, or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude.

Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude.

Courage, it would seem, is nothing less than the power to overcome danger, misfortune, fear, injustice, while continuing to affirm inwardly that life with all its sorrows is good; that everything is meaningful even if in a sense beyond our understanding; and that there is always tomorrow.

To those who followed Columbus and Cortez, the New World truly seemed incredible because of the natural endowments. The land often announced itself with a heavy scent miles out into the ocean. Giovanni di Verrazano in 1524 smelled the cedars of the East Coast a hundred leagues out. The men of Henry Hudson’s Half Moon were temporarily disarmed by the fragrance of the New Jersey shore, while ships running farther up the coast occasionally swam through large beds of floating flowers. Wherever they came inland they found a rich riot of color and sound, of game and luxuriant vegetation. Had they been other than they were, they might have written a new mythology here. As it was, they took inventory.

There are slavish souls who carry their appreciation for favors done them so far that they strangle themselves with the rope of gratitude.

The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.

I hope it is not pompous to call the chief idea of my life; I will not say the doctrine I have always taught, but the doctrine I should always have liked to teach. That is the idea of taking things with gratitude, and not taking things for granted.

Silent gratitude isn’t very much use to anyone.

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.

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.

Even after all this time,
The sun never says to the earth,
‘You owe me.’
Look what happens with
A love like that.
It lights the whole sky.

Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world.

Gratitude, like love, is never a dependable international emotion.

Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.

Come into my lap and sit in the center of your soul. Drink the living waters of memory and give birth to yourself. What you unearth will stun you. You will paint the walls of this cave in thanksgiving.

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.

Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.

True rest doesn’t affect us only when we are resting. It spills over into our weeks, our years, our very lives. The days preceding the day of rest become days of excitement and expectation. Even the most harried workdays become tolerable when you know a day or holy peace is shortly arriving. The days succeeding the day of rest become days of light, too. They shimmer with the afterglow of a revived spirit.

True rest gives us a completely different perspective on all of life’s difficulties. It allows us to heal, to reflect, to give thanks, and to face whatever lies ahead with a renewed sense of calm.

There is a calmness to a life lived in gratitude, a quiet joy.

I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new.

Conservatism makes no poetry, breathes no prayer, has no invention; it is all memory. Reform has no gratitude, no prudence, no husbandry

In a consumer society, contentment is a radical proposition. Recognizing abundance rather than scarcity undermines an economy that thrives by creating unmet desires. Gratitude cultivates an ethic of fullness, but the economy needs emptiness. The Thanksgiving Address reminds you that you already have everything you need. Gratitude doesn’t send you out shopping to find satisfaction; it comes as a gift rather than a commodity, subverting the foundation of the whole economy. That’s good medicine for land and people alike.