gratitude Quotes

“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach!”

“Do the wise thing and the kind thing too, and make the best of us and not the worst.”

“When you feel discontented, think over your blessings, and be grateful.”

“Love casts out fear, and gratitude can conquer pride.”

“The foundation of courage is vulnerability--the ability to navigate uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. It takes courage to open ourselves up to joy...joy is probably the most vulnerable emotion we experience. We’re afraid that if we allow ourselves to feel lit, we’ll get blindsided by disaster or disappointment. That’s why in moments of real joy, many of us dress-rehearse tragedy...I call it foreboding joy. The only way to combat foreboding joy is gratitude.”

“It is curious how people take it for granted that they have a right to preach at you and pray over you as soon as your income falls below a certain level.”

“You’ll miss the best things if you keep your eyes shut.”

“Life’s under no obligation to give us what we expect. We take what we get and are thankful it’s no worse than it is.”

“It’s about living in the moment and appreciating the smallest things. Surrounding yourself with the things that inspire you and letting go of the obsessions that want to take over your mind. It is a daily struggle sometimes and hard work but happiness begins with your own attitude and how you look at the world.”

...when you took a moment to see what was around you, noticed all the little things, it made you feel....lighter.

“Trade in your drama about how you can’t have what you want for the grateful expectation that miracles will walk into your life, and the more commonplace those miracles will become.”

“Having a good attitude and being grateful for all the things that are helping you live the life of your dreams will not only make your life a more pleasant place to be, and get you bigger tips, but it will also raise your frequency and attract the people and opportunities to you that will take you in the direction you want to go.”

“By contrast, I can’t tell you how many Asian kids I’ve met who, while acknowledging how oppressively strict and brutally demanding their parents were, happily describe themselves as devoted to their parents and unbelievably grateful to them, seemingly without a trace of bitterness or resentment.”

“My town is called *Who*-ville, for I am a *Who* And we *Whos* are all thankful and grateful to you.”

[S]team seems to have killed all gratitude in the hearts of sailors.

Ingratitude is amongst them a capital crime, as we read it to have been in some other countries: for they reason thus; that whoever makes ill-returns to his benefactor, must needs be a common enemy to the rest of the mankind, from where he has received no obligations and therefore such man is not fit to live.

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

Gratitude looks to the Past and love to the Present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead.

“Perhaps you are overvaluing what you don’t have and undervaluing what you do.”

“There’s some real utility in gratitude.”

“It took untold generations to get you where you are. A little gratitude might be in order.”

Time erodes gratitude more quickly than it does beauty!

“Most of them had not understood Blackberry’s discovery of the raft and at once forgot it. Fiver, however, came over to where Blackberry was lying against the stem of a blackthorn in the hedge. “You saved Pipkin and me, didn’t you?” he said. “I don’t think Pipkin’s got any idea what really happened; but I have.” “I admit it was a good idea,” replied Blackberry. “Let’s remember it. It might come in handy again sometime.”″

“I can see that one can never pay back Gilsa for the fear that she will give again.”

“O wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world That has such people in ’t!”

″‘Oh,’ sighed the duckling, ‘how thankful I am for being so ugly; even a dog will not bite me.’ And so he lay quite still, while the shot rattled through the rushes, and gun after gun was fired over him.”

“He now felt glad at having suffered sorrow and trouble, because it enabled him to enjoy so much better all the pleasure and happiness around him; for the great swans swam round the new-comer, and stroked his neck with their beaks, as a welcome.”

“Gratitude looks to the Past and love to the Present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead.”

“It is impossible to bring more into your life if you are feeling ungrateful about what you have. Why? Because the thoughts and feelings you emit as you feel ungrateful are all negative emotions.”

“Be grateful for what you have now. As you begin to think about all the things in your life you are grateful for, you will be amazed at the never ending thoughts that come back to you of more things to be grateful for. You have to make a start, and then the law of attraction will receive those grateful thoughts and give you more just like them.”

“Tonight Sally and Gillian will concentrate on the rain, and tomorrow on the blue sky. They will do the best they can, but they will always be the girls they once were, dressed in their black coats, walking home through the fallen leaves to a house where no one could see into the windows, and no one could see out. At twilight they will always think of those women who would do anything for love. And in spite of everything, they will discover that this, above all others, is their favorite time of day. It’s the hour when they remember everything the aunts taught them. It’s the hour they’re most grateful for.”

“When God is our Holy Father, sovereignty, holiness, omniscience, and immutability do not terrify us; they leave us full of awe and gratitude.”

“For her whole life she has been measuring herself against her sister, and she’s not going to do that anymore. That is the gift Gillian has given her tonight, and for that she will always be grateful.”

″‘She loved you, you know.’ He could tell from Bill’s voice that he was crying. ‘She told me once that if it weren’t for you…’ His voice broke completely. ‘Thank you,’ he said a moment later. ‘Thank you for being such a wonderful friend to her.‘”

“To my dear and honored Mother, whose life, no less than her pen, has been devoted to the welfare of others, this little book is affectionately dedicated.”

“Of him also I learned how to receive favours and kindnesses (as commonly they are accounted:) from friends, so that I might not become obnoxious unto them, for them, nor more yielding upon occasion, than in right I ought; and yet so that I should not pass them neither, as an unsensible and unthankful man.”

“i stand on the sacrifices of a million women before me thinking what can i do to make this mountain taller so the women after me can see farther -legacy”

“We begin so aware and grateful. The sun somehow hangs there in the sky. The little bird sings. The miracle of life just happens. Then we stub our toe, and in that moment of pain, the whole world is reduced to our poor little toe. Now, for a day or two, it is difficult to walk. With every step, we are reminded of our poor little toe.”

“I don’t deserve anything. You stand for what is right, Lina, without the expectation of gratitude or reward.”

“I reached for him and muffled my sobs against his shoulder. I was crying because no stranger had ever been so kind or gone so far for me….I was crying because I’d never known so much gratitude and there was no other way to show it.”

″... he saved my life in the coolest and readiest manner, and he has made a friend who never will require to be reminded of the debt he owes.”

“I wept because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet.”

“Meeting you was a disaster. But I am grateful every day for that disaster.”

“Returning from work feeling inspired, safe, fulfilled and grateful is a natural human right to which we are all entitled and not a modern luxury that only a few lucky ones are able to find.”

″‘That lame man you saw - is he grateful now? Is it worth it to get on his feet and spend the rest of his life dragging burdens like a mule?‘”

“How can we thank him? We have no power to do him any service. Lord, allow us to share this inheritance from our father with him as well. Take him too, and his family, into Your constant care.”

“And I have by me, for my comfort, two strange white flowers – shrivelled now, and brown and flat and brittle – to witness that even when mind and strength had gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart of man.”

“Lift up your heart to Him during your meals and in company; the least little remembrance will always be the most pleasing to Him. One need not cry out very loudly; He is nearer to us than we think.”

“When you recognize that you will thrive not in spite of your losses and sorrows, but because of them, that you would not have chosen the things that happened in your life, but you are grateful for them, that you will hold the empty bowls eternally in your hands, but you also have the capacity to fill them? THE WORD FOR THAT IS HEALING.”

“Like a good servant, Job counted the will of his Lord his great possession, by obedience to which his soul was enriched; nor did it grieve him to lose, while yet living, those goods which he must shortly leave at his death.”

“When you become addict in to MATERIAL things in life then the TRUE natural life start to run away from you, YES! it’s can give you certain pleasure in the society but in the same time it will sabotage your true HAPPINESS of life which we could have simply with GRATITUDE and FORGIVENESS”

“It’s the recognition that other people’s problems, their pain and frustrations, are every bit as real as our own – often far worse. In recognizing this fact and trying to offer some assistance, we open our hearts and greatly enhance our sense of gratitude.”

“I’m very much obliged to you, Irene, for getting me out of that hole, but I wish you hadn’t made a fool of me afterwards.”

″‘I’ve heard of you. And if it hadn’t been for you, Godmama, I wouldn’t be here at this minute.’ ‘Does that make you glad or sorry?’ asked the old lady. ‘Glad!’ said the Ordinary Princess promptly. ‘Though I ought to say,’ she added truthfully, ‘that there have been times when I’ve wished I was a really proper kind of princess ... but not very often.’ The old lady laughed a high cackling sort of laugh. ‘You’re a sensible child,’ she said. ‘Come and sit beside me and tell me all about it.‘”

“I would rather my hand were withered off than bring one brick to such a building! […] Perhaps the thing I resented was, that of all your edifices there has not been one at which one could not put out one’s tongue. On the contrary, I would let my tongue be cut off out of gratitude if things could be so arranged that I should lose all desire to put it out. ”

“Gratitude is merely the secret hope of further favors.”

“Oh, Mr. Edwards, thank you, thank you for going all the way to Independence to find Santa Claus for us.”

″‘Thank you! Thank you!’ Isabel cried. Her heart ached with gratitude toward these people. Just a moment’s kindness from each of them might mean the difference between death and survival for her mother and everyone else on the little raft.”

“Thank you, for clarifying for me what love is not.”

“I’m whining in retrospect. At the time, I never whined. Not once. I was the picture of humility and gratitude.”

“Wealth can also be that attitude of gratitude with which we remind ourselves everyday to count our blessings.”

“A burning brand shows the way, and each day your flame grows brighter. There is none like you, Matthias. You have the sign of greatness upon you. One day Redwall and all the land will be indebted to you. Matthias, you are a true Warrior.”

“Great, wide, beautiful, wonderful World, With the wonderful water round you curled, And the wonderful grass upon your breast, World, you are beautifully drest.”

“No sooner had the puppet discovered that he had feet than he jumped down from the table on which he was lying, and began to spring and to cut a thousand capers about the room, as if he had gone mad with delight. ‘To reward you for what you have done for me,’ said Pinocchio to his father, ‘I will go to school at once.‘”

“Her own future was close-folded still; but she leaned her head against the sun-warmed door, and closing her eyes, whispered, just as if she had been a child saying her prayers: ‘God bless aunt Miranda; God bless the brick house that was; God bless the brick house that is to be!‘”

″‘Why, mother!’ cried Rebecca, clasping her knees with her hands; ‘why, mother, it’s enough joy just to be here in the world on a day like this; to have the chance of seeing, feeling, doing, becoming! When you were seventeen, mother, wasn’t it good just to be alive? You haven’t forgotten?‘”

“Andrew says, ‘On the whole I feel very well cared for. And Miss St. Clair is good company. But it’s kind of embarrassing when we go shopping.’ I don’t think clothes would suit me. But I would do almost anything to be somebody’s pet.”

“The dinosaurs said, ‘Thank you Harry.’ They said it very quietly, but just loud enough for Harry to hear.”

“be kind. People are just happy to be alive. Our kindness fuels their gratitude, and hopefully our own.”

“If you’re going to get comfortable, baby, find comfort in your gratitude.”

“He remembers the page crumpled tightly in his fingers, the sudden shock of the lantern’s glare in his eyes. But for the first time he thinks of that moment not with terror, but with gratitude.”

“I daily discover so much baseness and ingratitude among mankind that I almost blush at being of the same species, and could quit the stage without regret, was it not for some gentle, generous souls like my dear Peggy. Benedict”

“There is something that happens when you are grateful. You continue to receive blessings.”

“I put the broom down wrap my arms around her and tell her thank you. For loving us, and Dad, and letting us play basketball, and being the best mother in the world.”

“Dear God, As I rise up, I thank You for the opportunity to be on this earth. I thank You for my mind and body, I thank You for my life. Please bless my body and use it for Your purposes. May I rise up strong today, and may my body and soul radiate Your love. May all impurities be cast out of my mind, my heart, my body. May every cell of my being be filled with Your light.”

“Resilient companies may come out the other end of upheaval entirely different than they were when they went in (and are often grateful for the transformation).”

“While the sun shines on you and the fields are green and beautiful to the eye, and your husband sees beauty in you which no has seen before, and you have a good store of grain laid away for hard times, a roof over you and a sweet stirring in your body, what more can a woman ask for?”

“Gratitude” is about letting go of desired outcomes and fully embracing the privilege and process of pursuing goals and dreams.”

“That’s how the three of us were. If one of us did something that was funny, the other two had to come up with something too. Three copycats. It wasn’t exactly that we had to show off so much as that we wanted to entertain each other. We wanted to show equally how much we were thankful for each other’s company.”

“Remember you are water. Of course you leave salt trails. Of course you are crying. Flow. P.S. If there happens to be a multitude of griefs upon you, individual and collective, or fast and slow, or small and large, add equal parts of these considerations: that the broken heart can cover more territory. that perhaps love can only be as large as grief demands. that grief is the growing up of the heart that bursts boundaries like an old skin or a finished life. that grief is gratitude. that water seeks scale, that even your tears seek the recognition of community. that the heart is a front line and the fight is to feel in a world of distraction. that death might be the only freedom. that your grief is a worthwhile use of your time. that your body will feel only as much as it is able to. that the ones you grieve may be grieving you. that the sacred comes from the limitations. that you are excellent at loving.”

“Have I done you a favor? thought Eduardo as he watched the baby turn its head toward the bustling nurses in their starched, white uniforms. Will you thank me for it later?”

″‘Oh, thank you indeed, sir,’ said the man with heartfelt gratitude. ‘Bless your noble heart!‘”

“Oh! Thank you, God, for a lovely day. And what was the other I had to say? I said “Bless Daddy,” so what can it be? Oh! Now I remember. God bless Me.”

“His gratitude to my kind friends knew no limit, yet I think all the same he felt it hard that he should miss those years of my life when I was receiving my most vivid impressions...”

“The being who is supremely good, hath vouchsafed to stretch out a father’s hand over you. You should lift up your hearts to him, and thank him without delay for the unexpected preservation of your lives.”

“All you need are these: certainty of judgement in the present moment: action for the common good in the present moment; and an attitude of gratitude in the present moment for anything that comes your way.”

″‘I’m glad I’m not an Epsilon,’ said Lenina, with conviction. ‘And if you were an Epsilon,’ said Henry, ‘your conditioning would have made you no less thankful that you weren’t a Beta or an Alpha.‘”

“Thank you, Pooh,” answered Eeyore. “You’re a real friend,” said he. “Not like Some,” he said.

I must only try in the future to show that I am not ungrateful to God for all His goodness to me in sending to me such a lover, such a husband, and such a friend.

“There is nothing that you and I could not accomplish together, if we gave our minds to it.” “Silly old ass.” “That’s what you always say when I’m being serious. Well, anyway, thanks awfully. You really saved us this time.”

“You’re old enough to pray for yourself, Anne,” she said finally. “Just thank God for your blessings and ask Him humbly for the things you want.”

“Good, oh my friend John! Well thought of! Truly Miss Lucy, if she be sad in the foes that beset her, is at least happy in the friends that love her. One, two, three, all open their veins for her, besides one old man. Ah yes, I know, friend John; I am not blind! I love you all the more for it! Now go.”

″‘My true friend,’ she said, in a faint voice, but with untellable pathos, ‘My true friend, and his! Oh, guard him, and give me peace!‘”

“You loved her too, old fellow; she told me all about it, and there was no friend had a closer place in her heart than you. I don’t know how to thank you for all you have done for her. I can’t think yet....”

That night Anne, who had wound up the delightful evening with a serious little talk with Mrs. Allan at the manse, knelt sweetly by her open window in a great sheen of moonshine and murmured a prayer of gratitude and aspiration that came straight from her heart. There was in it thankfulness for the past and reverent petition for the future; and when she slept on her white pillow her dreams were as fair and bright and beautiful as maidenhood might desire.

“Oh, Matthew,” exclaimed Anne, “I’ve passed and I’m first—or one of the first! I’m not vain, but I’m thankful.”

“If a man’s esteem and gratitude are ever worth the winning, you have won mine to-day.”

Perhaps it was because she was so grateful for this blessing that a greater was given her.

If you will believe me, she went and knocked at the study door before she gave herself time to think, and when a gruff voice called out, “come in!” she did go in, right up to Mr. Laurence, who looked quite taken aback, and held out her hand, saying, with only a small quaver in her voice, “I came to thank you, sir, for...” But she didn’t finish, for he looked so friendly that she forgot her speech and, only remembering that he had lost the little girl he loved, she put both arms round his neck and kissed him.

“Oh, Mother, if I’m ever half as good as you, I shall be satisfied,” cried Jo, much touched.

“There’s no need for me to say it, for everyone can see that I’m far happier than I deserve,” added Jo, glancing from her good husband to her chubby children, tumbling on the grass beside her.

“I knew I should be satisfied, if I had a little home, and John, and some dear children like these. I’ve got them all, thank God, and am the happiest woman in the world,” and Meg laid her hand on her tall boy’s head, with a face full of tender and devout content.

“I don’t think I ever ought to call myself ‘unlucky Jo’ again, when my greatest wish has been so beautifully gratified,” said Mrs. Bhaer, taking Teddy’s little fist out of the milk pitcher, in which he was rapturously churning.

“M. Morrel has always been exceedingly kind to me,” replied Dantès.

“I believe you are right, and that you have really saved my life; be assured I will return the favor hereafter.”

“Thanks, Cocles; you are the pearl of cashiers.” Cocles went away perfectly happy, for this eulogium of M. Morrel, himself the pearl of the honest men of Marseilles, flattered him more than a present of fifty crowns.

“I only know that he charged himself on my account with a mission, which he terminated so entirely to my satisfaction, that had I been king, I should have instantly created him knight of all my orders, even had I been able to offer him the Golden Fleece and the Garter.”

“I have the honor of presenting to you the Count of Monte Cristo, the generous friend whom I had the good fortune to meet in the critical situation of which I have told you.”

Noirtier gave Valentine such a look of tenderness and gratitude that it was comprehended even by the notary himself.

“Yes, yes,” said Valentine, “you mean that I have yet a kind grandfather left, do you not.” The old man intimated that such was his meaning. “Ah, yes, happily I have,” replied Valentine. “Without that, what would become of me?”

“Oh, you are good, you are great, my lord!” said Haydée, kissing the count’s hand, “and I am very fortunate in belonging to such a master!”

“Oh, what have I ever done in my life to merit such unbounded happiness?”

“Yes, yes,” said Albert, “and may there remain only the eternal friendship which I promised to my deliverer, which shall be transmitted to our children’s children, and shall always remind me that I owe my life and the honor of my name to you,—for had this been known, oh, Beauchamp, I should have destroyed myself; or,—no, my poor mother! I could not have killed her by the same blow,—I should have fled from my country.”

“Thanks to the influence of M. Morrel, to whom, next to my father, I owe every blessing I enjoy, every difficulty has been removed.”

“How grateful will M. de Villefort be for all your goodness; how thankfully will he acknowledge that to you alone he owes the existence of his wife and child! Most certainly, but for the prompt assistance of your intrepid servant, this dear child and myself must both have perished.”

Mrs. Hubble shook her head, and contemplating me with a mournful presentiment that I should come to no good, asked, “Why is it that the young are never grateful?” This moral mystery seemed too much for the company until Mr. Hubble tersely solved it by saying, “Naterally wicious.” Everybody then murmured “True!” and looked at me in a particularly unpleasant and personal manner.

It may have been about a month after my sister’s reappearance in the kitchen, when Biddy came to us with a small speckled box containing the whole of her worldly effects, and became a blessing to the household.

I recalled the hopeless circumstances by which she had been surrounded in the miserable little shop and the miserable little noisy evening school, with that miserable old bundle of incompetence always to be dragged and shouldered. I reflected that even in those untoward times there must have been latent in Biddy what was now developing, for, in my first uneasiness and discontent I had turned to her for help, as a matter of course. Biddy sat quietly sewing, shedding no more tears, and while I looked at her and thought about it all, it occurred to me that perhaps I had not been sufficiently grateful to Biddy. I might have been too reserved, and should have patronised her more (though I did not use that precise word in my meditations) with my confidence.

“Let us drink, Thanks to Fortune, and may she ever pick out her favourites with equal judgment!”

“I am glad to believe you have repented and recovered yourself. I am glad to tell you so. I am glad that, thinking I deserve to be thanked, you have come to thank me. But our ways are different ways, none the less.”

“Dear boy!” he said, putting his arm on my shoulder, as he took his seat. “Faithful dear boy, well done. Thankye, thankye!”

“Compare the present occasion with such an affliction as that, and be thankful for the friends you have, instead of coveting more.”

“All thanks for this good meal,”

“Shall I tell him of your gratitude?”

“A little thou knowest, but not much. See, O Bagheera, they never thank their teacher. Not one small wolfling has ever come back to thank old Baloo for his teachings. Say the word for the Hunting-People, then—great scholar.”

“Oh, Joe, you’re an angel. I’ll bless you for this the longest day I live.”

I’m thankful to the good God and Father of us all I’ve got you back, that’s long-suffering and merciful to them that believe on Him and keep His word, though goodness knows I’m unworthy of it, but if only the worthy ones got His blessings and had His hand to help them over the rough places, there’s few enough would smile here or ever enter into His rest when the long night comes.

“Tom stood a moment, to gather his dismembered faculties; and when he stepped forward to go to his punishment the surprise, the gratitude, the adoration that shone upon him out of poor Becky’s eyes seemed pay enough for a hundred floggings.”

“Daily Muff Potter’s gratitude made Tom glad he had spoken; but nightly he wished he had sealed up his tongue.”

“God has delivered us! God has delivered us!”

You wanted to avoid gratitude, I saw!

I praised God for bringing you back to me after so many trials, and I charged my old woman to take care of you, and to conduct you hither as soon as possible. She has executed her commission perfectly well; I have tasted the inexpressible pleasure of seeing you again, of hearing you, of speaking with you.