quotations about gratitude
And because gratitude is a form of joy, certainly we can give God not only our gratitude but also our praise, that his glory should be sufficient for our life and our joy.
ARTHUR C. MCGILL
Dying Unto Life
Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.
THICH NHAT HANH
Peace Is Every Step
Gratitude is a right estimate of our relationship to God, to others, and to life itself, because gratitude is the recognition that no one is a solitary achiever, no one has accumulated success or wealth unaided. Every human being is a debtor.
J. ELLSWORTH KALAS
Longing to Pray
Gratitude is the memory of the heart.
GUILLAUME MASSIEU
attributed, Day's Collacon
He who does not reflect his life back to God in gratitude does not know himself.
ALBERT SCHWEITZER
Reverence for Life
Gratitude looks to the Past and love to the Present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead.
C. S. LEWIS
The Screwtape Letters
Gratitude is a motivator of altruistic action, according to Aquinas, because it entails thanking one's benefactors and generating a fitting and appropriate response.
ROBERT A. EMMONS
introduction, The Psychology of Gratitude
Thanks are justly due for things got without purchase.
OVID
Amorum
Grateful persons resemble fertile fields, which always repay more than they receive.
JAMES CORNWELL
The Young Composer
No metaphysician ever felt the deficiency of language so much as the grateful.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
To receive honestly is the best thanks for a good thing.
GEORGE MACDONALD
Mary Marston
It seems somewhat odd, though, to suggest that gratitude is a moral duty because it appears to be of a different category than, say, the moral duty to tell the truth. Truth telling is an action originating in the speaker. Like gratitude, it requires another person (unless we think of telling oneself the truth as a moral duty). But unlike truth telling, gratitude involves not an overt but merely a subjective disposition. One can be grateful and do nothing (although gratitude can and often does imply some notion of reciprocity).
MARK T. MITCHELL
The Politics of Gratitude: Scale, Place & Community in a Global Age
As gratitude is a necessary, and a glorious virtue, so also it is an obvious, a cheap, and an easy one; so obvious that wherever there is life there is a place for it; so cheap, that the covetous man may be gratified without expense, and so easy that the sluggard may be so likewise without labor.
SENECA
Morals
The grateful heart will always find opportunities to show its gratitude.
AESOP
"The Ant and the Dove", Aesop's Fables
Gratitude is a second pleasure, one that prolongs the pleasure that precedes and occasions it, like a joyful echo of the joy we feel, a further happiness for the happiness we have been given.
ANDRE COMTE-SPONVILLE
A Small Treatise on the Great Virtues
Gratitude always comes into play; research shows that people are happier if they are grateful for the positive things in their lives, rather than worrying about what might be missing.
DAN BUETTNER
Thrive
There is no excess in the world so commendable as excessive gratitude.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Affections", Les Caractères
The gratitude of most men is only a secret desire to receive more favours.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Moral Maxims
Gratitude is a painful pleasure, felt and expressed by none but noble souls.
L. C. JUDSON
attributed, Day's Collacon
O Lord, that lends me life,
Lend me a heart replete with thankfulness!
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Henry VI, Part II