Quotations on Thankfulness
God gave you a gift of 86,400 seconds today. Have you used
one to say "thank you?" William A. Ward
Gratitude is the memory of the heart. Jean Baptiste
Massieu.
I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought;
and that gratitude 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
If a fellow isn't thankful for what he's got, he isn't likely to be
thankful for what he's going to get. Frank A. Clark
Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present
and not giving it. William Arthur Ward
"It must be an odd feeling to be thankful to nobody in
particular. Christians in public institutions often see this odd
thing happening on Thanksgiving Day. Everyone in the
institution seems to be thankful "in general." It's very strange.
It's a little like being married in general." - Cornelius Plantinga,
Jr.
We grow in love when we grow in gratefulness. And we grown
in gratefulness when we grow in love. Here is the link between
the two: thanksgiving pivots on our willingness to go beyond our
independence and to accept the give-and-take between giver
and thanksgiver. But the "yes" which acknowledges our
interdependence is the very "yes" to belonging, the "yes" of love.
Every time we say a simple "thank you," and mean it, we
practice that inner gesture of "yes." And the more we practice it
the easier it becomes.
-Brother David Steindl Rast
TB: In your research do you find that some people are, by
nature, grateful? And, if so, have you discovered anything that
you think makes that difference?
RE: There’s a whole cluster of related characteristics that seem
to go together — things like optimism, hope, gratitude, and
happiness. Some of this, I would guess, is genetically
determined. Some of it is going to be based upon early life
experiences and positive relationships with other people. Very
little of it, interestingly, seems to depend upon circumstances.
So there are just these ways of framing life experiences that
transcend good or bad things that are happening to a person.
There’s a cluster of positive characteristics and then there’s
another set of characteristics which block those positive
characteristics. A sense of entitlement, or deservingness, is
something that’s going to block this recognition that other
people are partly responsible for the good things that happen to
us. When I take all the credit for the good things that happen
to me it’s going to be hard to feel a sense of indebtedness or
sense of gratefulness in life.