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The public have neither shame or gratitude.
-William Hazlitt
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Gratitude: An imaginary emotion that rewards an imaginary behavior, altruism. Both imaginaries are false faces for selfishness, which is a real and honest emotion.
-Robert A. Heinlein
To Sail Beyond the Sunset (1987)
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True thanksgiving means that we need to thank God for what He has done for us, and not to tell Him what we have done for Him. -
-George R. Hendrick
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For today and its blessings, I owe the world an attitude of gratitude.
-Clarence E. Hodges
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Every professional athlete owes a debt of gratitude to the fans and management, and pays an installment every time he plays. He should never miss a payment.
-Bobby Hull
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There are minds so impatient of inferiority that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits not because recompense is a pleasure for them, but because obligation is a pain.
-Samuel Johnson
The Rambler (1750-52)
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Some people grumble because roses have thorns; I am thankful that the thorns have roses.
-Alphonse Karr
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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
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Can you see the holiness in those things you take for granted--a paved road or a washing machine? If you concentrate on finding what is good in every situation, you will discover that your life will suddenly be filled with gratitude, a feeling that nurtures the soul.
-Rabbi Harold Kushner
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We think that we suffer from ingratitude, while in reality we suffer from self-love.
-Walter Savage Landor
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Do you realize what this means? The fact of being alive... I still find it staggering that I am here at all.
-Christopher Leach
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One can never pay in gratitude; one can only pay in kind somewhere else in life.
-Anne Morrow Lindbergh
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Thank God every morning when you get up that you have something to do that day, which must be done, whether you like it or not.
-James Russell Lowell
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I have discovered that when we least care to admit it, we feel more confused than thankful, more caught than called, more worried than gracious. In humble moments when we can no longer gloss over the roughness of life, gratitude has a way of pushing out the real soreness of feeling cheated or inadequate to the rugged realities of the world. Gratitude seemed to be a handy response to dodge the tough things for which there are no simple or comforting answers.
-Patrick J. Malone, S.J.
from Lessons Learned - web article
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Gratitude is the most exquisite form of courtesy.
-Jacques Maritain
Reflections on America, ch. 17
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Nothing purchased can come close to the renewed sense of gratitude for having family and friends.
-Courtland Milloy
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I'm grateful for the opportunity to live on this beautiful and astonishing planet Earth. In the morning, I wake up with a sense of gratitude.
-Earl Nightingale
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Gratitude -- the meanest and most sniveling attribute in the world.
-Dorothy Parker
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Two kinds of gratitude: The sudden kind we feel for what we take; the larger kind we feel for what we give.
-Edwin Arlington Robinson
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We seldom find people ungrateful so long as it is thought we can serve them.
-Francois de la Rochefoucauld
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Too great a hurry to discharge an obligation is a kind of ingratitude.
-Francois de la Rochefoucauld
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In most of mankind gratitude is merely a secret hope for greater favours.
-Francois de la Rochefoucauld
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Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but which none have a right to expect.
-Jean Jacques Rousseau
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I never complained of the vicissitudes of fortune, nor suffered my face to be overcast at the revolution of the heavens, except once, when my feet were bare, and I had not the means of obtaining shoes. I came to the chief of Kfah in a state of much dejection, and saw there a man who had no feet. I returned thanks to God and acknowledged his mercies, and endured my want of shoes with patience, and exclaimed,
trans. Edward B. Eastwick
-Sa'di
The Gulistan (or Rose Garden), chapter 3, story 19
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There is as much greatness of mind in acknowledging a good turn, as in doing it.
-Seneca (Seneca the Elder)
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Books about Gratitude
