Being Thankful

Sunday, November 26, 2017 – Being Thankful

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder. ~ G. K. Chesterton

I feel a very unusual sensation – if it is not indigestion, I think it must be gratitude. ~ Benjamin Disraeli

Silent gratitude isn’t much use to anyone. ~ G. B. Stern

There is no such thing as gratitude unexpressed. If it is unexpressed, it is plain, old-fashioned ingratitude. ~ Robert Brault

The only people with whom you should try to get even are those who have helped you. ~ John E. Southard

If you have lived, take thankfully the past. ~ John Dryden

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

What a miserable thing life is: you’re living in clover, only the clover isn’t good enough. ~ Bertolt Brecht, Jungle of Cities, 1924

Gratitude is the least of the virtues, but ingratitude is the worst of vices. ~ Thomas Fuller

There is not a more pleasing exercise of the mind than gratitude. It is accompanied with such an inward satisfaction that the duty is sufficiently rewarded by the performance. ~ Joseph Addison

Gratitude is merely the secret hope of further favors. ~ La Rochefoucauld

Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted. ~ Aldous Huxley

The sun will not rise or set without my notice, and thanks. ~ Winslow Homer

Pride slays thanksgiving, but a humble mind is the soil out of which thanks naturally grow. A proud man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

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. ~ H. L. Mencken

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty. ~ Abraham Lincoln

He who thinks and thinks for himself, will always have a claim to thanks; it is no matter whether it be right or wrong, so as it be explicit. If it is right, it will serve as a guide to direct; if wrong, as a beacon to warn. ~ Jeremy Bentham

Thanks be to God. Since my leaving the drinking of wine, I do find myself much better, and do mind my business better, and do spend less money, and less time lost in idle company. ~ Samuel Pepys

Thank God we’re living in a country where the sky’s the limit, the stores are open late and you can shop in bed thanks to television. ~ Joan Rivers

Thanks to the Japanese and Geronimo, John Wayne became a millionaire. ~ Pat Morita

To give thanks in solitude is enough. Thanksgiving has wings and goes where it must go. Your prayer knows much more about it than you do. ~ Victor Hugo

To the people I forgot, you weren’t on my mind for some reason and you probably don’t deserve any thanks anyway. ~ Eminem

It would seem that the ingratitude, whereby a subsequent sin causes the return of sins previously forgiven, is a special sin. For, the giving of thanks belongs to counter passion, which is a necessary condition of justice. But justice is a special virtue. Therefore this ingratitude is a special sin. Thanksgiving is a special virtue. But ingratitude is opposed to thanksgiving. Therefore ingratitude is a special sin. ~ Thomas Aquinas

Gratitude is a quality similar to electricity: it must be produced and discharged and used up in order to exist at all. ~ William Faulkner

Gratitude – the meanest and most sniveling attribute in the world. ~ Dorothy Parker

Gratitude is a sickness suffered by dogs. ~ Joseph Stalin

Ingratitude is the essence of vileness. ~ Immanuel Kant

Gratitude is a fruit of great cultivation; you do not find it among gross people. ~ Samuel Johnson

Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but which none have a right to expect. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked – as I am surprisingly often – why I bother to get up in the mornings. ~ Richard Dawkins

Thanksgiving Day, a function which originated in New England two or three centuries ago when those people recognized that they really had something to be thankful for – annually, not oftener – if they had succeeded in exterminating their neighbors, the Indians, during the previous twelve months instead of getting exterminated by their neighbors, the Indians. Thanksgiving Day became a habit, for the reason that in the course of time, as the years drifted on, it was perceived that the exterminating had ceased to be mutual and was all on the white man’s side, consequently on the Lord’s side; hence it was proper to thank the Lord for it and extend the usual annual compliments. ~ Mark Twain

Turkey: A large bird whose flesh, when eaten on certain religious anniversaries has the peculiar property of attesting piety and gratitude. ~ Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

Thanksgiving, man. Not a good day to be my pants. ~ Kevin James

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

Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well. ~ Voltaire

The highest tribute to the dead is not grief but gratitude. ~ Thornton Wilder

What separates privilege from entitlement is gratitude. ~ Brené Brown

Steam seems to have killed all gratitude in the hearts of sailors. ~ Jules Verne, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

All sanity depends on this: that it should be a delight to feel the roughness of a carpet under smooth soles, a delight to feel heat strike the skin, a delight to stand upright, knowing the bones are moving easily under the flesh. ~ Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook

Are you what is called a lucky man? Well, you are sad every day. Each day has its great grief or its little care. Yesterday you were trembling for the health of one who is dear to you, today you fear for your own; tomorrow it will be an anxiety about money, the next day the slanders of a calumniator, the day after the misfortune of a friend; then the weather, then something broken or lost, then a pleasure for which you are reproached by your conscience or your vertebral column; another time, the course of public affairs. Not to mention heartaches. And so on. One cloud is dissipated, another gathers. Hardly one day in a hundred of unbroken joy and sunshine. And you are of that small number who are lucky! As for other men, stagnant night is upon them. ~ Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

No one is as capable of gratitude as one who has emerged from the kingdom of night. We know that every moment is a moment of grace, every hour an offering; not to share them would mean to betray them. Our lives no longer belong to us alone; they belong to all those who need us desperately. ~ Elie Wiesel, Night

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero