"Self-pity and gratitude are mortal enemies. Where one exists the other cannot. Since 
both are highly contagious, individuals must choose gratitude before becoming too 
thankless to do otherwise."

Mike S. Adams
"Thankfulness is the beginning of gratitude. Gratitude is the completion of thankfulness. 
Thankfulness may consist merely of words. Gratitude is shown in acts."

Henri Frederic Amiel
"Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It 
turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal 
into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our 
past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow."

Melody Beattie
"Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul."

Henry Ward Beecher

"The unthankful heart... discovers no mercies; but let the thankful heart sweep through the day and, as the magnet finds the iron, so it will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings!"

Henry Ward Beecher
"Grace is the essence of theology and gratitude is the essence of ethics."
G. C. Berkouwer
"There is a calmness to a life lived in gratitude, a quiet joy."
 
Ralph H. Blum
"It is permissible to use wine not only for necessity, but also to make us merry...... [it must be moderate] lest men forget themselves, drown their senses,.....in making merry [those who enjoy wine] feel a livelier gratitude to God."

John Calvin, The Institutes of Christian Religion

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

G.K. Chesterton

"When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time.  Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs?"

G.K. Chesterton

"Appreciation can make a day, even change a life. Your willingness to put it into words
is all that is necessary."

Margaret Cousins

"If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, "thank you," that would suffice."

Meister Eckhart
"In the New Testament, religion is grace and ethics is gratitude."

Thomas Erskine
"The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings."

Eric Hoffer, Reflections On The Human Condition 
"For what I have received may the Lord make me truly thankful. And more truly for what I 
have not received."

Storm Jameson (1891 -1986)

"Gratitude is born in hearts that take time to count up past mercies."

Charles E. Jefferson (1860-1937)

"My heart is filled with gratitude to Almighty God for his unspeakable mercies with which He has blessed us in this day. For those He granted us from the beginning of life, and particularly for those He has vouchsafed us during the past year [of war]. What should have become of us without His crowning help and protection? Oh, if our people would only recognize it and cease from self-boasting and adulation, how strong would be my belief in the final success and happiness to our country! But what a cruel thing is war; to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness God has granted us in this world; to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors, to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world! I pray that on this day [Christmas] when only peace and good-will are preached to mankind, better thoughts may fill the hearts of our enemies and turn them to peace."

Robert E. Lee

"No day should be lived unless it was begun with a prayer of thankfulness and an intercession for guidance."

Robert E. Lee

"Gratitude is the memory of the heart."

Jean Baptiste Massieu

"Saying thank you is more than good manners. It is good spirituality."

Alfred Painter

"Let's be grateful for those who give us happiness; they are the charming gardeners who make our soul bloom."

Marcel Proust

"While never willing to bow to a tyrant, our forefathers were always willing to get to their knees before God.  When catastrophe threatened, they turned to God for deliverance.  When the harvest was bountiful, the first thought was thanksgiving to God.  Prayer is today as powerful a force in our nation as it has ever been.  We as a nation should never forget this source of strength."

Ronald Reagan

"No people on earth have more cause to be thankful than ours, and this is said reverently, in no spirit of boastfulness in our own strength, but with gratitude to the Giver of good who has blessed us with the conditions which have enabled us to achieve so large a measure of well-being and of happiness."

Theodore Roosevelt

"At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of 
us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us." 

Albert Schweitzer

"To educate yourself for the feeling of gratitude means to take nothing for granted, but 
to always seek out and value the kind that will stand behind the action. Nothing that is 
done for you is a matter of course. Everything originates in a will for the good, which 
is directed at you. Train yourself never to put off the word or action for the expression
of gratitude."

Albert Schweitzer
"The grateful person, being still the most severe exacter of himself, not only confesses, but proclaims, his debts."

Robert South
"The only people with whom you should try to get even are those who have helped you."

John E. Southard 
"Thankfulness makes much of little."

Charles Haddon Spurgeon

"...The man must be bad indeed who can look upon the events of the American Revolution without feeling the warmest gratitude towards the great author of the Universe whose divine interposition was so frequently manifested in our behalf. And it is my earnest prayer that we may so conduct ourselves as to merit a continuance of those blessings with which we have hitherto been favored."

George Washington

"No one is as capable of gratitude as one who has emerged from the kingdom of night."  

Elie Wiesel, (1928- ) Writer, Nobel Peace Prize winner 1986 
"We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our 
treasures."

Thornton Wilder
"Grace isn't a little prayer you chant before receiving a meal.  It's a way to live."

Jackie Windspear
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