Quotes About Gratitude

Courtesies of a small and trivial character are the ones which strike deepest in the grateful and appreciating heart.

Courtesies of a small and trivial character are the ones which strike deepest in the gratefully and appreciating heart.

That man is richest whose pleasures are cheapest.

Thank God, they cannot cut down the clouds!

I am a happy camper so I guess I'm doing something right. Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.

They [wood stumps] warmed me twice—once while I was splitting them, and again when they were on the fire.

However mean your life is, meet and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is.

However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Things do not change, we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do want society.

We are sometimes made aware of a kindness long passed, and realize that there have been times when our friends' thoughts of us were of so pure and lofty a character that they passed over us like the winds of heaven unnoticed when they treated us not as what we were, but as what we aspired to be. -- from A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.

We fail to praise the ceaseless ministry of the great inanimate world around us only because its kindness is unobtrusive. Nature is always noiseless. All her greatest gifts are given in secret. And we forget how truly every good and perfect gift comes from without, and from above, because no pause in her changeless beneficence teaches us the sad lessons of deprivation.

Surely joy is the condition of life. —HENRY DAVID THOREAU

The world is] a wonderful place to live and lots more wonderful if you live in such a way that you can live with yourself.

When I'm not thanked at all, I'm thanked enough;I've done my duty, and I've done no more.

I am content; that is a blessing greater than riches; and he to whom that is given need ask no more.

Some folks rail against other folks, because other folks have what some folks would be glad of.

It is easy to give; it is harder to make giving unnecessary.

I wake up every day with a smile on my face.

I want to thank you for stopping the applause. It is impossible for me to look humble for any period of time.

We have achieved most as surgeons when our patients recover completely and forget us completely. All patients are immensely grateful at first after a successful operation but if the gratitude persists it usually means that they have not been cured of the underlying problem and that they fear that they may need us in the future. They feel that they must placate us, as though we were angry gods or at least the agents of an unpredictable fate.

We have been most successful, however, when our patients return to their homes and get on with their lives and never need to see us again. They are grateful, no doubt, but happy to put us and the horror of their illness behind them. Perhaps they never quite realized just how dangerous the operation had been and how lucky they were to have recovered so well. Whereas the surgeon, for a while, has known heaven, having come very close to hell.

But it seems to me now that it no longer matters if I never finish. I will try not to wait for the end, but I hope to be ready to leave, booted and spurred, when it comes. It is enough that I am well for a little longer, that I have been lucky to be part of a family – past, present and future – that I can still be useful, that there is still work to be done.

Don't look for miracles. You yourself are the miracle.

It's good to be just plain happy; it's a little better to know that you're happy; but to understand that you're happy and to know why and how… and still be happy, be happy in the being and the knowing, well that is beyond happiness, that is bliss.