Quotes About Gratitude

But I don't quite understand, Father: is nobody your friend but the one that does something for you?

It is a great privilege to be poor, Peter. You must not mistake, however, and imagine it a virtue; it is but a privilege, and one also that may be terribly misused.

You allowed me existence, which is the sum of what one can demand of his fellow-beings

All true love will, one day, behold its own image in the eyes of the beloved, and be humbly glad.

No gift unrecognized as coming from God is at its own best: therefore many things that God would gladly give us, things even that we need because we are, must wait until we ask for them, that we may know whence they come: when in all gifts we find Him, then in Him we shall find all things.

At length, one lovely morning, when the green corn lay soaking in the yellow sunlight, and the sky rose above the earth deep and pure and tender like the thought of God about it, Alec became suddenly aware that life was good, and the world beautiful . . . One of God's lyric prophets, the larks, was within earshot, pouring down a vocal summer of jubilant melody. The lark thought nobody was listening but his wife; but God heard in heaven, and the young prodigal heard on the earth.

But the praises of father or mother do our Selves good, and comfort them and make them beautiful.

Give me a chair and a table, fire enough to keep me from shivering, the few books I like best and writing materials, and I am absolutely content.

35]              Caelum non animum mutant The man who is not content where he is, would never have been content somewhere else, though he might have complained less. Donal Grant, ch. 31

She did not even trouble herself much to show Godfrey her gratitude. We may spoil gratitude as we offer it, by insisting on its recognition. To receive honestly is the best thanks for a good thing.

he was more grateful for Truffey's generous forgiveness than he would have been for the richest living in Scotland. Such forgiveness is just giving us back ourselves—clean and happy. And for what gift can we be more grateful?

God is easy to please, but hard to satisfy.

It is one thing to believe in a God; it is quite another to believe in God! Every time we grumble at our fate, every time we are displeased, hurt, resentful at this or that which comes to us, every time we do not receive the suffering sent us, with both hands, as William Law says, we are of the same spirit with this half-crazy woman.

I suspect there is nothing a man can be so grateful for as that to which he has the most right. There

She hardly knew for which to be more grateful—her son, given helpless into her hands, unable to repel the love she lavished upon him; or the girl whom God had taken from the very throat of the swallowing grave.

Perhaps you have had more friends than you are aware of. You owe something to the man, for instance, who, with his outspoken antagonism, roused you first to a sense of what was lacking to you. I hope I shall be grateful to God for it some day, returned Wingfold. I cannot say that I feel much obligation to Mr. Bascombe. And yet when I think of it,—perhaps—I don't know—what ought a man to be more grateful for than honesty?

Every highest human act is just a giving back to God of that which he first gave to us.

I have tipped waiters, and I have been tipped by waiters.

The point is that the pleasures of spring are available to everybody, and cost nothing.

No one I met at this time -- doctors, nurses, practicantes, or fellow-patients-- failed to assure me that a man who is hit through the neck and survives it is the luckiest creature alive. I could not help thinking that it would be even luckier not to be hit at all.

The scene had interested me. It was so different from the ordinary demeanour of tramps--from the abject worm-like gratitude with which they normally accept charity. The explanation, of course, was that we outnumbered the congregation and so were not afraid of them. A man receiving charity practically always hates his benefactor--it is a fixed characteristic of human nature; and, when he has fifty or a hundred others to back him, he will show it.

There is nothing more dreadful in the world than to live in somebody else's house, eating his bread and doing nothing in return for it.

A man receiving charity practically always hates his benefactor -- it is a fixed characteristic of human nature; and, when he has fifty or a hundred others to back him, he will show it.

Now, suppose we consider our trades and businesses. Is it not natural if we conclude a profitable transaction to consider it not good luck but a just reward for our efforts? I am inclined to think we may be overlooking the gifts of the goddess. Perhaps she really does assist us when we do not appreciate her generosity.