16 Inspiring Thanksgiving Quotes

Here's How to Express Your Gratitude

Find reasons to give thanks
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These inspirational Thanksgiving quotes teach us to count our blessings. If we wish to express gratitude to our friends, family, and God for these blessings, then these Thanksgiving quotes should be helpful there, too.

Giving Thanks

Here are some thoughts on being grateful:

Johannes A. Gaertner: Author
"To speak gratitude is courteous and pleasant, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live gratitude is to touch Heaven."

William Law: English cleric
"Would you know who is the greatest saint in the world: It is not he who prays most or fasts most, it is not he who gives most alms or is most eminent for temperance, chastity or justice; but it is he who is always thankful to God, who wills everything that God wills, who receives everything as an instance of God's goodness and has a heart always ready to praise God for it."

Melody Beattie: American author
"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."

Frank A. Clark: Former English soccer player
"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."

Fred De Witt Van Amburgh: Dutch cartographer and artist
"None is more impoverished than the one who has no gratitude. Gratitude is a currency that we can mint for ourselves, and spend without fear of bankruptcy."

John Fitzgerald Kennedy: Late American president
"As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them."

Estonian Proverb
"Who does not thank for little will not thank for much."

Ethel Watts Mumford: American author
"God gave us our relatives; thank God we can choose our friends."

Meister Eckhart; German theologian
"If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, 'Thank you,' that would suffice."

Galatians 6:9
"Do not get tired of doing what is good. Don't get discouraged and give up, for we will reap a harvest of blessing at the appropriate time."

Thomas Aquinas: Catholic priest, philosopher
"Thanksgiving is a special virtue. But ingratitude is opposed to Thanksgiving. Therefore ingratitude is a special sin."

Albert Barnes: American theologian
"We can always find something to be thankful for, and there may be reasons why we ought to be thankful for even those dispensations which appear dark and frowning."

Henry Ward Beecher: American clergyman
"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!"

William Faulkner: American novelist
"Gratitude is a quality similar to electricity: It must be produced and discharged and used up in order to exist at all."

George Herbert: English poet
"Thou that has given so much to me,
Give one thing more—a grateful heart;
Not thankful when it pleases me,
As if Thy blessings had spare days;
But such a heart, whose pulse may be
Thy praise."

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Khurana, Simran. "16 Inspiring Thanksgiving Quotes." ThoughtCo, Oct. 2, 2021, thoughtco.com/great-thanksgiving-quotes-2833178. Khurana, Simran. (2021, October 2). 16 Inspiring Thanksgiving Quotes. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/great-thanksgiving-quotes-2833178 Khurana, Simran. "16 Inspiring Thanksgiving Quotes." ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/great-thanksgiving-quotes-2833178 (accessed March 28, 2024).