Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Gratitude

"It is safe to assume that the actions of our ancestors were guided by gratitude, obligation, retribution, and indignation before they developed enough language capacity for moral discourse." - Frans de Waal, fully Franciscus Bernardus Maria "Frans" de Waal

"Love is the way I walk in gratitude." - A Course In Miracles, aka ACIM

"Love is the way I walk in gratitude." -

"Gratitude is the sign of noble souls." - Aesop NULL

"Gratitude is the sign of noble souls." -

"Gratitude is the sign of noble souls." -

"A donkey knows no gratitude." - African Proverbs

"A donkey knows no gratitude." -

"Gratitude takes three forms: a feeling in the heart, an expression in words, and a giving in return." - Author Unknown NULL

"Swift gratitude is sweetest; if it delays, all gratitude is empty and unworthy of the name." - Author Unknown NULL

"Today. Mend a quarrel. Search out a friend. Dismiss suspicion and replace it with trust. Write a love letter. Share some treasure. Give a soft answer. Encourage youth. Manifest your loyalty in a word or deed. Keep a promise. Find the time. Forego a grudge. Forgive an enemy. Listen. Apologize if you were wrong. Try to understand. Flout envy. Examine demands on others. Think first of someone else. Appreciate, be kind, be gentle. Laugh a little more. Deserve confidence. Take up arms against malice. Decry complacency. Express your gratitude. Worship your God. Gladden the heart of a child. Take pleasure in the beauty and wonder of the earth. Speak your love. Speak it again. Still speak it again. Speak it still once again." - Author Unknown NULL

"An act by which we make one friend and one enemy is a losing game; because revenge is a much stronger principle than gratitude." - Charles Caleb Colton

"The reason why great men meet with so little pity or attachment in adversity, would seem to be this: the friends of a great man were made by his fortune, his enemies by himself, and revenge is a much more punctual paymaster than gratitude." - Charles Caleb Colton

"There are three kinds of praise - that which we yield, that which we lend, and that which we pay. We yield it to the powerful from fear, we lend it to the weak from interest, and we pay it to the deserving from gratitude." - Charles Caleb Colton

"Act with kindness, but do not expect gratitude." - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL

"Benefits received are a delight to us as long as we think we can requite them; when that possibility is far exceeded, they are repaid with hatred instead of gratitude." - Tacitus, fully Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus NULL

"And only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live in every experience, painful or joyous; to live in gratitude for every moment, to live abundantly." - Dorothy Thompson

"Two kinds of gratitude: The sudden kind we feel for what we take, the larger kind we feel for what we give." - Edwin Arlington Robinson

"A grateful person is a powerful person, for gratitude generates power. All abundance is based on being grateful for what we have." - Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

"I have no sympathy with the old idea that children owe such immense gratitude to their parents that they can never fulfill their obligations to them. I think the obligation is all on the other side. Parents can never do too much for their children to repay them for the injustice of having brought them into the world, unless they have insured them high moral and intellectual gifts, fine physical health, and enough money and education to render life something more than one careless struggle for necessaries." - Elizabeth Cady Stanton

"Parents who expect gratitude from their children (there are even some who insist on it) are like usurers who gladly risk their capital if only they receive interest." - Franz Kafka

"When drawing a face, any face, it is as if curtain after curtain, mask after mask, falls away, until a final mask remains, one that can no longer be removed, reduced. By the time the drawing is finished, I know a great deal about that face, for no face can hide itself for long. But although noting escapes the eye, all is forgiven beforehand. The eye does not judge, moralize, criticize. It accept the masks in gratitude as it does the long bamboos being long, the goldenrod being yellow." - Frederick Franck

"Next to ingratitude, the most painful thing to bear is gratitude." - Henry Ward Beecher

"Remember God’s bounty in the year. String the pearls of His favor. Hide the dark parts, except so far as they are breaking out in light! Give this one day to thanks, to joy, to gratitude!" - Henry Ward Beecher

"Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul; and the heart of man knoweth none more fragrant." - Hosea Ballou

"If gratitude is due from children to their earthly parent, how much more is the gratitude of the great family of men due to our Father in heaven." - Hosea Ballou

"Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but which none have a right to expect." -

"The core prescription for happiness and meaning handed down through all the world’s spiritual teaching is unchanging: Remember the source with gratitude, and love one another. In this way the meaning of life as an interconnected web of love and compassion becomes manifest in even the most seemingly mundane moments." - Joan Borysenko

"Gratitude makes you naturally mindful and predisposes you to having holy moments, one of the hallmarks of the everyday mystic." - Joan Borysenko

"As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them." -

"Among the many acts of gratitude we owe to God, it may be accounted one to study and contemplate the perfections and beauties of His work of creation. Every new discovery must necessarily raise in us a fresh sense of the greatness, wisdom, and power of God." - Jonathan Edwards

"If gratitude, when exerted towards another, naturally produces a very pleasing sensation in the mind of a grateful man, it exalts the soul into rapture when it is employed on this great object of gratitude to the beneficent Being who has given us everything we already possess, and from whom we expect everything we hope for." - Joseph Addison

"Happiness is itself a kind of gratitude." - Joseph Wood Krutch

"My parents never bound us to any church but taught us that the love of goodness was the love of God, the cheerful doing of duty made life happy, and that the love of one’s neighbor in its widest sense was the best help for oneself. Their lives showed us how lovely this simple faith was, how much honor, gratitude and affection it brought them, and what a sweet memory they left behind." - Louisa May Alcott

"If future generations are to remember us with gratitude rather than contempt...we must leave them with a glimpse of the world as it was in the beginning, not just after we got through with it." -

"Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent [mother] of all others." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL

"Increasing your gratitude about the good things in your past intensifies positive memories, and learning how to forgive past wrongs defuses the bitterness that makes satisfaction impossible." - Martin Seligman, Martin E. P. "Marty" Seligman

"Maybe the only thing worse than having to give gratitude constantly all the time is having to accept it." -

"“Every morning of the world I give thanks for all the wonderful things in my life,” declared a young man enthusiastically. “And do you know something? It’s strange indeed, but the more I give thanks, the more I have reason to be thankful. For, you see, blessings just pile up on me one after another like nobody’s business”... The more you practice the art of thankfulness, the more you have to be thankful for... The attitude of gratitude revitalizes the entire mental process by activating all other attitudes, thus stimulating creativity... Remember that praise and thanksgiving are the most powerful prayers of all." - Norman Vincent Peale

"Fear guides more to their duty than gratitude; for one man who is virtuous from the love of virtue, from the obligation he thinks he lies under to the Giver of all, there are ten thousand who are good only from their apprehension of punishment." - Oliver Goldsmith

"A good deed is never lost. He who sows courtesy, reaps friendship; he who plants kindness, gathers love; pleasure bestowed upon a grateful mind was never sterile, but generally gratitude begets reward." - Saint Basil, aka Basil of Caesarea, Saint Basil the Great NULL

"Fame, as a river, is narrowest where it is bred, and broadest afar off; so exemplary writers depend not upon the gratitude of the world." - William Davenant, fully Sir William Davenant, also spelled D'Avenant

"We find in God all the excellences of light, truth, wisdom, greatness, goodness and life. Light gives joy and gladness; truth gives satisfaction; wisdom gives learning and instruction; greatness excites admiration; goodness produces love and gratitude; life gives immortality and insures enjoyment." - William Jones, fully Sir William Jones of Nayland, aka Trinity Jones

"Gratitude can transform common days into thanksgivings, turn routine jobs into joy, and change ordinary opportunities into blessings." - William A. Ward, fully William Arthur Ward

"The public have neither shame nor gratitude." - William Hazlitt

"The root of joy is gratefulness...It is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful." - David Steindl-Rast

"Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude. " - Denis E. Waitley

"Silent gratitude isn't very much to anyone. " - Gertrude Stein

"We must face the recognition that what the early Christians saw in Jesus Christ, and what we must accept if we look at him rather than at our imaginations about him, was not a person characterized by universal benignity, loving God and loving man. His love of God and his love of neighbor are two distinct virtues that have no common quality but only a common source. Love of God is adoration of the only true good; it is gratitude to the bestower of all gifts; it is joy in holiness; it is "consent to Being." But the love of man is pitiful rather than adoring; it is giving and forgiving rather than grateful. It suffers for them in their viciousness and profaneness; it does not consent to accept them as they are, but calls them to repentance. The love of God is nonpossessive Eros; the love of man pure Agape; the love of God is passion; the love of man, compassion. There is duality here, but not of like-minded interest in two great values, God and man. It is rather the duality of the Son of Man and Son of God, who loves God as man should love Him, and loves man as only God can love, with powerful pity for those who are foundering." - Richard Niebuhr, fully Helmut Richard Niebuhr