I was going to write about the scientific research behind gratitude, but decided that the blog post was for another day. Gratitude, after all, is not an analytical exercise. It is a feeling and an exalted one at that. So, today, on the day of Thanksgiving, I offer you a collection of my favorite words of wisdom, quotes and proverbs on the subject. I hope that these words of thankfulness will nudge and move you into a state of grace, and help you feel your way into living a life of unhindered gratitude. You’ll feel joyful and grateful just by reading these words, I promise. I always do.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Albert Camus’s letter of gratitude to his teacher Louis Germaine soon after receiving the Nobel Prize.
“Dear Monsieur Germain,
I let the commotion around me these days subside a bit before speaking to you from the bottom of my heart. I have just been given far too great an honor, one I neither sought nor solicited. But when I heard the news, my first thought, after my mother, was of you. Without you, without the affectionate hand you extended to the small poor child that I was, without your teaching and example, none of all this would have happened. I don’t make too much of this sort of honor. But at least it gives me the opportunity to tell you what you have been and still are for me, and to assure you that your efforts, your work, and the generous heart you put into it still live in one of your little schoolboys who, despite the years, has never stopped being your grateful pupil. I embrace you with all my heart.
Albert Camus”
Anne Lamott in Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers
“What can we say beyond Wow, in the presence of glorious art, in music so magnificent that it can’t have originated solely on this side of things? Wonder takes our breath away, and makes room for new breath.”
Thornton Wilder
“We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.”
Albert Einstein
“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night. Act III, scene iii
“I can no other answer make but thanks, And thanks, and ever thanks. ”
Chinese Proverb
“When you drink from a stream, remember the spring.”
Maya Angelou
“When we give cheerfully and accept gratefully, everyone is blessed.”
A.A. Milne in Winnie-the-Pooh
“Piglet noticed that even though he had a Very Small Heart, it could hold a rather large amount of Gratitude.”
Meister Eckhart
“If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, ‘thank you,’ that would suffice.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“For each new morning with its light.
For rest and shelter of the night.
For health and food, for love and friends.
For everything thy goodness sends.”
And finally, from an unknown author,
“If you can read this, thank a teacher.”
Sources:
- Brain Pickings; Albert Camus’s Beautiful Letter of Gratitude to his Childhood Teacher After Winning the Nobel Prize
- Goodreads; Quotes on Gratitude
- All Things William; Gratitude
- Duly Posted; Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poem about gratitude
- Art and Image Credit; Aditi Iyer
