In daily life we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but gratefulness that makes us happy. It is necessary, then, to cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.
Interpretation
Gratefulness leads to happiness, not the other way around.
This quote emphasizes the importance of gratitude as a fundamental aspect of achieving happiness. It suggests that rather than waiting for happiness to arrive, one should actively cultivate gratitude for the positive aspects of life, which in turn fosters a sense of joy and fulfillment.
In practice
In a motivational speech about mental well-being, you could use this quote to emphasize the power of gratitude.
You want to get rich in order that you may surround yourself with beautiful things, see distant lands, feed your mind, and develop your intellect; in order that you may love others and do kind things, and be able to play a good part in helping the world to find truth.
Many people who order their lives rightly in all other ways are kept in poverty by their lack of gratitude.
Whatever you habitually think yourself to be, that you are. You must form, now, a greater and better habit; you must form a conception of yourself as a being of limitless power, and habitually think that you are that being. It is the habitual, not the periodical thought that decides your destiny.
That which makes you want more money is the same as that which makes the plant grow; it is life seeking fuller expression.
Never look at the visible supply; always look at the limitless riches in the formless substance and know that they are coming to you as fast as you can receive and use them.
It is only a poor sort of happiness that could ever come by caring very much about our own pleasures. We can only have the highest happiness such as goes along with being a great man, by having wide thoughts and much feeling for the rest of the world as well as ourselves.
What is the good of life if its chief element, and that which must always be its chief element, is odious? No, the only true economy is to arrange so that your daily labor shall be itself a joy.
Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.
It sometimes strikes me how immensely fortunate I am that each day should take its place in my life, either reddened with the rising and setting sun, or refreshingly cool with deep, dark clouds, or blooming like a white flower in the moonlight. What untold wealth!
Joy is the serious business of heaven. Our merriment must be between people who take each other seriously.
The rights essential to happiness. . . . We claim them from a higher source - from the King of kings and Lord of all the earth.
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