Quotes on Gratitude

Gratitude is the confidence in life itself... As gratitude grows it gives rise to joy. We experience the courage to rejoice in our own good fortune and in the good fortune of others... We can be joyful for people we love, for moments of goodness, for sunlight and trees, and for the very breath within our lungs. Like an innocent child, we can rejoice in life itself, in being alive.

What I suddenly understood was that a thank-you note isn't the price you pay for receiving a gift, as so many children think it is, a kind of minimum tribute or toll, but an opportunity to count your blessings. And gratitude isn't what you give in exchange for something; it's what you feel when you are blessed--blessed to have family and friends who care about you, and who want to see you happy. Hence the joy from thanking.

We often wonder why God gives and takes, constricts and expands. What we forget is that human beings understand things by their opposites. Without dark, we can’t understand light. Without hardship, we wouldn’t *experience* ease. Without the existence of deprivation and loss, we couldn’t grasp the need for gratitude or the virtue of patience. And without separation, we wouldn’t taste the sweetness of reunion. Glory be to the one who gives—even when He takes.

The moment you begin to worry about the things you want and the things you don’t have in life is the moment you will lose your gratitude... The greatest source of happiness is the ability to be grateful at all times.

Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have - life itself.

What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise for which we are later, in the fullness of time and understanding, very grateful for!

A journal, is a book that shall contain a record of all your joy, your ecstasy, what you are grateful for.

Gratitude, in itself, is heaven.

I am grateful for what I have. My thanksgiving is perpetual.

Stormy or sunny days, glorious or lonely nights, I maintain an attitude of gratitude.

All your life, you will be faced with a choice. You can choose love positivity and gratitude that things aren't worse or hate negativity and bitterness that things aren't better ...I choose love positivity and gratitude that things aren't worse.

...The silent reminiscence of hardships departed, is sweeter than the presence of delight.

One can learn to focus on "opportunity" as the gift within every given moment. This attitude towards life always improves the situation. Even in times of sickness, someone who habitually practices grateful living will look for the opportunity that a given moment offers and use it creatively.

The last of human freedoms - the ability to chose one's attitude especially an attitude of gratitude in a given set of circumstances especially in difficult circumstances.

Gratitude lifts our eyes off the things we lack so we might see the blessings we possess.

Pain from problems and disappointments, etc., is inevitable in life, but suffering is a choice determined by whether you choose to compare your experience and pain to something better and therefore feel unlucky and bitter or to something worse and therefore feel lucky and grateful!

To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven depending on whether they compare it to something better and so feel disappointed and bitter or something worse and so feel relieved and grateful.

When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long in disappointment and bitterness at the closed door that we do not expectantly look for and therefore see with pleasure and gratitude the one which has been opened for us.

Man has an almost infinite capacity for taking things and people for granted and thereby missing out on the pleasure of being grateful that things aren't worse and of praising and thereby lifting the spirits of others.

You have to have a darkness...for the dawn to come. You have to have experienced difficulties and challenges to fully appreciate and be grateful for success.

"Great suffering has a silver-lining that we can be grateful for, because it builds up a human being and puts him or her within reach of self-knowledge."