Many of us think of gratitude around Thanksgiving, and we count our blessings for a few days or maybe a few weeks. The rest of the year we leave this wonderful tool gathering dust in our hearts and minds without awareness of what a gift it truly is.
Gratitude brings comfort and joy to life. Gratitude provides perspective in difficult times. Gratitude is an effective treatment for anxiety and depression as I have personally experienced. Gratitude reminds us of all that we have to balance out corporations spending billions trying to convince us our lives are still incomplete (You are not incomplete).
Gratitude reminds us to be kind, it allows us to be happy, and it fills our lives with abundance.
I invite you to open your life to gratitude all year long. Keep a gratitude journal. Participate in a gratitude challenge. Start a gratitude meditation. Embrace the power gratitude has to improve your life, your health, and your happiness. To encourage a regular practice of gratitude, here are 22 quotes to inspire gratitude!
Photo by Shannon Kringen
22 Thoughts to Inspire a Practice of Gratitude
“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” ~Marcel Proust
“Gratitude is riches. Complaint is poverty.” ~Doris Day
“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.” ~Marcus Tullius Cicero
“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.” ~Frank A. Clark
“Give thanks for a little and you will find a lot.” ~The Hausa of Nigeria
“When you write down your gratitude, it grows.” ~Chrysta Bairre
“Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.” ~Robert Brault
“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 Waitley
“Some people grumble that roses have thorns; I am grateful that thorns have roses.” ~Alphonse Karr
“Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.” ~Oprah Winfrey
“If the only prayer you say in your life is thank you, that would suffice.” ~Meister Eckhart
“Things turn out best for people who make the best of the way things turn out.” ~John Wooden
“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words but to live by them.” ~John F. Kennedy
“We should certainly count our blessings, but we should also make our blessings count.” ~Neal A. Maxwell
“As each day comes to us refreshed and anew, so does my gratitude renew itself daily. The breaking of the sun over the horizon is my grateful heart dawning upon a blessed world. ” ~Adabella Radici
“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.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
“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.” ~Albert Einstein
“Gratitude for the seemingly insignificant—a seed—this plants the giant miracle.” ~Ann Voskamp
“He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.” ~Epictetus
“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
“Not what we say about our blessings, but how we use them, is the true measure of our thanksgiving.” ~W.T. Purkiser
“Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn’t learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn’t learn a little, at least we didn’t get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn’t die; so, let us all be thankful.” ~Buddha
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Did you know I wrote a book? In it, I go in-depth on gratitude, how to start a gratitude practice of your own, and all the ways in which it can change your life. Click here to read more about it and get your copy!