42 Thankfulness Quotes To Inspire

In a fast-paced world where moments often blur into a constant shuffle, taking a step back to appreciate the present can be incredibly grounding. Thankfulness is more than a fleeting emotion; it's a powerful practice that enriches our lives, shifting our perspectives and nurturing deeper connections. In this collection, we've gathered 42 insightful quotes to inspire gratitude and encourage a mindful appreciation for the little joys and profound gifts in our daily experiences. Whether you're seeking motivation, peace, or a renewed sense of wonder, these reflections on gratitude are sure to stir your spirit and illuminate the beauty in the everyday. Join us on this journey of thankfulness, and let these words guide you toward a brighter, more fulfilled life.

1. “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

2. “Joy is thankfulness, and when we are joyful, that is the best expression of thanks we can offer the Lord, Who delivers us from sorrow and sin.” - Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica

3. “I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.” - L. M. Montgomery

4. “Rest and be thankful.” - William Wordsworth

5. “This is the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.” - Queen Elizabeth I

6. “Instead of thanking God for my two strong legs that are able to run and jump and climb, I whined about my "thunder thighs" and "thick" ankles. Instead of rejoicing that I have two capable arms that can lift and carry and balance my body, I complained about the flab that hung beneath them. I have been totally and unbelievably ungrateful for everything. Like a completely spoiled brat, I took my healthy body for granted. I criticized it and despised it. With crystal clarity, I know that I do not deserve the good health that God has mysteriously blessed me with. Not only have I been unappreciative of my body and its amazing working parts, I tortured it by overexercising, and I put my entire health at serious risk by starving myself. What on earth was wrong with me? As I watch these kids with their less-than-perfect bodies, I feel so thoroughly ashamed of myself. I mean, how could I have been so stupid and shallow and self-centered?” - Melody Carlson

7. “God gave us minds to think with and hearts to thank with. Instead we use our hearts to think about the world as we would like it to have been, and we use our minds to come up with rationalizations for our ingratitude. We are a murmuring, discontented, unhappy, ungrateful people. And because we think we want salvation from our discontents...” - Douglas Wilson

8. “Those blessings are sweetest that are won with prayer and worn with thanks.” - Thomas Goodwin

9. “We would worry less if we praised more. Thanksgiving is the enemy of discontent and dissatisfaction.” - Harry A. Ironside

10. “Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.” - William Arthur Ward

11. “Rachel? my dad prompts.Do I have to...?"His stern expression answers my questionFine. I'm grateful that the Native Americans are finally getting revenge on the white man for destroying their culture, by building megacasinos.” - Melissa Schorr

12. “People complain about the bad things that happen to em that they don't deserve but they seldom mention the good. About what they done to deserve them things” - Cormac McCarthy

13. “To witness miracles unfold in your experience, count your blessings and be thankful. Perceived small blessings accumulate to be the most powerful.” - T.F. Hodge

14. “Do not indulge in dreams of having what you have not, but reckon up the chief of the blessings you do possess, and then thankfully remember how you would crave for them if they were not yours.” - Marcus Aurelius

15. “So to you, or anyone else who has spent four minutes on me in some way-- listening to just one song, or watching one of my videos….Thank you. I love you like I love sparkles and having the last word. And that's real love.” - Taylor Swift

16. “Sometimes we focus so much on what we don't have that we fail to see, appreciate, and use what we do have!” - Jeff Dixon

17. “We pray for the big things and forget to give thanks for the ordinary, small (and yet really not small) gifts.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

18. “Do not say, 'But it is hypocritical to thank God with my tongue when I don't feel thankful in my heart.' There is such a thing as hypocritical thanksgiving. Its aim is to conceal ingratitude and get the praise of men. That is not your aim. Your aim in loosing your tongue with words of gratitude is that God would be merciful and fill your words with the emotion of true gratitude. You are not seeking the praise of men; you are seeing the mercy of God. You are not hiding the hardness of ingratitude, but hoping for the in-breaking of the Spirit. Thanksgiving with the Mouth Stirs Up Thankfulness in the HeartMoreover, we should probably ask the despairing saint, 'Do you know your heart so well that you are sure the words of thanks have no trace of gratitude in them?' I, for one, distrust my own assessment of my motives. I doubt that I know my good ones well enough to see all the traces of contamination. And I doubt that I know my bad ones well enough to see the traces of grace. Therefore, it is not folly for a Christian to assume that there is a residue of gratitude in his heart when he speaks and sings of God's goodness even though he feels little or nothing. To this should be added that experience shows that doing the right thing, in the way I have described, is often the way toward being in the right frame. Hence Baxter gives this wise counsel to the oppressed Christian:'Resolve to spend most of your time in thanksgiving and praising God. If you cannot do it with the joy that you should, yet do it as you can. You have not the power of your comforts; but have you no power of your tongues? Say not that you are unfit for thanks and praises unless you have a praising heart and were the children of God; for every man, good and bad, is bound to praise God, and to be thankful for all that he hath received, and to do it as well as he can, rather than leave it undone.... Doing it as you can is the way to be able to do it better. Thanksgiving stirreth up thankfulness in the heart.” - John Piper

19. “Courtesies of a small and trivial character are the ones which strike deepest in the grateful and appreciating heart.” - Henry Clay

20. “You can also look at your body and think about how the blood flows and the fact that your body is in constant renewal. It is a miracle of creation happening within you every second of the day. This is something to be thankful for.” - Celso Cukierkorn

21. “Do you consider yourself a blessing or just another person?” - Jonathan Anthony Burkett

22. “In the Christian community thankfulness is just what it is anywhere else in the Christian life. Only he who gives thanks for little things receives the big things. We prevent God from giving us the great spiritual gifts He has in store for us, because we do not give thanks for daily gifts. We think we dare not be satisfied with the small measure of spiritual knowledge, experience, and love that has been given to us, and that we must constantly be looking forward eagerly for the highest good. Then we deplore the fact that we lack the deep certainty, the strong faith, and the rich experience that God has given to others, and we consider this lament to be pious. We pray for the big things and forget to give thanks for the ordinary, small (and yet really not small) gifts. How can God entrust great things to one who will not thankfully receive from Him the little things? If we do not give thanks daily for the Christian fellowship in which we have been placed, even where there is no great experience, no discoverable riches, but much weakness, small faith, and difficulty; if on the contrary, we only keep complaining to God that everything is so paltry and petty, so far from what we expected, then we hinder God from letting our fellowship grow according to the measure and riches which are there for us all in Jesus Christ.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

23. “Anything I cannot thank God for for the sake of Christ, I may not thank God for at all; to do so would be sin. ... We cannot rightly acknowledge the gifts of God unless we acknowledge the Mediator for whose sake alone they are given to us.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

24. “To fight discouragement, remind yourself of the basics: I can write.I have the opportunity to do so. I love what I write. Now smile and be thankful.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

25. “Ingratitude produces pride while gratitude produces humility.” - Orrin Woodward

26. “Mother! what a world of affection is comprised in that single word; how little do we in the giddy round of youthful pleasure and folly heed her wise counsels. How lightly do we look upon that zealous care with which she guides our otherwise erring feet, watches with feelings which none but a mother can know the gradual expansion of our youth to the riper yours of discretion. We may not think of it then, but it will be recalled to our minds in after years, when the gloomy grave or a fearful living separation has placed her far beyond our reach, and her sweet voice of sympathy and consolation for the various ills attendant upon us sounds in our ears no more. How deeply then we regret a thousand deeds that we have done contrary to her gentle admonitions! How we sign for those days once more, that we may retrieve what we have done amiss and make her kind heart glad with happiness! Alas! once gone they can never be recalled, and we grow mournfully sad with the bitter reflection.” - Fanny Kelly

27. “Gratitude is medicine for a heart devastated by tragedy.  If you can only be thankful for the blue sky, then do so.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

28. “Even the smallest tender mercy can bring peace when recognized and appreciated.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

29. “The whole of the life -- even the hard -- is made up of the minute parts, and if I miss the infinitesimals, I miss the whole. These are new language lessons, and I live them out. There is a way to live the big of giving thanks in all things. It is this: to give thanks in this one small thing. The moments will add up.” - Ann Voskamp

30. “I know there is poor and hideous suffering, and I've seen the hungry and the guns that go to war. I have lived pain, and my life can tell: I only deepen the wound of the world when I neglect to give thanks for early light dappled through leaves and the heavy perfume of wild roses in early July and the song of crickets on humid nights and the rivers that run and the stars that rise and the rain that falls and all the good things that a good God gives.” - Ann Voskamp

31. “The value we place on what we've been given correlates to our depth of gratitude for it.” - Todd Stocker

32. “Be not wishing and pining but thankfully content.  For it is a short bridge between wanting and regret."- from "Dimpellumpzki” - Richelle E. Goodrich

33. “Gratitude goes beyond the 'mine' and 'thine' and claims the truth that all of life is a pure gift. In the past I always thought of gratitude as a spontaneous response to the awareness of gifts received, but now I realize that gratitude can also be lived as a discipline. The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love, a gift to be celebrated with joy.” - Henri J.M. Nouwen

34. “Lord, behold our family here assembled. We thank You for this place in which we dwell, for the love accorded us this day, for the hope with which we expect the morrow; for the health, the work, the food and the bright skies that make our lives delightful; for our friends in all parts of the earth. Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind. Spare us to our friends, soften us to our enemies. Bless us, if it may be, in all our innocent endeavors; if it may not, give us strength to endure that which is to come that we may be brave in peril, constant in tribulation, temperate in wrath and in all changes of fortune and down to the gates of death, loyal and loving to one another. We beseech of you this help and mercy for Christ's sake.” - Robert Louis Stevenson

35. “I'm not weeping for what I've lost ... I'm just grateful to the Lord, grateful that he gave me so much. ... Praise the Almighty God for what he gave me, for such love and such joy.” - Rosslyn Elliott

36. “Without darkness, we may never know how bright the stars shine. Without battles, we could not know what victory feels like. Without adversity, we may never appreciate the abundance in our lives. Be thankful, not only for the easy times, but for every experience that has made you who you are.” - Julie-Anne

37. “Gratitude paints little smiley faces on everything it touches.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

38. “Every once in a while God allows you to stub your toe as a kind reminder to be grateful for the miraculous body attached to it.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

39. “I may not be where I want to be but I'm thankful for not being where I used to be.” - Habeeb Akande

40. “The thankful receiver bears a plentiful harvest.” - William Blake

41. “So make remembrance of Me, and I will make remembrance of you. And show thanks to Me, and do not be ungrateful.” - Anonymous

42. “Let us not take what we eat for granted; let us view our meals as an opportunity to give our Lord praise.” - Dillon Burroughs