I really believe in ThanksLiving. I love the Gratitude Community, Project Smile, and ideas like the Blessing Bowl. I’ve written quite a bit about gratitude in the past.

November is a perfect time to focus on being grateful – although there’s no time that’s not perfect to focus on being grateful. If you have athletes in your family, I think the best thing you can do is to “Let Gratitude Carry You through the Competition Season.” And no matter what your life situation is, you can let gratitude carry you through life.

Here are my favorite gratitude quotes:

“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.” Cicero

“Gratitude is the memory of the heart.” Jean Baptiste Massieu

“Gratitude is riches. Complaint is poverty.” Doris Day

“To speak gratitude is courteous and pleasant, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live gratitude is to touch Heaven.” Johannes A. Gaertner

“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.” Meister Eckhart

“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.” G.K. Chesterton

“Gratitude is the best attitude.” Author Unknown

“The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.” Eric Hoffer

“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.” John Fitzgerald Kennedy

“In our daily lives, we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but the gratefulness that makes us happy.” Albert Clarke

“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.”
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Gratitude is when memory is stored in the heart and not in the mind.” Lionel Hampton

“The only people with whom you should try to get even are those who have helped you.” John E. Southard

“Forget injuries, never forget kindness.” Confucius

“Darkness deserves gratitude. It is the alleluia point at which we learn to understand that all growth does not take place in the sunlight.” Joan Chittister

“Showing gratitude is one of the simplest yet most powerful things humans can do for each other.” Randy Pausch

“Joy is the simplest form of gratitude.” Karl Barth

“Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is a spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude.” Denis Watley

“Nothing is more honorable than a grateful heart.” Lucius Annaeus Seneca

“Who does not thank for little will not thank for much.” Estonian Proverb

“God gave you a gift of 86,400 seconds today. Have you used one to say “thank you?” William A. Ward

“A single grateful thought toward heaven is the most complete prayer.” Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

“The gratitude that we encounter helps us believe in the goodness of the world, and strengthens us thereby to do what’s good.” Dr. Albert Schweitzer

“When we give cheerfully and accept gratefully, everyone is blessed.” Maya Angelou

“Gratitude is something of which none of us can give too much. For on the smiles, the thanks we give, our little gestures of appreciation, our neighbors build their philosophy of life.” A.J. Cronin

“Gratitude for the present moment and the fullness of life now is the true prosperity.” Eckhart Tolle

“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” Marcel Prous

“The grateful person knows that God is good, not by hearsay but by experience. And that is what makes all the difference.” Thomas Merton

“Give thanks for unknown blessings already on their way.” Native American Prayer

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

“Gratefulness is the key to a happy life that we hold in our hands, because if we are not grateful, then no matter how much we have we will not be happy – because we will always want to have something else or something more.” David Steindl-Rast

“So much has been given to me; I have no time to ponder over that which has been denied.” Helen Keller

“The Pilgrims made seven times more graves than huts. No Americans have been more impoverished than these who, nevertheless, set aside a day of thanksgiving.” H. U. Westermayer

“ThanksGiving is good but ThanksLiving is better.” Matthew Henry

What is your favorite gratitude quote?

Photo Credit: Photo by Woodley Wonderworks at Flickr Creative Commons.