Great Throughts Treasury

"What brings fulfillment is gratefulness, the simple response of our heart to this life in all its fullness."

"The greatest gift one can give is thanksgiving. In giving gifts, we give what we can spare, but in giving thanks we give ourselves."

"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"

"Look closely and you will find that people are happy because they are grateful. The opposite of gratefulness is just taking everything for granted."

"In daily life we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but gratefulness that makes us happy"

"Wherever we may come alive, that is the area in which we are spiritual."

"One single gift acknowledged in gratefulness has the power to dissolve the ties of our alienation"

"Sometimes people get the mistaken notion that spirituality is a separate department of life, the penthouse of existence. But rightly understood, it is a vital awareness that pervades all realms of our being... Wherever we may come alive, that is the area in which we are spiritual."

"Everything is a gift. The degree to which we are awake to this truth is a measure of our gratefullness, and gratefullness is a measure of our aliveness."

"The root of joy is gratefulness...It is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful."

"We are never more than one grateful thought away from peace of heart."