Unto Us, So Much Is Given: 9 Quotes About Gratitude

There is so much to be grateful for on any given day, it’s easy for these blessings to become invisible to us – especially in the face of our struggles. Not only that, this time of year the pressure to give thanks reaches a fever pitch, in ways that can undermine our ability to feel and express these emotions sincerely.

The following authors are here to remind us why thankfulness deserves a permanent place in our heart, and to offer a bit of advice in terms making sure these feelings are expressed to others. Happy Thanksgiving!

Kahill Gibran, The Prophet, 1923
“You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might pray also in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance.”

Oprah Winfrey, What I Know for Sure, 2014
Being grateful all the time isn’t easy. But it’s when you feel least thankful that you are most in need of what gratitude can give you: perspective. Gratitude can transform any situation. It alters your vibration, moving you from negative energy to positive. It’s the quickest, easiest, most powerful way to effect change in your life—this I know for sure.”

Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything, 2006
“In the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back the people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it’s wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices.”

Anne Lamott, Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers, 2012
“Unto us, so much is given. We just have to be open for business.”

Stephen W. Hawking, New York Times Magazine Interview, 2004
“My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus.”

Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, 1994
“My gratitude for good writing is unbounded; I’m grateful for it the way I’m grateful for the ocean.”

Stephen King, The Eyes of the Dragon, 1984
“I think that real friendship always makes us feel such sweet gratitude, because the world almost always seems like a very hard desert, and the flowers that grow there seem to grow against such high odds.”

Helen Keller, The Open Door, 1957
“It has been said that life has treated me harshly; and sometimes I have complained in my heart because many pleasures of human experience have been withheld from me…if much has been denied me, much, very much, has been given me.”

William Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, 1623
“They do not love, that do not show their love.”