Thanksgiving Quotations
- "It is therefore recommended ... to set apart Thursday the eighteenth day of December next, for solemn thanksgiving and praise, that with one heart and one voice the good people may express the grateful feelings of their hearts and consecrate themselves to the service of their divine benefactor ..."
-- Samuel Adams, father of the American Revolution on November 1, 1777 (adopted by the 13 states as the first official Thanksgiving Proclamation) - "Gratitude is the sign of noble souls."
-- Aesop's Fables - "My whole problem is that all of my favorite things at Thanksgiving are the starches, and everyone is trying to go low-carb this year, even a green vegetable has carbs in it."
-- Ted Allen - "The funny thing about Thanksgiving, or any huge meal, is that you spend 12 hours shopping for it and then chopping and cooking and braising and blanching. Then it takes 20 minutes to eat it and everybody sort of sits around in a food coma, and then it takes four hours to clean it up."
-- Ted Allen - "On Thanksgiving Day, all over America, families sit down to dinner at the same moment - halftime."
-- Anonymous - "Thanksgiving is possible only for those who take time to remember; no one can give thanks who has a short memory."
-- Anonymous - "One act of thanksgiving made when things go wrong is worth a thousand when things go well."
-- Anonymous - "Real abundance is found when we join hands with those we love."
-- Anonymous - "Thanksgiving is a circle of memories."
-- Anonymous - "Thanksgiving is a time for remembering and appreciating the special people in our lives. Our home is warmed by the love of family and friends."
-- Anonymous - "Much to be Thankful For."
-- Anonymous - "Thankful for elastic waistbands!"
-- Anonymous - "Friends, Family, Food and FOOTBALL!"
-- Anonymous - "Dear Lord; we beg but one boon more: Peace in the hearts of all men living, peace in the whole world this Thanksgiving."
-- Joseph Auslander - "Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow."
-- Melody Beattie - "Pride slays thanksgiving, but an humble mind is the soil out of which thanks naturally grow. A proud man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves."
-- Henry Ward Beecher - "The unthankful heart... discovers no mercies; but let the thankful heart sweep through the day and, as the magnet finds the iron, so it will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings!"
-- Henry Ward Beecher - "Got no check books, got no banks. Still I'd like to express my thanks - I got the sun in the mornin' and the moon at night."
-- Irving Berlin - "Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving."
-- (Colossians 4:2) Bible - "In seedtime, learn. In harvest, teach. In winter, enjoy."
-- William Blake - "What we're really talking about is a wonderful day set aside on the fourth Thursday of November when no one diets. I mean, why else would they call it Thanksgiving?"
-- Erma Bombeck - "Heap high the board with plenteous cheer and gather to the feast, And toast the sturdy Pilgrim band whose courage never ceased."
-- Alice W. Brotherton - "On Thanksgiving Day we acknowledge our dependence."
-- William Jennings Bryan - "Thanksgiving-day, I fear, If one the solemn truth must touch, Is celebrated, not so much To thank the Lord for blessing o'er, As for the sake of getting more!"
-- Will Carleton - "I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and new."
-- Will Carleton - "Thank God every day when you get up that you have something to do that day which must be done whether you like it or not. Being forced to work and forced to do your best will breed in you temperance and self-control, diligence and strength of will, cheerfulness and content, and a hundred virtues which the idle will never know."
-- Basil Carpenter - "Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others."
-- Cicero - "It has been an unchallengeable American doctrine that cranberry sauce, a pink goo with overtones of sugared tomatoes, is a delectable necessity of the Thanksgiving board and that turkey is uneatable without it."
-- Alistair Cooke - "The inspiration was this great group of 40 or 50 relatives, sometimes for Thanksgiving or Passover or something and my brothers would just go up and make them laugh."
-- Billy Crystal - " My cooking is so bad my kids thought Thanksgiving was to commemorate Pearl Harbor."
-- Phyllis Diller - "I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and new."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson - "You probably think Italians like meals with heavy meats and sauces, but they actually prefer light meats. They see turkey as a healthy, light white meat that lends itself excellently to their style of cooking, and they use it in many different ways. Also, Europeans do not celebrate Thanksgiving so they perceive turkey as an all-year round option."
-- Todd English - "Who does not thank for little will not thank for much."
-- Estonian proverb - "Gratitude is a quality similar to electricity: it must be produced and discharged and used up in order to exist at all."
-- William Faulkner - "I do not think of all the misery, but of the glory that remains. Go outside into the fields, nature and the sun, go out and seek happiness in yourself and in God. Think of the beauty that again and again discharges itself within and without you and be happy."
-- Anne Frank - "As we enjoy great Advantages from the Inventions of others we should be glad of an Opportunity to serve others by any Invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously."
-- Ben Franklin - "Gratitude is the heart's memory."
-- French Proverb - "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 - "My grandfather told me that there were two kinds of people: those who did the work and those who took credit for it. He urged me to try to me among the first group; it was much less likely to be crowded there."
-- Indira Gandhi - "Your friend is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving."
-- Kahlil Gibran - "It's better to pace yourself throughout a big day like Thanksgiving by having something healthful for breakfast and something light for lunch."
-- Marilu Henner - "It is now common knowledge that the average American gains 7 pounds between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day."
-- Marilu Henner - "There is one day that is ours. Thanksgiving Day . . . is the one day that is purely American."
-- O. Henry - "A lot of Thanksgiving days have been ruined by not carving the turkey in the kitchen."
-- Kin Hubbard - "It's like being at the kids' table at Thanksgiving - you can put your elbows on it, you don't have to talk politics... no matter how old I get, there's always a part of me that's sitting there."
-- John Hughes - "Thanksgiving, man. Not a good day to be my pants."
-- Kevin James - "And taught by thee the Church prolongs Her hymns of high thanksgiving still."
-- John Keble - "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 - "We will speed the day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing ...Free at last, Free at last, Thank God Almighty, I'm free at last."
-- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr (Address at Lincoln Memorial during March on Washington, August 1963) - "An optimist is a person who starts a new diet on Thanksgiving Day."
-- Irv Kupcinet - "We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown."
-- Abraham Lincoln, during the Civil War in 1863 - "My favorite meal is turkey and mashed potatoes. I love Thanksgiving, it's just my favorite. I can have Thanksgiving all year round."
-- Cindy Margolis - "Thanksgiving Day comes, by statute, once a year; to the honest man it comes as frequently as the heart of gratitude will allow."
-- Edward Sandford Martin - "Thanksgiving comes to us out of the prehistoric dimness, universal to all ages and all faiths. At whatever straws we must grasp, there is always a time for gratitude and new beginnings."
-- J. Robert Moskin - "God gave us our relatives; thank God we can choose our friends."
-- Ethel Watts Mumford - "It's a thanksgiving to God. It's something I have wanted to do for a long time, but the record company wasn't ready for it. So I did it myself."
-- Aaron Neville - "Thanksgiving Day is a jewel, to set in the hearts of honest men; but be careful that you do not take the day, and leave out the gratitude."
-- E.P. Powell - " Not what we say about our blessings, but how we use them, is the true measure of our thanksgiving."
-- WT Purkiser - "Let us remember that, as much has been given us, much will be expected from us, and that true homage comes from the heart as well as from the lips, and shows itself in deeds."
-- Theodore Roosevelt - "My mother is such a lousy cook that Thanksgiving at her house is a time of sorrow."
-- Rita Rudner - "We give thanks for unknown blessings already on their way."
-- Ritual Chant - "Once, when my feet were bare, and I had not the means of obtaining shoes I came to the chief of Kufah in a state of much dejection, and saw there a man who had no feet. I returned thanks to God and acknowledged his mercies, and endured my want of shoes with patience."
-- Sadi The Gulistan - "To educate yourself for the feeling of gratitude means to take nothing for granted, but to always seek out and value the kind that will stand behind the action. Nothing that is done for you is a matter of course. Everything originates in a will for the good, which is directed at you. Train yourself never to put off the word or action for the expression of gratitude."
-- Albert Schweitzer - "Our Creator shall continue to dwell above the sky, and that is where those on earth will end their thanksgiving."
-- Seneca Nation of the Iroquois Confederacy - "O Lord that lends me life, Lend me a heart replete with thankfulness."
-- William Shakespeare - "Small cheer and great welcome makes a merry feast."
-- William Shakespeare - "The act is unjustifiable that either begs for a blessing, or, having succeeded gives no thanksgiving."
-- Merle Shain - "Great as the preparations were for the dinner, everything was so contrived that not a soul in the house should be kept from the morning service of Thanksgiving in the church."
-- Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe - "How wonderful it would be if we could help our children and grandchildren to learn thanksgiving at an early age. Thanksgiving opens the doors. It changes a child's personality. A child is resentful, negative—or thankful. Thankful children want to give, they radiate happiness, they draw people."
-- Sir John Templeton - "Who does not thank for little will not thank for much."
-- Unknown - "We give thanks for unknown blessings already on their way."
-- Unknown - "Gratitude is the inward feeling of kindness received. Thankfulness is the natural impulse to express that feeling. Thanksgiving is the following of that impulse."
-- Henry Van Dyke - "Best of all is it to preserve everything in a pure, still heart, and let there be for every pulse a thanksgiving, and for every breath a song."
-- Konrad von Gesner - "It is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor."
-- George Washington in his first Presidential Proclamation - "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 - "Happiness is the realization of God in the heart. Happiness is the result of praise and thanksgiving, of faith, of acceptance; a quiet tranquil realization of the love of God."
-- White Eagle - "Numberless marks does man bear in his soul, that he is fallen and estranged from God; but nothing gives a greater proof thereof, than that backwardness, which every one finds within himself, to the duty of praise and thanksgiving."
-- George Whitefield - "And let these altars, wreathed with flowers And piled with fruits, awake again Thanksgivings for the golden hours, The early and the latter rain!"
-- John Greenleaf Whittier - "Ah! on Thanksgiving day, when from East and from West, From North and South, come the pilgrim and guest, When the gray-haired New Englander sees round his board The old broken links of affection restored, When the care-wearied man seeks his mother once more, And the worn matron smiles where the girl smiled before. What moistens the lips and what brightens the eye? What calls back the past, like the rich pumpkin pie?"
-- John Greenleaf Whittier - "Grace isn't a little prayer you chant before receiving a meal. It's a way to live."
-- Jackie Windspear
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