Here are a few sayings and poems to share on Thanksgiving.
“When asked if my cup is half-full or half-empty my only response is that I am thankful I have a cup.” -- Sam Lefkowitz
“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
“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.” -- John F. Kennedy
“An optimist is a person who starts a new diet on Thanksgiving Day.” -- Irv Kupcinet
“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
“If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, ‘thank you,’ that would suffice.” -- Meister Eckhart (c. 1260–c. 1327), German theologian, philosopher and mystic
“Thanksgiving dinners take 18 hours to prepare; they are consumed in 12 minutes; Half-times take 12 minutes. This is not coincidence.” -- Erma Bombeck
“We can always find something to be thankful for, and there may be reasons why we ought to be thankful for even those dispensations which appear dark and frowning.” -- Albert Barnes
“In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.” -- Albert Schweitzer
“Thanksgiving, after all, is a word of action.” -- W. J. Cameron
“For flowers that bloom about our feet;
For tender grass, so fresh, so sweet;
For song of bird, and hum of bee;
For all things fair we hear or see,
Father in heaven, we thank Thee!” -Ralph Waldo Emerson
“So once in every year we throng
Upon a day apart,
To praise the Lord with feast and song
In thankfulness of heart.” -- Arthur Guiterman, The First Thanksgiving
“Our rural ancestors, with little blest,
Patient of labour when the end was rest,
Indulged the day that housed their annual grain,
With feasts, and off'rings, and a thankful strain.” -- Alexander Pope
“He who thanks but with the lips
Thanks but in part;
The full, the true Thanksgiving
Comes from the heart.” -- J.A. Shedd
