20 Thanksgiving Quotes that Inspire Gratitude

Aylin Erman |

Sep 10, 2024

This Thanksgiving, do more than just indulge in a feast and spend (fun but exhausting) time with your family – take a moment to be thankful to have the opportunity to do just that! No matter the travails of the past or upcoming year, we all can find much to be thankful for, down to something as fundamental as being alive and well. The following 20 Thanksgiving quotes will echo your gratitude.

“You may have heard of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. There’s another day you might want to know about: Giving Tuesday. The idea is pretty straightforward. On the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, shoppers take a break from their gift-buying and donate what they can to charity.” – Bill Gates
“The thankful receiver bears a plentiful harvest.” – William Blake
“If you are really thankful, what do you do? You share.” – W. Clement Stone
Pride slays thanksgiving, but a 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
“If a fellow isn’t thankful for what he’s got, he isn’t likely to be thankful for what he’s going to get.” – Frank A. Clark
There is one day that is ours. Thanksgiving Day is the one day that is purely American.” – O. Henry
“I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way. I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I killed them and took their land.” – Jon Stewart
“To give thanks in solitude is enough. Thanksgiving has wings and goes where it must go. Your prayer knows much more about it than you do.” – Victor Hugo
“An optimist is a person who starts a new diet on Thanksgiving Day.” – Irv Kupcinet
“Thanksgiving, man. Not a good day to be my pants.” – Kevin James
“Even though we’re a week and a half away from Thanksgiving, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.” – Richard Roeper
“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 van Gesner
“Keep your eyes open to your mercies. The man who forgets to be thankful has fallen asleep in life.” – Robert Louis Stevenson
“Strive to find things to be thankful for, and just look for the good in who you are!” – Bethany Hamilton
“Often people ask how I manage to be happy despite having no arms and no legs. The quick answer is that I have a choice. I can be angry about not having limbs, or I can be thankful that I have a purpose. I chose gratitude.” – Nick Vujicic
“Drink and be thankful to the host! What seems insignificant when you have it, is important when you need it.” – Franz Grillparzer
“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
“Every day I’ve got to be thankful that I am alive, and you never know – the cliche is, I guess, you could get hit by a bus tomorrow, so you’d better be at peace with whatever you got going at the moment.” – Joseph Gordon-Levitt
“If I could write a story that would do for the Indian one-hundredth part what ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ did for the Negro, I would be thankful the rest of my life.” – Helen Hunt Jackson