Thanksgiving Quotes
This page is not a collection of Thanksgiving writing. It is made from three others, gratitude, family and happiness, and sorted by quality. A handful of entries mention the holiday itself, from writers as different as Harriet Beecher Stowe, the poet John Keble, Will Carleton, Patton Oswalt and Ted Nugent.
Most of what you will see is general, and it makes good table talk, with more sentiment than usual and less irony. Glance at the flag and the source before you print one on a place card.
Most quoted on thanksgiving:
Pleasures are ever in our hands or eyes;
And when in act they cease, in prospect rise.
Reason's whole pleasure, all the joys of sense,
Lie in three words,—health, peace, and competence.
Follow pleasure, and then will pleasure flee,
Flee pleasure, and pleasure will follow thee.
I fly from pleasure, because pleasure has ceased to please: I am lonely because I am miserable.
The little pleasure of the game
Is from afar to view the flight.
This idea of selfishness as a virtue, as opposed to generosity: That, to me, is unnatural."
O Lord, that lends me life, Lend me a heart replete with thankfulness!
Happiness was simply something that occurred in a well-regulated life.
How vainly seek
The selfish for that happiness denied
To aught but virtue!
Hold him alone truly fortunate who has ended his life in happy well-being.
My plenteous joys,
Wanton in fulness, seek to hide themselves
In drops of sorrow.
'Tis safer to be that which we destroy
Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.