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.

Random quote on Thanksgiving

Most quoted on thanksgiving:

Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others,
And in their pleasure takes joy, even as though 'twere his own.
Not in the morning alone, not only at mid-day he charmeth;
Even at setting, the sun is still the same glorious planet.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

If solid happiness we prize,
Within our breast this jewel lies,
And they are fools who roam.
The world has nothing to bestow;
From our own selves our joys must flow,
And that dear hut, our home.

Nathaniel Cotton

That side of our existence whose direction is towards the infinite seeks not wealth, but freedom and joy.

Rabindranath Tagore

Once more I realized to what an extent earthly happiness is made to the measure of man. It is not a rare bird which we must pursue at one moment in heaven, at the next in our minds. Happiness is a domestic bird found in our own courtyards.

Nikos Kazantzakis Report to Greco (1965)

I fear, the inevitable conclusion we must all come to is, that in the world happiness is quite indefinable. We can no more grasp it than we can grasp the sun in the sky or the moon in the water.

Dinah Craik A Woman's Thoughts About Women (1858)