78 Quotes About Gratitude and Mindful Living

In my quest to find a better foothold in the world, I’ve begun to work on understanding my own impact on the world, tangible and not, and how I can work to better improve all of them.

One way I’ve been doing this is to consciously decide where and how my money gets spent. I don’t mean going completely off-grid and making my own clothing (I don’t even own a sewing machine) but rather understanding that with my money comes a choice of how to use it: I can go for the cheapest option which most likely means a larger eco-footprint and contributing to terrible ethical practices, or I can do a little research, possibly spend a little more, but know that what I’ve chosen has made a small impact by supporting more ethical companies. 

It might feel infinitesimal every time, but remember that every choice pivots your path. When you make 100 choices that benefit mindfulness, they make a much bigger difference than 100 choices not thought about at all.

78 Quotes About Gratitude and Mindful Living

To help give you a little more clarity, I sourced 78 different quotes that help bring the concept of mindful living and gratitude a little more context. Check it out:

1. Be grateful for what you already have while you pursue your goals. If you aren’t grateful for what you already have, what makes you think you would be happy with more. – Roy T. Bennett
2. Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them – that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like. – Lao Tzu
3. Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you. – Lao Tzu
4. Wherever you are, be there totally – Eckhart Tolle
5. Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love. – Lao Tzu
6. At times, our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us. – Albert Schweitzer
7. Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul. – Henry Ward Beecher
8. When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself. – Tecumseh
9. When eating fruit, remember the one who planted the tree. – Vietnamese Proverb
10. Got no checkbooks, got no banks, still I’d like to express my thanks. I got the sun in the morning and the moon at night. – Irving Berlin
11. For my part, I am almost contented just now, and very thankful. Gratitude is a divine emotion: it fills the heart, but not to bursting; it warms it, but not to fever. – Charlotte Bronte
12. No duty is more urgent than giving thanks. – James Allen
13. I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder. – G.K. Chesterton
14. Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know. – Pema Chodron
15. Rejoicing in ordinary things is not sentimental or trite. It actually takes guts. – Pema Chodron
16. Mindfulness isn’t difficult, we just need to remember to do it. – Sharon Salzberg
17. You cannot control the results, only your actions. – Allan Lokos
18. The art of peaceful living comes down to living compassionately & wisely. – Allan Lokos
19. If you want to conquer the anxiety of life, live in the moment, live in the breath. – Amit Ray
20. Open the window of your mind. Allow the fresh air, new lights and new truths to enter. – Amit Ray
21. The Way is not in the sky, the Way is in the heart. – Buddha
22. You only lose what you cling to. – Buddha
23. Attachment leads to suffering. – Buddha
24. Every experience, no matter how bad it seems, holds within it a blessing of some kind. The goal is to find it. – Buddha
25. The little things? The little moments? They aren’t little.  – Jon Kabat-Zinn
26. Mindfulness is a way of befriending ourselves and our experience.  – Jon Kabat-Zinn
27. The best way to capture moments is to pay attention. This is how we cultivate mindfulness.  – Jon Kabat-Zinn
28. Many people are alive but don’t touch the miracle of being alive. – Thi­ch Nhát Hánh
29. Gratitude turns what we have into enough. – Anonymous
30. Gratitude is a powerful catalyst for happiness. It’s the spark that lights a fire of joy in your soul. – Amy Collette
31. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow. – Melody Beattie
32. Thankfulness is the beginning of gratitude. Gratitude is the completion of thankfulness. Thankfulness may consist merely of words. Gratitude is shown in acts. – Henri Frederic Amiel
33. Happiness cannot be traveled to owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude. – Denis Waitley
34. Joy is the simplest form of gratitude. – Karl Barth
35. No one who achieves success does so without the help of others. The wise and confident acknowledge this help with gratitude. – Alfred North Whitehead
36. In ordinary life, we hardly realize that we receive a great deal more than we give, and that it is only with gratitude that life becomes rich. – Dietrich Bonhoeffer
37. Gratitude is when memory is stored in the heart and not in the mind. – Lionel Hampton
38. Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues but the parent of all others. – Marcus Tullius Cicero
39. We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude. – Cynthia Ozick
40. You cannot do a kindness too soon because you never know how soon it will be too late. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
41. I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder. – Gilbert C. Chesterton
42. Gratitude will shift you to a higher frequency, and you will attract much better things. – Rhonda Byrne
43. When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around. – Willie Nelson
44. Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn’t learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn’t learn a little, at least we didn’t get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn’t die; so, let us all be thankful. – Buddha
45. Gratitude helps you to grow and expand; gratitude brings joy and laughter into your life and into the lives of all those around you. – Eileen Caddy
46. Two kinds of gratitude: The sudden kind we feel for what we take; the larger kind we feel for what we give. – Edwin Arlington Robinson
47. Gratitude is the sweetest thing in a seekers life, in all human life. If there is gratitude in your heart, then there will be tremendous sweetness in your eyes. – Sri Chinmoy
48. As with all commandments, gratitude is a description of a successful mode of living. The thankful heart opens our eyes to a multitude of blessings that continually surround us. – James E. Faust
49. The more grateful I am, the more beauty I see. – Mary Davis
50. The deepest craving of human nature is the need to be appreciated. – William James
51. There is a calmness to a life lived in gratitude, a quiet joy. – Ralph H. Blum
52. Gratitude is the most exquisite form of courtesy. – Jacques Maritain
53. The root of joy is gratefulness. – David Steindl-Rast
54. I’ve had a remarkable life. I seem to be in such good places at the right time. You know, if you were to ask me to sum my life up in one word, gratitude. – Dietrich Bonhoeffer
55. He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has. – Epictetus
56. 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. – Melody Beattie
57. Being thankful is not always experienced as a natural state of existence, we must work at it, akin to a type of strength training for the heart. – Larissa Gomez
58. Today I choose to live with gratitude for the love that fills my heart, the peace that rests within my spirit, and the voice of hope that says all things are possible. – Anonymous
59. We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures. – Thornton Wilder
60. If you concentrate on finding whatever is good in every situation, you will discover that your life will suddenly be filled with gratitude, a feeling that nurtures the soul. – Rabbi Harold Kushner
61. Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough. – Oprah Winfrey
62. 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
63. I looked around and thought about my life. I felt grateful. I noticed every detail. That is the key to time travel. You can only move if you are actually in the moment. You have to be where you are to get where you need to go. – Amy Poehler
64. Gratitude for the present moment and the fullness of life now is the true prosperity. – Eckhart Tolle
65. Gratitude is the sign of noble souls. – Aesop
66. Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it. – William Arthur Ward
67. Develop an attitude of gratitude, and give thanks for everything that happens to you, knowing that every step forward is a step toward achieving something bigger and better than your current situation. – Brian Tracy
68. Opening your eyes to more of the world around you can deeply enhance your gratitude practice. – Derrick Carpenter
69. Nothing is more honorable than a grateful heart. – Lucius Annaeus Seneca
70. Be grateful for what you already have while you pursue your goals. If you aren’t grateful for what you already have, what makes you think you would be happy with more. – Roy T. Bennett
71. Train yourself never to put off the word or action for the expression of gratitude. – Albert Schweitzer
72. Gratitude is riches. Complaint is poverty. – Doris Day
73. Gratitude is an antidote to negative emotions, a neutralizer of envy, hostility, worry, and irritation. It is savoring; it is not taking things for granted; it is present-oriented. – Sonja Lyubomirsky
74. When you are grateful, fear disappears and abundance appears. – Tony Robbins
75. What separates privilege from entitlement is gratitude. – Brene Brown
76. When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude. – G.K. Chesterton
77. I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
78. Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well. – Voltaire