Grateful Quotes

“We are safer and happier when we care for each other in community, when we do things for each other.”
― Diana Butler Bass, Grateful: The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks

“Gratitude is not about stuff. Gratitude is the emotional response to the surprise of our very existence, to sensing that inner light and realizing the astonishing sacred, social, and scientific events that brought each one of us into being. We cry out like the psalmist, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made!” (Ps. 139:14).”
― Diana Butler Bass, Grateful: The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks

“Gratitude is complicated. Feelings of dependence—and interdependence—can be both elusive and resisted, mostly because they are caught up with soul-crushing ideas of obligation and debt. But if gratitude is mutual reliance upon (instead of payback for) shared gifts, we awaken to a profound awareness of our interdependence. Dependence may enslave the soul, but interdependence frees us.”
― Diana Butler Bass, Grateful: The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks

“Everything is a gift. The degree to which we are awake to this truth is a measure of our gratefulness, and gratefulness is a measure of our aliveness. —DAVID STEINDL-RAST”
― Diana Butler Bass, Grateful: The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks

“I learned new things about myself, about God, about life—all of it possible only because I was fired. I feel thankful.”
― Diana Butler Bass, Grateful: The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks

“In normal life one is not at all aware that we always receive infinitely more than we give, and that gratitude is what enriches life.”
― Diana Butler Bass, Grateful: The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks

“Much of what passes for gratitude today appears to be a sort of secular prosperity gospel.”
― Diana Butler Bass, Grateful: The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks

“Gratitude is, however, more than just an emotion. It is also a disposition that can be chosen and cultivated, an outlook toward life that manifests itself in actions—it is an ethic.”
― Diana Butler Bass, Grateful: The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks

“The baby, the star, and the wise men: a story of gifts and radical gratitude. Joy to the world!”
― Diana Butler Bass, Grateful: The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks

“There is no one experience of gratitude; rather, it is a complex and episodic thing, and one that is deeply personal.”
― Diana Butler Bass, Grateful: The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks

“Gratitude is not a psychological or political panacea, like a secular prosperity gospel, one that denies pain or overlooks injustice, because being grateful does not “fix” anything. Pain, suffering, and injustice—these things are all real. They do not go away. Gratitude, however, invalidates the false narrative that these things are the sum total of human existence, that despair is the last word. Gratitude gives us a new story. It opens our eyes to see that every life is, in unique and dignified ways, graced: the lives of the poor, the castoffs, the sick, the jailed, the exiles, the abused, the forgotten as well as those in more comfortable physical circumstances. Your life. My life. We all share in the ultimate gift—life itself. Together. Right now.”
― Diana Butler Bass, Grateful: The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks

“Grace—gifts given without being earned and with no expectation of return—”
― Diana Butler Bass, Grateful: The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks