Gratitude quotes with context
Gratitude often starts with things you only notice once they are gone. The lines here come from G. K. Chesterton, Henry David Thoreau, Rainer Maria Rilke and many others, plus proverbs nobody can trace to a single author.
With context
Read and listen to the explanationA simple meal can contain a whole chain of invisible hands.
What grows grows for you if you have eyes for it.
There are things you only see when you truly look, and then you can't stop seeing them.
Two people looked through the same prison window. One saw mud; the other saw stars.
Value does not arise only from rarity; sometimes only from attention.
What is missing from us is the extraordinary; we are missing from the ordinary.
All 185 quotes
Proverb 26
Whoever only waits for tomorrow misses today.
A warm word at the right time is the greatest gift.
The warmth of a fire on a cold evening: explain that to someone who has never felt it.
Whoever values a small fire does not freeze.
A kind word costs nothing and leaves everything.
Whoever stops complaining begins to see.
Whoever counts stones forgets the field.
A person who was there for you when it was hard is gold.
The value of light is learned first in darkness.
A bird that sings doesn't ask for an audience.
What is present is silent; what is missing cries out.
A warm bed in the cold is just a bed to one who has never been cold.
The old holds the new, and the new forgets the old.
What is healthy you don't feel; what is missing you feel immediately.
Bread tastes best to the one who knows what it means to be hungry.
A house with laughter in it is worth more than a palace without.
Whoever doesn't see the small sees the large wrongly.
The best thing about a bad day is that it ends.
Life whispers before it screams; those who hear the whisper don't need the scream.
Whoever values nothing small deserves nothing great.
A book that has changed you is worth more than a thousand that haven't.
The rose blooms even when no one smells it.
Whoever doesn't ask what they have will one day ask where it went.
What is eaten together nourishes more than what is consumed alone.
The best thing about an old friend is that they know you.
A person who tells you the truth is rarer than one who flatters you.
Henry David Thoreau 19
A quiet evening is worth more than a thousand noisy celebrations.
A garden that grows needs no recognition.
Not what is missing makes poor, but the failure to see what is there.
A garden that grows needs no admiration.
Habit makes the extraordinary ordinary, and the ordinary invisible.
The sound of rain on the roof is a song for those who listen.
It is not possession that brings happiness, but awareness.
Not the rare but the overlooked is the most beautiful.
What you possess also possesses you, if you don't know what you have.
Whoever walks attentively through a forest understands why it exists.
The best thing about everyday life is that it is lived, not merely survived.
What you see today and miss tomorrow is in this moment perfect.
The simple thing fully experienced surpasses everything complicated.
What the earth carries it carries in silence.
What is familiar is overlooked. What is missing is missed.
The rustling of leaves is to the listening ear a complete language.
The simple thing faithfully lived surpasses the great thing half-heartedly lived.
An evening without plans is sometimes the richest.
In the modesty of the ordinary lies the foundation of happiness.
Zen wisdom 18
The reflection of the full moon on the lake is no less than the moon itself.
The best thing about today is that it was.
What you see today you may search for tomorrow.
Whoever breathes today already has more than many wish for.
Whoever sees the transient holds fast to the enduring.
Whoever sees the passing sees the essential.
The hands that help you today are not to be taken for granted.
Life gives no receipt; it gives quietly and takes quietly.
What is still here tonight may not be there tomorrow morning.
What you hear in this moment you will never hear in exactly this way again.
The light of morning is not the same as the light of evening, and both are wonderful.
A morning that begins, not one that must begin.
What is will not always have been, and will not always be.
Every sunset is unique, and you will never see another one like this.
Whoever wakes in the morning and feels pain knows they are still alive.
A clear sky after rain is never the same as before.
The water you drink was rain millions of years ago.
We notice the absence of light. Why not its presence?
G. K. Chesterton 17
It is not grand things that make life rich, but the small things you don't search for.
Life carries its own beauty; you just have to stop searching for it.
Whoever carelessly breaks bread has forgotten the hunger of the world.
Not the rare is precious; the precious is rarely noticed.
The good that happens daily is no less wonderful because it happens daily.
The world is full of wonders; it is only habit that has made us blind to them.
It takes no extraordinary things to lead an extraordinary life.
The good in life is always greater than we think, and smaller than we search for.
The most beautiful is always already here; we sometimes just arrive too late.
What we enjoy daily is often a miracle we've simply gotten used to.
Some things were great while you considered them normal.
Beauty in life doesn't wait; it is already here.
The simplest things are often the richest.
Beauty lies not in the extraordinary, but in the attentive gaze at the simple.
What you have now will one day be called memory.
Whoever sees what others overlook lives in a richer world.
Beauty is not rare, only our eye for it is.
Rainer Maria Rilke 14
What you see today carries your image tomorrow.
The face of a person you love changes every day. Look closely.
What we see as an end was for others a beginning.
Life writes its most beautiful stories in the silence.
The hands that hold you will not be able to do so forever.
The heart beats without being asked, and doesn't ask if it is heard.
The laughter of a person you love is a sound you should imprint in your memory.
The silence between two people who understand each other says more than a thousand words.
It is often the quiet things that speak loudest when they are gone.
What you love is the only thing that is truly yours.
In every face lies a story you will never hear completely.
Life writes its most beautiful pages in the small things.
The sound of the sea is the same for everyone, and different for everyone.
What you love is real in this moment. Everything else is abstraction.
Thich Nhat Hanh 9
A child sees a leaf and pauses. We have forgotten what that means.
What we eat carries the sun within it.
What you practice seeing daily you will one day truly see.
The bread you eat today contains the work of many hands.
Breathing is the first and last miracle.
Every meal is a feast for those who know how to see it.
The root of the good lies in the small that is daily overlooked.
What you touch is also touched by you, if you allow it.
What you receive today comes from far away.
Seneca 8
Lack often teaches too late what abundance said too quietly.
You must have stepped off the ship to enjoy its rocking.
The good we receive often goes unnoticed until it is absent.
As long as you can still ask not everything is lost.
An evening with people you love is worth more than any treasure.
Whoever only counts what is missing silences what is present.
The hours that seem self-evident are often the most precious coins.
The ordinary is only the miracle that eyes have grown used to.
Unknown 8
The laughter of an old person at themselves is the purest form of wisdom.
What you share today lives on in the other.
What seems self-evident to you today is the content of someone else's prayer.
The most beautiful things in life cannot be photographed.
What you have today someone yesterday lost.
The hands of an old person tell more than any book.
Everything you take for granted today was once someone else's goal.
Whoever hears a child laugh understands what wealth means.
Marcel Proust 7
The end of a day that was is more beautiful than the morning that is to come.
The irretrievable is hidden in every moment.
The moment is the foundation of life, and we skip over it daily.
The time we consider important and the time that was important are often different.
The most beautiful stories don't end; they begin by being remembered.
Forgetting is the enemy of fullness.
What was yesterday is now the past, and already precious for that reason.
Epictetus 6
The world doesn't lose its luster; habit only lays dust on it.
Sunlight asks no applause and yet is a gift every morning.
A tree gives shade without asking who deserves it.
Whoever knows the small joys knows happiness.
Looking back often ennobles what the moment neglected.
What seems self-evident never is.
Rumi 6
Whoever appreciates the light has not forgotten the darkness.
Light would not be beautiful if there were no darkness.
The heart that opens finds beauty everywhere.
The heart that doesn't close always finds room for more.
The river doesn't appreciate the sea until it disappears into it.
Light has never loved anyone more than the one who knows darkness.
Benjamin Franklin 5
A roof becomes holy only when rain falls into memory.
What is lent should not be loved less but touched more consciously.
Abundance is when what is present is allowed to speak again.
We know the value of water only when the well runs dry.
Wonder is the moment when the world becomes unspent again.
Ecclesiastes 5
Some voices only grow large when the room is silent without them.
The greatest gifts often bear no ribbon and no name.
A day need not be extraordinary to become irreplaceable.
Everything that could remain is borrowed; precisely because of this it deserves care.
A quiet evening is not nothing; it is an event without sound.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 5
Small things are only small as long as you are certain you will see them tomorrow.
A quiet body is a wealth that is usually counted only in turbulence.
A warm room feels different when you think of the cold street.
Enough is not a small state; it is a great perspective.
Closeness is often there before you realize it was the most precious thing.
Ralph Waldo Emerson 5
The ordinary faithfully observed becomes the extraordinary.
Life reveals itself to those who are ready to receive it.
Life gives itself to everyone, but few receive it.
A sunrise was never made for nothing.
What belongs to you belongs to you only as long as you notice it.
Lao Tzu 4
What grows silently grows most deeply.
The inconspicuous carries the precious.
Whoever understands the small need not search for the large.
What you know lies closer than you think, and is more than you know.
Marcus Aurelius 4
Everyday life becomes poor when you only use it and never observe it.
Whoever is always present is easily overlooked until their presence becomes history.
An old smell can show how rich a long-past day was.
Not everything valuable comes as success; some comes as air time and shelter.
Wabi-Sabi wisdom 4
Whoever values the imperfect finds wholeness in the imperfect.
The imperfect has a beauty that perfection doesn't know.
The transient is precisely valuable because it passes.
Transience makes what remains first visible.
Other voices 9
The only prayer we will ever need is gratitude.
The ordinary contains the sacred if you look for it.
A person who asks how you are and truly listens is rare.
A person who truly listens is rarer than one who talks.
There are only two ways to live your life: one as if nothing is a miracle, the other as if everything is.
The eyes of children show us what we have lost.
Whoever values the small will not lack the great.
Whoever sees beauty in simple things has understood life.
What belongs to us we notice only when we have to hold on to it.
One thought a day.
In the app.
Stillwort has more than 800 quotes in four categories. You can read each one or have it read to you, and selected quotes come with the full explanation.