17 Thankful Thursday Quotes For Your Gratitude Practice (2024)

Gratitude is good for our well-being.

A helpful way to incorporate more gratitude into your life is to sit down with some inspiring Thankful Thursday quotes.

We know that gratitude makes us feel better, but we don’t always remember to practice it. The truth is that it’s easy to get caught up in the dramas and stresses of everyday life. It’s hard to feel thankful when we have urgent work deadlines, long commutes, or dreary weather to contend with.

That’s not to say that we should ignore reality and force ourselves to be positive all the time. But taking a moment to acknowledge the good in our lives, may help us better cope with our personal and professional challenges.

A regular gratitude practice has been shown to benefit your mind and body in a variety of ways. Expressing thanks can help you…

• Alleviate stress and tension. When we make it a habit to appreciate the good in our life, we may find it easier to decompress and release our stress.
• Be more present. Instead of dwelling on past mistakes or longing for things we don’t have, gratitude can help us become thankful for what we have in the current moment.
• Enrich your personal and professional relationships. Giving thanks to our friends, family, and coworkers can strengthen our relationships and help us treat people with more compassion and kindness.

By adding a Thankful Thursday to your week, you’ll have a designated day to practice gratitude and make it a regular part of your routine.

How to practice Thankful Thursday

Here are some tips to help you get started with a Thursday gratitude routine.

Time of day. Some people like to practice their gratitude in the morning and set a positive tone for the day. Others like to practice gratitude right before bed and reflect on the events of the day. There’s no right time to practice gratitude. Even 15 minutes during your lunch break can be a good time to express thanks.

Gratitude notebook. You can record what you’re thankful for in a gratitude notebook and write down your favorite Thankful Thursday quotes.

Say it out loud. Words have power. Reciting a Thankful Thursday quote outloud can make the words resonate even more and have a profound, long lasting effect.

Write in your journal. If you have time, you can pick a quote and reflect on its meaning in your journal. Ask yourself: What does this quote mean to me? How can I put this quote into practice?

Scented candle or incense. A pleasant smelling candle can help you slow down and put you in a relaxed state of mind to express thanks.

Thankful Thursday quotes

We’ve rounded up inspiring and meaningful Thankful Thursday quotes to help you reflect on all the wonderful things you have going on in your life. You can read these quotes out loud, write them in your journal, and refer to them whenever you need to recharge and restore yourself.

1. “Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.” — Cicero
2. “When you go deeply into the present, gratitude arises spontaneously, even if it's just gratitude for breathing, gratitude for the aliveness that you feel in your body. Gratitude is there when you acknowledge the aliveness of the present moment.” — Eckhart Tolle
3. “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
4. "Every minute of every hour of every day you are making the world, just as you are making yourself, and you might as well do it with generosity and kindness and style." — Rebecca Solnit
5. “Be present in all things and thankful for all things.” — Maya Angelou
6. “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
7. “Imagine that every person in the world is enlightened but you. They are all your teachers, each doing just the right things to help you learn perfect patience, perfect wisdom, perfect compassion.” — Gautama Buddha
8. “Voluntary simplicity means going fewer places in one day rather than more, seeing less so I can see more, doing less so I can do more, acquiring less so I can have more.” — Jon Kabat-Zinn
9. “When a person doesn't have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity. A person can almost be defined by his or her attitude toward gratitude.” — Elie Weisel
10. “In order to be happy, we must first possess inner contentment—and inner contentment doesn't come from having all we want, but rather from wanting and appreciating all we have.” — Dalai Lama
11. “We learn that what truly heals is gratitude and tenderness.” — Pema Chödrön
12. “They do not love that do not show their love.”— William Shakespeare
13. “Each moment is just what it is. It might be the only moment of our life; it might be the only strawberry we’ll ever eat. We could get depressed about it, or we could finally appreciate it and delight in the preciousness of every single moment of our life.” – Pema Chödrön
14. “When we live in the spirit of gratitude, there will be much happiness in our life. The one who is grateful is the one who has much happiness while the one who is ungrateful will not be able to have happiness.” — Thich Nhat Hanh
15. "At some point in life, the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint, or even remember it. It is enough."— Toni Morrison.
16. “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” — Albert Einstein
17. “Be grateful for your life, every detail of it, and your face will come to shine like a sun, and everyone who sees it will be made glad and peaceful.” — Rumi

Looking for more inspiration? Here are quotes about determination and mindfulness quotes for a calm and centered week.