The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.
--Friedrich Nietzsche

It is through gratitude for the present moment that the spiritual dimension of life opens up.
--Eckhart Tolle

“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.” 
― Epicurus

“Piglet noticed that even though he had a Very Small Heart, it could hold a rather large amount of Gratitude.” 
― A.A. Milne

“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.” 
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.” 
― Voltaire

“My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus."
-- Stephen W. Hawking

“Got no checkbooks, got no banks. Still I'd like to express my thanks - I've got the sun in the mornin' and the moon at night.” 
― Irving Berlin

“I think that real friendship always makes us feel such sweet gratitude, because the world almost always seems like a very hard desert, and the flowers that grow there seem to grow against such high odds.” 
--Stephen King

"He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has." 

--Epictetus

"Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has plenty; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some." 
--Charles Dickens

"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

“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”
--Marcel Proust

Gratitude is the memory of the heart.
--Jean Baptiste Massieu

Gratitude is an art of painting an adversity into a lovely picture.
-- Kak Sri

Gratitude is a quality similar to electricity: it must be produced and discharged and used up in order to exist at all.
-- William Faulkner

Ingratitude is the daughter of pride.
--Miguel de Cervantes

“You are the hybrids of golden worlds and ages splendidly conceived.” 

― Aberjhani

 "If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans."―James Herriot

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated." ― Mahatma Gandhi

"Four legs good, two legs bad." -- GEORGE ORWELL, Animal Farm

"People must have renounced, it seems to me, all natural intelligence to dare to advance that animals are but animated machines. ... Such people can never have observed with attention the character of animals, not to have distinguished among them the different voices of need, of suffering, of joy, of pain, of love, of anger, and of all their affections. It would be very strange that they should express so well what they could not feel."
-- VOLTAIRE

"Time spent with cats is never wasted." -- Sigmund Freud

"Humans are amphibians - half spirit and half animal. As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time." -- C. S. Lewis

"The cat is classic whilst the dog is Gothic - nowhere in the animal world can we discover such really Hellenic perfection of form, with anatomy adapted to function, as in the felidae."

-- H. P. Lovecraft

"Be a good animal, true to your animal instincts." -- D. H. Lawrence

"Our animal origins are constantly lurking behind, even if they are filtered through complicated social evolution." -- Richard Dawkins

“Some people talk to animals. Not many listen though. That's the problem.” 
― A.A. Milne

“I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.” 
― Winston S. Churchill

“Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened.” 
― Anatole France

“I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men.” 
― Leonardo da Vinci