Quotes about Appreciation

In my experience, if you are not radically grateful every day, resentment always takes over.

Your concern is not so much to have what you love anymore, but to love what you have—right now.

We are here to witness the creation and to abet it. We are here to notice each thing so each thing gets noticed. Together we notice not only each mountain shadow and each stone on the beach but, especially, we notice the beautiful faces and complex natures of each other.… Otherwise, creation would be playing to an empty house."266

I doubt if you can see the image of God (Imago Dei) in your fellow humans if you cannot first see it in rudimentary form in stones, in plants and flowers, in strange little animals, in bread and wine, and most especially cannot honor this objective divine image in yourself.

You cannot know anything spiritually by saying it is a not-that : you can only know it by meeting it in its precise and irreplaceable thisness and honoring it there.

Albert Einstein is supposed to have said, "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.

The resolution of earthly embodiment and divinization is what I call incarnational mysticism. As has been said many times, there are finally only two subjects in all of literature and poetry: love and death. Only that which is limited and even dies grows in value and appreciation; it is the spiritual version of supply and demand. If we lived forever, they say, we would never take life seriously or learn to love what is. I think that is probably true.

When you give someone your time, you are giving them a portion of your life that you'll never get back. Your time is your life. That is why the greatest gift you can give someone is your time.

If you don't know how to be happy with what you have, you will never be happy with more.

Gratitude asks, "Why me? Why do I get all that I have?

The first thing on Dr. Amen's master to-do list, the first thing he sees each day, is his gratitude list. Rather than just writing down a few things, he keeps a running tab on what he is grateful for, looks at it every day, and adds to it as joyful moments occur.

Gratitude asks, "Why me? Why do I get all that I have?" David modeled this kind of gratitude when he prayed, "Who am I, O Sovereign LORD, and what is my family, that you have brought me this far?"15 Years later, his son would write, "It is better to be satisfied with what you have than to be always wanting something else.