Looking Back With Gratitude Quotes & Sayings

Why does it often take extreme life situations to bring back an awareness of the magic and mystery of life? Why do we often wait until we're about to die before discovering a deep gratitude for life as it is? Why do we exhaust ourselves seeking love, acceptance, fame, success, or spiritual enlightenment in the future? Why do we work or meditate ourselves into the grave? Why do we postpone life? Why do we hold back from it? What are we looking for exactly? What are we waiting for? What are we afraid of? Will the life we long for really come in the future? Or is it always closer than that? — Jeff Foster

That was happiness. Not the framed greatest hits, but the moments in between. At the time, I hadn't pegged them as being particularly happy. But now, looking back at those phantom snapshots, I'm struck by my calm, my ease, the evident comfort with my life. I'm happy in retrospect. — Maria Semple

I was standing on the deck looking down at a gang of stevedores working on the dock thirty feet below. One of them recognized me, nudged his neighbor, and pointed. All at once the whole gang stopped working to yell, 'Booster! Booster Keaton!' They waved in wild excitement, and I waved back, marveling, because it was fifteen years of more since they could have seen my last M-G-M picture.
And if there is sweeter music this side of heaven I haven't heard it. Dr. Avedon said I could live to be a hundred years old. I intend to do it. For who would not wish to live a hundred years in a world where there are so many people who remember with gratitude and affection a little man with a frozen face who made them laugh a bit long years ago when they and I were both young? — Buster Keaton

I can see it in the looking back, how this daily practice of the discipline of gratitude is the way to daily practice the delight of God ... — Ann Voskamp