Thanksgiving Quotes: 15 Best, Most Famous Thanksgiving Day Sayings

Thanksgiving Day is an American tradition. Like any holiday in the United States, it has been commemorated and remembered in a number of ways through the years.

Here's a compilation of some of the best, most famous quotes related to Thanksgiving, from some of America's most well-known citizens as well as lesser-known citizens who had a way with words:

"The unthankful heart... discovers no mercies; but let the thankful heart sweep through the day and, as the magnet finds the iron, so it will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings!" -Henry Ward Beecher

"Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence." -Erma Bombeck

"Thanksgiving, after all, is a word of action." - W.J. Cameron

"If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, "thank you," that would suffice." -Meister Eckhart

"For flowers that bloom about our feet;
For tender grass, so fresh, so sweet;
For song of bird, and hum of bee;
For all things fair we hear or see,
Father in heaven, we thank Thee!" -Ralph Waldo Emerson

"If you want to turn your life around, try thankfulness. It will change your life mightily." -Gerald Good

"So once in every year we throng
Upon a day apart,
To praise the Lord with feast and song
In thankfulness of heart." -Arthur Guiterman

"Praise God even when you don't understand what He is doing." -Henry Jacobsen

"As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them." -John Fitzgerald Kennedy

"An optimist is a person who starts a new diet on Thanksgiving Day." -Irv Kupcinet

"Thanksgiving was never meant to be shut up in a single day." -Robert Caspar Lintner

"Thanksgiving Day comes, by statute, once a year; to the honest man it comes as frequently as the heart of gratitude will allow." -Edward Sandford Martin

"Our rural ancestors, with little blest,
Patient of labour when the end was rest,
Indulged the day that housed their annual grain,
With feasts, and off'rings, and a thankful strain." -Alexander Pope

"Thanksgiving Day is a jewel, to set in the hearts of honest men; but be careful that you do not take the day, and leave out the gratitude." -E.P. Powell

"The Pilgrims made seven times more graves than huts. No Americans have been more impoverished than these who, nevertheless, set aside a day of thanksgiving." -H.U. Westermayer