Grateful and Blessed Family Quotes: 21 Sourced Lines for Thanksgiving Toasts, Graces, Cards and Hard Years
Words My Family Quotes Editors
On 3 October 1863, in the middle of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday of November a national day of thanksgiving. Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of Godey's Lady's Book, had campaigned for a shared national holiday for years and wrote to Lincoln about it that September. Lincoln's proclamation also asked Americans to remember "widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers," so this family holiday began by giving thanks while some chairs at the table were empty. That mix of real thanks and honest loss runs through the best lines about being grateful for family.
This guide gathers 21 of those lines. We traced each one to the speech, book, hymn or letter it comes from, and grouped them by where you are likely to use them: a toast at the table, a thankful-and-blessed grace, a card to a parent, a hard year, a caption or a note to your children. Near the end there is a simple way to build your own toast, and a list of popular "gratitude" quotes we corrected or left out because the wording or the author was wrong.
Short Enough to Say Out Loud at the Table
A toast has to survive a noisy room and a nervous speaker. The lines below are short or easy to cut down, and most of them come from Thanksgiving itself or from writers who thought hard about thanks.
"It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People." — Abraham Lincoln, Proclamation of Thanksgiving, 3 October 1863
"They" are the blessings of a year the proclamation calls one of "fruitful fields and healthful skies," a strange thing to say in 1863, and Lincoln knew it. The phrase "with one heart and one voice" is what makes it work at a family table: it turns a room of people who may have argued all year into a single voice for a moment. If the full sentence is too formal, "with one heart and one voice" works on its own as a short toast.
"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, Proclamation 3560, Thanksgiving Day, 4 November 1963
Kennedy signed this proclamation less than three weeks before he was killed in Dallas, so it became his last Thanksgiving proclamation. The same text asks Americans to gather "in homes blessed by family affection." The line suits a host who would rather keep the toast short and then get on with the meal: say thanks, then show it.
"I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder." — G. K. Chesterton, A Short History of England, chapter VI, 1917
Chesterton wrote this in a history book, in the chapter on the Crusades, while explaining that medieval people believed almost every good thing came from outside themselves, "like good news." His point was that receiving well is a way of thinking, not just good manners, and he compares it to a baby who is fed rather than one sucking his thumb. "Happiness doubled by wonder" is a good description of the moment when the person giving the toast looks around the table and is a little surprised that everyone made it. If you only want half of it, the second half is the one people remember.
"If a man had no more to do with God than to be thankful, that would suffice." — Meister Eckhart, Sermon XXVII (Quint 34), translated by Maurice O'C. Walshe
This is the real source of the internet favourite "If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough." The popular version is a modern rewording; the real line comes from a sermon the medieval German mystic (c. 1260–1328) preached in Middle High German. Wikiquote traces the "only prayer" wording to a 2002 book, A Bucket of Surprises. It makes a good one-sentence grace for families who want something religious but not long.
"A happy family / Is but an earlier heaven." — John Bowring, "Home Joys", in A Collection of Hymns for Public and Private Worship, 1837
You will often see this credited to George Bernard Shaw. It was in fact written by Sir John Bowring, a British politician, linguist and hymn writer (he also wrote "In the Cross of Christ I Glory"), for an 1837 hymnal. Researchers at Quote Investigator traced the Shaw credit, and a misspelled "Sir John Browning," to newspaper fillers from the 1890s onward. It fits a place card or the top of a printed menu.
Thankful and Blessed: A Grace, a Hymn and a Reunion
"Thankful" looks back at what people did for you; "blessed" says the family itself is a gift you did not earn. Families who search for the two words together usually want a line that does both, often for a grace before the meal or a caption under a crowded photo. These four come from scripture, a hymn, a Scots table grace and an essay about saying grace.
"And he lifted up his eyes, and saw the women and the children; and said, Who are those with thee? And he said, The children which God hath graciously given thy servant." — Genesis 33:5, King James Version
Jacob says this at the end of some twenty years away, on the day he finally meets the brother he had cheated and feared. The verse before it is the reunion itself: Esau "ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck, and kissed him: and they wept." When Esau asks who all these people are, Jacob does not list names or boast; he calls his family something given to him by grace. The second half, "the children which God hath graciously given," is a natural blessed-family caption for a reunion photo or the first holiday with a new baby.
"Count your many blessings, name them one by one, / And it will surprise you what the Lord hath done." — Johnson Oatman Jr., "Count Your Blessings", 1897, tune by Edwin O. Excell, in Songs for Young People
Most people know the phrase "count your blessings" without knowing the hymn behind it. The first verse begins "When upon life's billows you are tempest tossed, / When you are discouraged, thinking all is lost," so the counting is advice for a bad stretch, not a boast about a good one. That makes it honest for a family that has had a hard year and still wants to say it feels blessed. Read aloud at the table, "name them one by one" can become the grace itself: each person names one thing.
"Some hae meat an canna eat, / And some wad eat that want it; / But we hae meat, and we can eat, / And sae the Lord be thankit." — The Selkirk Grace, traditional Scots table grace known since the 17th century, usually credited to Robert Burns
This four-line grace is said at Burns Suppers every January, and it is almost always printed under Burns's name. The attribution is shaky: the grace was already known in the 17th century as the "Galloway Grace" or the "Covenanters' Grace," and it got its current name from the story that Burns said it at a dinner given by the Earl of Selkirk. In plain English, "hae" is have, "wad" is would and "thankit" is thanked. It is short, a little funny in a family accent, and it thanks for food while remembering both the sick who cannot eat and the hungry who have nothing, which is the thankful-and-blessed idea in four lines.
"I own that I am disposed to say grace upon twenty other occasions in the course of the day besides my dinner. I want a form for setting out upon a pleasant walk, for a moonlight ramble, for a friendly meeting, or a solved problem." — Charles Lamb, "Grace Before Meat", London Magazine, November 1821
Lamb wrote as "Elia," and this essay later went into Essays of Elia. Its argument is that thanks should not be saved for the meal alone, and the poet Robert Southey later complained that the essays lacked "a sounder religious feeling." For a family, Lamb's list is a good prompt: the walk after dinner, the cousins meeting again, the homework finally solved. If your table wants a short blessed-family line for a photo rather than a grace, our short blessed family quotes are matched to the kind of picture each one suits.
In a Card for the People Who Raised You
A card to a parent, grandparent or the aunt who stepped in is usually read alone, sometimes more than once. That leaves room for longer lines that say something specific about what a family gives.
"Anyone who has ever been able to sustain a good work has had at least one person, and often many, who have believed in him or her. We just don't get to be competent human beings without a lot of different investments from others." — Fred Rogers, commencement address at Dartmouth College, 9 June 2002
Rogers said this to graduates, and in the same speech gave them what he called "an invisible gift," a silent minute "to think about those who have helped you become who you are today." That makes it one of the most natural lines for a graduation card addressed to a parent instead of from one. The full speech begins this sentence with "Anyone who has ever graduated from a college"; we have shortened it so it fits any occasion.
"In ordinary life we hardly realize that we receive a great deal more than we give, and that it is only with gratitude that life becomes rich." — Dietrich Bonhoeffer, letter to his parents from Tegel prison, 1943, in Letters and Papers from Prison
Bonhoeffer, a German pastor arrested for his part in the resistance to Hitler, wrote this to his mother and father from a Berlin prison cell; he was executed in April 1945. The wording is from the older English edition; the newer Fortress Press translation reads "In normal life we hardly realize how much more we receive than we give." Either way, it is a thank-you letter to parents in the most serious circumstances, which is why it carries weight in a card.
"Often, too, our own light goes out, and is rekindled by some experience we go through with a fellow-man." — Albert Schweitzer, Memoirs of Childhood and Youth, translated by C. T. Campion, 1924
Schweitzer was looking back on his childhood in Alsace and on the people who had shaped him without knowing it. He goes on to say that each of us owes deep thanks to those who rekindled this inner light. The version that circulates online, "blown again into instant flame," is a later, looser translation; Campion's 1924 wording is the one in print from the year the memoir appeared in English. Use it for a sibling or friend who got you through a bad stretch.
"For this one virtue is not only the greatest, but is also the parent of all the other virtues." — Cicero, Pro Plancio §80, 54 BC, translated by C. D. Yonge
The virtue is gratitude. Cicero was defending his friend Gnaeus Plancius in court and explaining why he owed him so much. The Latin calls gratitude the mater virtutum omnium reliquarum, the "mother of all the other virtues." The popular "A thankful heart is…" version is a modern rewording. For a card to a mother, the Latin "mother of all the virtues" is a nice touch.
"I do think that families are the most beautiful things in all the world!" — Louisa May Alcott, Little Women, chapter 47, "Harvest Time", 1869
Jo March bursts out with this in the last chapter, at an apple-picking party on her mother's sixtieth birthday, with the whole family gathered round, and the book says she was "in an unusually up-lifted frame of mind." It is excited and a little over the top, just like Jo, which makes it a good choice when a formal card would sound wrong. The chapter appears in the second part of the novel, published in 1869.
For cards to the oldest people at the table, our thankful-for-grandparents quotes from memoirs go into the same idea one generation further back.
When the Year Took Someone From the Table
Many families sit down to their first holiday after a death, a divorce or a falling-out. Gratitude in those years is real but quieter. These lines leave room for the person who is missing.
"What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. … All that we love deeply becomes a part of us." — Helen Keller, We Bereaved, 1929
Keller, deaf and blind from infancy, wrote We Bereaved as a short book of consolation for people in mourning; passages from it were later reprinted in The Open Door (1957). Between the two sentences quoted here she lists a sunset, moonlight and the ocean, things she knew through touch and description. The shortened two-sentence form circulates widely. It is one of the few gratitude quotes that works for a sympathy card and for a holiday toast that names a person who has died.
"We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasure." — Thornton Wilder, The Woman of Andros, 1930
In the novel, the courtesan Chrysis tells her dinner guests a fable about a dead hero allowed to relive one ordinary day, who finds it almost unbearable because the living do not notice how precious it is. The sentence goes on: "for our hearts are not strong enough to love every moment." Wilder came back to the same idea in Our Town (1938). Online copies often say "treasures"; the book says "treasure."
"Now is now. It can never be a long time ago." — Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Big Woods, chapter 13, 1932
These are the last lines of the first Little House book. Laura lies awake listening to Pa's fiddle and Ma rocking by the fire, and is glad that the cozy house and her parents are "now." Wilder wrote it in her sixties, about a Wisconsin cabin she had left as a small child, so the reader knows what the child does not: it became a long time ago. That gives it a gentle double meaning for a family photo caption.
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." — Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, part 1, chapter 1, 1878, translated by Constance Garnett
This is the most famous opening line about families ever written, and it is not a happy one: the next sentence reads "Everything was in confusion in the Oblonskys' house." It belongs on this list as a reminder that gratitude for family is not a claim that yours is perfect. Use it with a wink, or in a note to the relative who has been through the confusion with you. If the holiday table needs some humor about difficult relatives, our sarcastic quotes about bad family relatives are traced to their sources too.
A Caption, or a Note Tucked Into a Child's Lunchbox
Gratitude also flows downward: from parents to children, and from adults to the family they were given and did not choose.
"Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself." — Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, "On Children", 1923
Gibran's prophet Almustafa says this when a woman holding a baby asks him to speak of children. The passage continues, "They come through you but not from you." Read in full, it is gratitude without ownership, which is why it is often read at baby namings and graduations. For a caption, the first two sentences are enough.
"You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you as you are to them." — Desmond Tutu, God Has a Dream, 2004
The archbishop's next sentence admits that, given the choice, we might have picked different brothers and sisters, and that admission is what makes the line honest. It works for a sibling caption, or for a blended family's first holiday photo. The "as you are to them" half matters: it reminds the reader that the gift goes both ways.
"Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom." — Marcel Proust, Les Plaisirs et les Jours, 1896
Proust was in his mid-twenties when this first book, a collection of stories and prose pieces, came out. The French is "Soyons reconnaissants aux personnes qui nous donnent du bonheur, elles sont les charmants jardiniers par qui nos âmes sont fleuries." It is lovely under a photo of a grandparent in a garden. Be aware of the twist, though: in the next lines Proust says we should be even more grateful to the cruel or indifferent people who have made us suffer, because sorrow teaches us more. If you quote him, quote only the first sentence.
Looking for something lighter for a weekly dinner rather than a holiday? Our happy family time quotes for Sunday dinners are built for that.
Building a Thank-You Toast in Three Sentences
A quote is a good start, but people remember the sentence that only you could have said. A simple structure that works for toasts, cards and captions:
- The borrowed line. Pick one quote from above, and cut it down if it is long. Say who wrote it; it takes three seconds and makes the line sound chosen, not copied.
- One specific thing. Name a real event from this year: the drive to the hospital, the casserole that kept arriving, the brother who fixed the furnace. One concrete detail does more than a list of virtues.
- Turn it to the room. End by raising a glass or signing off to the people actually present (or missing). Keep it under a minute.
Two examples written by our editors to show the pattern; swap in your own details:
- Toast: "Lincoln once asked a whole divided country to give thanks 'with one heart and one voice.' This year we nearly lost that voice when Dad was in the hospital in March. So, with one heart and one voice: to all of us, still here."
- Card to a mother: "Cicero called gratitude the mother of all the other virtues. You taught me most of mine, starting with saying thank you. So: thank you, for this year and for all the others."
| Moment | Best pick from this page | How much to quote |
|---|---|---|
| Thanksgiving toast | Lincoln, Kennedy or Chesterton | One phrase or one sentence |
| Grace before the meal | Meister Eckhart or the Selkirk Grace | The whole line or all four lines |
| Thankful and blessed caption | Genesis 33:5 or Oatman's hymn | "The children which God hath graciously given" |
| Card to a parent | Fred Rogers or Bonhoeffer | Full quote; card readers are patient |
| First holiday after a loss | Helen Keller or Thornton Wilder | Keller's two sentences |
| Instagram caption | Laura Ingalls Wilder, Gibran or Tutu | Under 15 words |
| Something lighter | Alcott or Tolstoy | The whole line, plus a wink |
Popular Gratitude Quotes We Corrected or Left Out
Earlier versions of this page carried several lines that do not hold up. Here is what we changed and why, so you don't repeat the errors on a card:
- "A happy family is but an earlier heaven" is not Shaw; it is John Bowring's 1837 hymn "Home Joys."
- "We were together. I forget the rest" is a modern shortening of Walt Whitman's "Day by day and night by night we were together—all else has long been forgotten by me," from "Once I Pass'd Through a Populous City" (1860). That poem is about a lover, not family, so we dropped it.
- "I sustain myself with the love of family," credited to Maya Angelou, appears only on quote sites; we found no book or interview where she said it.
- "The informality of family life is a blessed condition…," credited to Marge Kennedy, could not be traced to a published page.
- "Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it," credited to William Arthur Ward, has no known primary source.
- Churchill's "around the family and the home" line is widely dated to a 21 March 1943 broadcast, but the transcript we could check does not contain it, so we left it out until it can be confirmed.
- Thich Nhat Hanh's "most precious gift … is our presence" may come from Living Buddha, Living Christ (1995), but we could not check the page, so it is out for now.
Questions Readers Ask
What is a good short quote for a Thanksgiving family toast?
Lincoln's "with one heart and one voice" from the 1863 proclamation is short, historical and made for a group. For something more personal, try the second half of Chesterton's line, "gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder," then add one sentence about your own year.
Who said "A happy family is but an earlier heaven"?
Sir John Bowring, in his hymn "Home Joys," published in 1837. It is often credited to George Bernard Shaw, but there is no evidence Shaw wrote it.
Did Meister Eckhart say "If the only prayer you ever say is thank you, it will be enough"?
Not in those words. His sermon says, "If a man had no more to do with God than to be thankful, that would suffice." The popular "only prayer" version is a modern rewording from the early 2000s.
What is a good thankful and blessed family quote?
Jacob's answer in Genesis 33:5, "The children which God hath graciously given thy servant," says both things at once: thanks, and a family seen as a gift. For a grace, the four-line Selkirk Grace or the first verse of "Count Your Blessings" (1897) works well.
Did Robert Burns write the Selkirk Grace?
Probably not. It is credited to him because he was said to have recited it at the Earl of Selkirk's table, but the same grace was already known in the 17th century as the "Galloway Grace" or the "Covenanters' Grace."
How do I thank my family without sounding like a greeting card?
Use one borrowed line, then one specific memory from this year, then speak to the people in the room. The detail does the work; the quote just opens the door.