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1 " I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way. I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I killed them and took their land. "
― Jon Stewart
2 " Ingratitude to God does not rely only on our refusal to give the verbal thanksgiving due to Him, but also recides in our inability to appreciate his gifts and potentials in us by leaving them untapped. "
― Israelmore Ayivor
3 " The concept of time, as it’s commonly understood by normalpeople with normal jobs and normal goddamn lives, doesn’texist on the road. The nights spread out like the dark,godforsaken highways that distinguish them, and the days runtogether like Thanksgiving dinner smothered in gravy. Younever really know where you are or what time it is, and the outsideworld starts to fade away.It’s cool. "
― Tiffanie DeBartolo , How to Kill a Rock Star
4 " This is where you all live?" Asked John as they ascended the stairs. " It's small." " This is just our Thanksgiving house," Scott muttered. " We have a house for every day of the year. "
5 " Do they desire to join me in thanksgiving when they hear how, by your gift, I have come close to you, and do they pray for me when they hear how I am held back by my own weight? ...A brotherly mind will love in me what you teach to be lovable, and will regret in me what you teach to be regrettable. This is a mark of a Christian brother's mind, not an outsider's--not that of 'the sons of aliens whose mouth speaks vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of iniquity' (Ps. 143:7 f.). A brotherly person rejoices on my account when he approves me, but when he disapproves, he is loving me. To such people I will reveal myself. They will take heart from my good traits, and sigh with sadness at my bad ones. My good points are instilled by you and are your gifts. My bad points are my faults and your judgements on them. Let them take heart from the one and regret the other. Let both praise and tears ascend in your sight from brotherly hearts, your censers. ...But you Lord...Make perfect my imperfections "
― Augustine of Hippo , Confessions
6 " There are very few men and women, I suspect, who cooked and marketed their way through the past war without losing forever some of the nonchalant extravagance of the Twenties. They will feel, until their final days on earth, a kind of culinary caution: butter, no matter how unlimited, is a precious substance not lightly to be wasted; meats, too, and eggs, and all the far-brought spices of the world, take on a new significance, having once been so rare. And that is good, for there can be no more shameful carelessness than with the food we eat for life itself When we exist without thought or thanksgiving we are not men, but beasts. "
― M.F.K. Fisher , The Art of Eating
7 " Dear Rocky,Here I am taking my pencil in my hand to say hello, hoping you are in the best of health, both physically and mentally. As for me, I am fine thanks to Almighty God.The weather in the valley is in the shits. It's been raining since Thanksgiving and here it is almost at the end of December and it's still raining. Instead of growing a prick, I think I'm going to grow a tail, like a tadpole. Ha, ha, ha! "
8 " Thanksgiving Day, a function which originated in New England two or three centuries ago when those people recognized that they really had something to be thankful for -- annually, not oftener -- if they had succeeded in exterminating their neighbors, the Indians, during the previous twelve months instead of getting exterminated by their neighbors, the Indians. Thanksgiving Day became a habit, for the reason that in the course of time, as the years drifted on, it was perceived that the exterminating had ceased to be mutual and was all on the white man's side, consequently on the Lord's side; hence it was proper to thank the Lord for it and extend the usual annual compliments. "
― Mark Twain
9 " NO MUSE IS GOOD MUSETo be an Artist you need talent, as well as a wifewho washes the socks and the children,and returns phone calls and library books and types.In other words, the reason there are so many moreMen Geniuses than Women Geniuses is not Genius.It is because Hemingway never joined the P.T.A.And Arthur Rubinstein ignored Halloween.Do you think Portnoy's creator sits through children's theatermatinees--on Saturdays?Or that Norman Mailer faced 'driver's ed' failure,chicken pox or chipped teeth?Fitzgerald's night was so tender because the fenderhis teen-ager dented happened when Papa was at a story conference.Since Picasso does the painting, Mrs. Picasso did the toilet training.And if Saul Bellow, National Book Award winner, invited thirty-threefor Thanksgiving Day dinner, I'll bet he had help.I'm sure Henry Moore was never a Cub Scout leader,and Leonard Bernstein never instructed a tricyclerOn becoming a bicycler just before he conducted.Tell me again my anatomy is not necessarily my destiny,tell me my hang-up is a personal and not a universal quandary,and I'll tell you no muse is a good museunless she also helps with the laundry. "
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10 " A community is only being created when its members accept that they are not going to achieve great things, that they are not going to be heroes, but simply live each day with new hope, like children, in wonderment as the sun rises and in thanksgiving as it sets. Community is only being created when they have recognized that the greatness of man is to accept his insignificance, his human condition and his earth, and to thank God for having put in a finite body the seeds of eternity which are visible in small and daily gestures of love and forgiveness. The beauty of man is in this fidelity to the wonder of each day. "
― Jean Vanier , Community And Growth
11 " I may be deemed superstitious, and even egotistical, in regarding this event as a special interposition of divine Providence in my favor. But I should be false to the earlierst sentiments of my soul, if I suppressed the opinion. I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and incur my own abhorrence. From my earliest recollection, I date the entertainment of a deep conviction that slavery would not always be able to hold me within its foul embrace; and in the darkest hours of my career in slavery, this living word of faith and spirit of hope departed not from me, but remained like ministering angels to cheer me through the gloom. This good spirit was from God, and to him I offer thanksgiving and praise. "
― Frederick Douglass , Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
12 " We only enter into the full life if our faith gives thanks. Because how else do we accept His free gift of salvation if not with thanksgiving? Thanksgiving is the evidence of our acceptance of whatever He gives. Thanksgiving is the manifestation of our Yes! to His grace. "
― Ann Voskamp , One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
13 " May my thanksgiving be my prayer. "
― Lailah Gifty Akita ,
14 " To Have An Attitude Of Thanksgiving To God Is To Bring Health For Your Spirit, Soul And Body "
15 " Thanksgiving at Sea" Most of us will enjoy Thanksgiving Day ashore in the comfort of our home but some will be at sea, because they are working on some boat, barge or ship. Others will be out on the brine by design as passengers, now considered guests on cruise ships. What came to mind however, was my father who was a ship’s cook in the 1920’s, and the stories he shared with us. Best as I can tell, the year must have been somewhere around 1924 when his ship was in Shanghai, which is now China’s biggest city. Tied up at a rickety dock on the Huangpu River, he could see the famed waterfront promenade lined with the now famed colonial-style buildings. The time had come to butcher one of the penned goats, brought along for this expressed purpose. Being on a German freighter, Thanksgiving Day had no special meaning but stew made of goat meat was always a treat for the crew. Fast forward to the present… almost every single cruise ship at sea or in a foreign port, will celebrate Thanksgiving Day with a marvelous turkey dinner, plus joyful entertainment. Whether you celebrate the day with your significant other, or take along an entire gang of friends and family; Thanksgiving Day at sea will be far from the lonely day it once was. Holidays, including Thanksgiving are always especially festive at sea. "
16 " They meet, as we shall meet tomorrow, to murder one another; they kill and maim tens of thousands, and then have thanksgiving services for having killed so many people (they even exaggerate the number), and they announce a victory, supposing that the more people they have killed the greater their achievement. How does God above look at them and hear them?" exclaimed Prince Andrew in a shrill, piercing voice. " Ah, my friend, it has of late become hard for me to live. I see that I have begun to understand too much. And it doesn't do for man to taste of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.... Ah, well, it's not for long!" he added. "
17 " As a flower expresses thanks with her beauty and fragrance for her magnificent life, let us express our gratitude to every friend with our service and love and to the Earth for her hospitality and care. Let us be thankful and let us express the deepest gratitude for our magnificent life. No matter where you are, I wish you all a very happy Thanksgiving filled with profound joy and endless peace. "
18 " When I have neither pleasure nor pain and have been breathing for a while the lukewarm insipid air of these so called good and tolerable days, I feel so bad in my childish soul that I smash my moldering lyre of thanksgiving in the face of the slumbering god of contentment and would rather feel the very devil burn in me than this warmth of a well-heated room. A wild longing for strong emotions and sensations seethes in me, a rage against this toneless, flat, normal and sterile life. I have a mad impulse to smash something, a warehouse, perhaps, or a cathedral, or myself, to commit outrages, to pull off the wigs of a few revered idols... "
― Hermann Hesse , Steppenwolf
19 " For in America this season is decreed “family season”. (Eat your hearts out, you pitiable loners who don’t have families!) Melancholy as Thanksgiving is, the Christmas-New year’s season is far worse and lasts far longer, providing rich fund of opportunities for self-medicating, mental collapse, suicide and public mayhem with firearms. In fact it might be argued that the Christmas-New year’s season which begins abruptly after Thanksgiving is now the core-sason of American life itself, the meaning of American life„ the brute existencial point of it. How without families must envy us who bask in parental love, in the glow of yule-logs burning in fireplaces stoked by our daddie’s robust pokers, we who are stuffed to bursting with our mummie’s frantic holiday cooking; how you wish you could be us, pampered/protected kids tearing expensive foil wrappings off too many packages to count, gathered about the Christmas tree on Christmas morning as Mummy gently chided: “Skyler! Bliss! Show Daddy and Mummy what you’ve just opened, please! And save the little cards, so you know who gave such nice things to you "
― Joyce Carol Oates , My Sister, My Love
20 " For in America this season is decreed “family season”. (Eat your hearts out, you pitiable loners who don’t have families!) Melancholy as Thanksgiving is, the Christmas-New year’s season is far worse and lasts far longer, providing rich fund of opportunities for self-medicating, mental collapse, suicide and public mayhem with firearms. In fact it might be argued that the Christmas-New year’s season which begins abruptly after Thanksgiving is now the core-sason of American life itself, the meaning of American life„ the brute existencial point of it. How without families must envy us who bask in parental love, in the glow of yule-logs burning in fireplaces stoked by our daddie’s robust pokers, we who are stuffed to bursting with our mummie’s frantic holiday cooking; how you wish you could be us, pampered/protected kids tearing expensive foil wrappings off too many packages to count, gathered about the Christmas tree on Christmas morning as Mummy gently chided: “Skyler! Bliss! Show Daddy and Mummy what you’ve just opened, please! And save the little cards, so you know who gave such nice things to you”. "
― Joyce Carol Oates