These inspirational quotes about kindness, gratitude and thankfulness could make you a better person

As quote collectors know, a good axiom can turn your week around, and there’s a scientific reason for that.

Coming across an inspirational saying in a book or on your social media feed works as a pattern interrupt, snapping you out of your negative thinking pattern and dropping you onto a more positive track. Add a good visual, and you can commit that maxim to memory.

In the interest of spreading Thankful Moments, here’s a collection some of our favorite quotes about kindness, gratitude and thankfulness.

1. Early 20th century writer and suffragist Margaret Cousins was an early adopter of the Thankful philosophy’s second step: If you feel thankful, say so.

Appreciation can make a day, even change a life. Your willingness to put it into words is all that is necessary. – Margaret Cousins

2. Between writing plays, speeches, sermons, poems and books, G.K. Chesterton did a lot of thinking. So if anyone would be an expert on the highest form of thought, it’d be him.

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder. – G.K. Chesterton

3. The first woman to be nominated by a major party as a presidential candidate has confronted more than her share of negativity, but that hasn’t changed Hillary Rodham Clinton’s penchant for relentless optimism.

We should remember that just as a positive outlook on life can promote good health, so can everyday acts of kindness. – Hillary Rodham Clinton

4. The first black American president literally wrote the book on hope, so we’ll take his word for it.

The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something. Don’t wait for good things to happen to you. If you go out and make some good things happen, you will fill the world with hope, you will fill yourself with hope. – Barack Obama

5. A real Cinderella story, Oprah’s rise to queendom was fraught with troubled times. If she says the result of thankfulness is an attitude of abundance, she must be right.

Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough. – Oprah Winfrey

6. When the universe deals you an unfair blow, you have two choices: focus on your misfortune, or be thankful for the community that props you up.

When life throws us rocks, we have a choice. We can lay down and be defeated, or we can rally our strength, seek help from our communities, face adversity head on and feel thankful the knowledge that if and when we fail, someone will be there to help us get back on our feet. – Kim McDonnell

7. Without action, thankfulness is incomplete. You can’t reap all the benefits of a Thankful Moment until you’ve tried to create one for someone else.

Pay it forward. Stopping to appreciate life’s little blessing and express your gratitude is good. Sharing your elevated optimism with someone who needs it is even better.

8. A prolific writer, G.B. Stern could appreciate the importance of putting thanks into words. Feeling thankful is good, but it’s not enough.

Silent gratitude isn’t much use to anyone. – G.B. Stern

9. When you have a lot to give, you should give a lot. With his charitable gifts totalling $275 million, New York business W. Clement Stone practiced what he preached.

If you are really thankful, what do you do? You share. – W. Clement Stone

10. Everyone encounters disappointment. But every disappointment offers an opportunity to find things on the bright side to be thankful for.

True success isn’t defined by the absence of failure. True success is measured in Thankful Moments — the blessings you experience and the ones you create for others along the way. – Kim McDonnell

11. According to William Arthur Ward—the master of inspirational maxims—sometimes thankfulness is just a matter of perspective.

Gratitude can transform common days into thanksgivings, turn routine jobs into joy, and change ordinary opportunities into blessings. – William Arthur Ward

12. Charles Dickens was just as famous for making readers laugh as he was for making them cry. But you don’t have to be a legendary novelist to spread good humor.

There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor. – Charles Dickens