9 Inspirational Thanksgiving Quotes

“What moistens the lip and what brightens the eye?
What calls back the past, like the rich pumpkin pie?”
—John Greenleaf Whittier, The Pumpkin, 1844

“Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.”
—J.H. Payne

“Heap high the board with plenteous cheer and gather to the feast,
And toast that sturdy Pilgrim band whose courage never ceased.”
—Alice Williams Brotherton, The First Thanksgiving Day

“I wish the bald eagle had not been chosen as the representative of our country; he is a bird of bad moral character…like those among men who live by sharping and robbing, he is generally poor, and often very lousy…the turkey…is a much more respectable bird, and withal a true original native of America.”
—Benjamin Franklin, in a letter to Sarah Bache, Jan. 26, 1784

“There is no love sincerer than the love of food.”
—George Bernard Shaw

“Dear the people coming home,
Dear glad faces long away,
Dear the merry cries, and dear
All the glad and happy play.
Dear the thanks, too, that we give
For all of this Thanksgiving Day.”
—Harriet Prescott Spofford, Every Thanksgiving Day, in Poems, 1881

“For man, autumn is a time of harvest, of gathering together. For nature, it is a time of sowing, of scattering abroad.”
—Edwin Way Teale, Autumn Across America, 1956

“One single grateful thought raised to heaven is the most perfect prayer.”
—G.E. Lessing

“Strange to see how a good dinner and feasting reconciles everybody.”
—Samuel Pepys