From the Federalist Patriot:
Which is the quintessential American holiday? The Fourth of July, our nation's recognized birthday? No, a typical Independence Day celebration now turns more toward recreation than to original customs of patriotic reflection on the debt we owe both to our Founding Fathers and our Heavenly Father. But Thanksgiving...this holiday, more than any other commemorated in our country, has retained -- even if in attenuated form -- the sentiments present from its first celebration on our shores. On Thanksgiving, we still stop to give thanks for our blessings; we still take pause to hold our family and friends dearest in our hearts; and we still acknowledge, expressly or implicitly, the Author of life and liberty who has heaped bounties on us beyond our deserving.Remember, when the ACLU tries to tell you that the Founding Fathers set out to keep religion out of government, that it was those same men who set forth a day of thanks to Him for His blessings.
Visit Lion and Lambs for some more thoughts on this
"O Lord, that lends me life, lend me a heart replete with
thankfulness." --William Shakespeare
"A thankful heart is not only the greatest virtue, but the parent of all other
virtues." --Cicero
"The worship most acceptable to God comes from a thankful and cheerful
heart." --Plutarch
"Since the things we do determine the character of life, no blessed person can
become unhappy. For he will never do those things which are hateful and
petty." --Aristotle
"Pride slays thanksgiving, but an humble mind is the soil out of which thanks
naturally grow. A proud man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he
gets as much as he deserves." --Henry Ward Beecher
"I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and
new." --Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The person who has stopped being thankful has fallen asleep in life." --Robert
Louis Stevenson
"We ought to give thanks for all fortune: if it is 'good,' because it is good,
if 'bad' because it works in us patience, humility and the contempt of this
world and the hope of our eternal country." --C.S. Lewis
"No people on earth have more cause to be thankful than ours, and this is said
reverently, in no spirit of boastfulness in our own strength, but with the
gratitude to the Giver of good who has blessed us. Let us remember that, as much
has been given us, much will be expected from us, and that true homage comes
from the heart as well as from the lips, and shows itself in deeds." --Theodore
Roosevelt