Ingratitude Quotes

[...] It is not humanity that will tear the land asunder, but a certain inhumanity born from ingratitude and the explosion of souls_ in the usual name of progress. ~ Anouar Majid

If you sum up your judgment of me, the result you get is that, although you don't charge me with anything downright improper or wicked . . . , you do charge me with coldness, estrangements and ingratitude. And, what is more, you charge me with it in such a way as to make it seem my fault, as though I might have been able, with something like a touch on the steering wheel, to make everything quite different, while you aren't in the slightest to blame, unless it be for having been too good to me.
This, your usual way of representing it, I regard as accurate only in so far as I too believe you are entirely blameless in the matter of our estrangement. But I am equally entirely blameless. If I could get you to acknowledge this, then what would be possible is - not, I think, a new life, we are both much too old for that - but still, a kind of peace . . . ~ Franz Kafka

Gratitude is a Beautiful Virtue but don't get offended when ingratitude is shown or your good deeds. ~ Jaachynma N.E. Agu

There is so much to love and to admire in this life that it is an act of ingratitude not to be happy and content in this existence. ~ Lin Yutang

Swinish gluttony never looks to heaven amidst its gorgeous feast; but with besotted, base ingratitude, cravens and blasphemes his feeder. ~ John Milton

It's supposed to be raining Thank Yous on Thursday, after an ingratitude draught. Also, you'd better enjoy my love while it's fresh, before it goes rotten and I have to sell it to McDonald's as chicken filler. ~ Jarod Kintz

According to the people who dearly would love to throw him out of office, Barack Obama was elected to be 'above politics.' He wasn't elected to be president, after all. He was elected as an avatar of American tolerance. His attempts to get himself reelected imply a certain, well, ingratitude. ~ Charlie Pierce

Today I offer a prayer of forgiveness:
forgive the pettiness of my ingratitude ...
the absence of profound thankfulness. ~ Mary Anne Radmacher

there is something still more appalling than the ingratitude of daughters who have cast off their old father and wish that he were dead, and that is a rivalry between two sisters. ~ Honore De Balzac

Children are taught to look down on their nurses (nannies), to treat them as mere servants. When their task is completed the child is withdrawn or the nurse is dismissed. Her visits to her foster-child are discouraged by a cold reception. After a few years the child never sees her again. The mother expects to take her place, and to repair by her cruelty the results of her own neglect. But she is greatly mistaken; she is making an ungrateful foster-child, not an affectionate son; she is teaching him ingratitude, and she is preparing him to despise at a later day the mother who bore him, as he now despises his nurse. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Radically and basically, all sin is simply ingratitude. ~ Karl Barth

The story of the Jews in the Bible is replete with incidents of their ingratitude to God for His gifts to them: incidents that just as repeatedly merit and receive punishment. ~ Elliott Abrams

Satan's sin becomes the first sin of all humanity: the sin of ingratitude. ~ Ann Voskamp

I hate ingratitude more in a man
than lying, vainness, babbling, drunkenness,
or any taint of vice whose strong corruption
inhabits our frail blood. ~ William Shakespeare

Jesus perfected his life and became our Christ. Priceless blood of a god was shed, and he became our Savior; his perfected life was given, and he became our Redeemer; his atonement for us made possible our return to our Heavenly Father, and yet how thoughtless, how unappreciative are most beneficiaries! Ingratitude is a sin of the ages. ~ Spencer W. Kimball

Gratitude is one of the greatest Christian virtues; ingratitude, one of the most vicious sins. ~ Billy Graham

The Armenians will willingly harbor
revolutionaries, arrange for their entertainment and the furthering of their ends. The pride of race brings about many singularities and prompts the Armenians to prey on missionaries, Jesuits, consuls and European traveler with rapacity and ingratitude. The poor Armenians will demand assistance in a loud tone, yet will seldom give thanks for a donation. Abuse of Consular officers and missionaries is only a part of the stock-in-trade of the extra-Armenian press. ~ Mark Sykes

The ingratitude of the world can never deprive us of the conscious happiness of having acted with humanity ourselves. ~ Oliver Goldsmith

Ingratitude never so thoroughly pierces the human breast as when it proceeds from those in whose behalf we have been guilty of transgressions. ~ Henry Fielding

We should confess His hand in all things. Ingratitude is one of our great sins. ~ Ezra Taft Benson

It would seem that the ingratitude, whereby a subsequent sin causes the return of sins previously forgiven, is a special sin. For, the giving of thanks belongs to counter passion, which is a necessary condition of justice. But justice is a special virtue. Therefore this ingratitude is a special sin. Thanksgiving is a special virtue. But ingratitude is opposed to thanksgiving. Therefore ingratitude is a special sin. ~ Thomas Aquinas

It is a maxim that no man was ever enslaved by influence while he was fit to be free. ~ Samuel Johnson

The consequences of an ungrateful spirit are not as readily seen as, say, those of a contagious disease. But they are no less deadly. Western civilization has fallen prey to an epidemic of ingratitude. Like a poisonous vapor, this subtle sin is polluting our lives, our homes, our churches, and our culture. ~ Nancy Leigh DeMoss

Turn your eyes whither you will, enter into whatever temple you please, you will find there on the very threshold Prophecy and Sacrament ... whoever despises these two things, infallibly bends towards earth, knowing nothing of God but his name, and holding with him no other relations than ingratitude and forgetfulness. ~ Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire

A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master" (Matthew 10:24). In other words, the same things that happened to our Lord will happen to us on our way to our "Jerusalem." There will be works of God exhibited through us, people will get blessed, and one or two will show gratitude while the rest will show total ingratitude, but nothing must divert us from going "up to [our] Jerusalem. ~ Oswald Chambers

Ingratitude is the soul's enemy ... Ingratitude is a burning wind that dries up the source of love, the dew of mercy, the streams of grace. ~ Bernard Of Clairvaux

Ingratitude is treason to mankind. ~ James Thomson

Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before
more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle. ~ Charles Dickens

The worse of ingratitude lies not in the ossified heart of him who commits it, but we find it in the effect it produces on him against whom it was committed. ~ Walter Savage Landor

We must be on guard against the ingratitude and hypocrisy of our own hearts, or we will prove ourselves to lack genuine persevering faith. Let us examine ourselves and seek to follow the Lord in truth. ~ Anonymous

The lack of forgiveness and ingratitude leads unhappiness ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

A little "thank you" that you will say to someone for a "little favour" shown to you is a key to unlock the doors that hide unseen "greater favours". Learn to say "thank you" and why not? ~ Israelmore Ayivor

Half the ingratitude and complacency in the world down to how slowly and imperceptibly most good and bad things unfold. ~ Alain De Botton

A single farmer can feed the whole town, but no one will ever notice his death. Except when they are feeling hungry again. That's the nature and ingratitude of humanity. ~ Mwanandeke Kindembo

Sharper than a serpent's tooth is a daughter's ingratitude. Still, the proudest spirits can be broken, with love. ~ Neil Gaiman

One of humanity's most common character traits is ingratitude. ~ Dennis Prager

Geese are friends to no one, they bad mouth everybody and everything. But they are companionable once you get used to their ingratitude and false accusations. ~ E.B. White

Falsehood, ingratitude, injustice, the puerility of the ends which we ourselves look upon as great and momentous ... these all so contradict the idea of what men might be if they only would, and are so at variance with our active wish to see them better, that, to avoid hating where one cannot love, it seems but a slight sacrifice to forego all the joys of fellowship with our kind. ~ Immanuel Kant

There is no such thing as gratitude unexpressed. If it is unexpressed, it is plain, old-fashioned ingratitude. ~ Robert Brault

To live a remote, retired, secluded life is the antipodes of spirituality as Jesus Christ taught it. The test of our spirituality comes when we come up against injustice and meanness and ingratitude and turmoil, all of which have the tendency to make us spiritual sluggards. ~ Oswald Chambers

The wicked are always ungrateful. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

Serve many fruitlessly, If one repay, Th' ingratitude of thousands 'twill outweigh. ~ Luigi Pulci

Who make not friends with sinful, lives not away from hope futilely,
Who outrages not another's wife and betrays not arrogance surely;
Who never commits any theft or never shows ingratitude certainly,
And never indulges in drinking is a person who is always happy.
[99] - 33 Mahatma Vidur ~ Munindra Misra

Mindful consumption is the object of this precept. We are what we consume. If we look deeply into the items that we consume every day, we will come to know our own nature very well. We have to eat, drink, consume, but if we do it unmindfully, we may destroy our bodies and our consciousness, showing ingratitude toward our ancestors, our parents, and future generations (66). ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Ingratitude is the essence of vileness. ~ Immanuel Kant

He loved the interminable winter nights, when the dissatisfied wind mewed through the keyhole, and gusts of acrid smoke were driven down through the chimney; the imperfect silence when you awoke, as of a conversation hastily lulled, objects being hastily replaced. 'Blow, blow thou winter wind, thou art not so unkind as man's ingratitude.' Why was it that he felt so perfectly attuned to winter, to its fatalistic expectation of the worst, then, when the worst came, its rustic heroisms and shouldering of burdens, improvised ingeniousness, constructive despair? ~ Violet Trefusis

Ingratitude is a crime more despicable than revenge, which is only returning evil for evil, while ingratitude returns evil for good. ~ William George Jordan

ORPHAN, n. A living person whom death has deprived of the power of filial ingratitude ... ~ Ambrose Bierce

Four things are destroyed by the other fours: kindness by ingratitude, strength (of government) by crime, power by power and human love by arrogance. ~ Khwaja Abdullah Ansari

Greed's worst point is its ingratitude. ~ Seneca The Younger

G. K. Chesterton once said that to be thankful is the highest form of thought and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder. Thanklessness, then,must be the lowest form of thought, and ingratitude is discontentment, bankrupted of wonder. ~ Ravi Zacharias

Josef Stalin once said that 'Gratitude is a sickness suffered by dogs.' Let us correct this: Ingratitude is a horrible disease belongs to the callous rocks! A grateful dog is a being much more developed than an ungrateful man! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Sin is cosmic treason. Sin is treason against a perfectly pure Sovereign. It is an act of supreme ingratitude toward the One to whom we owe everything, to the One who has given us life itself. Have you ever considered the deeper implications of the slightest sin, of the most minute peccadillo? What are we saying to our Creator when we disobey Him at the slightest point? We are saying no to the righteousness of God. We are saying, God, Your law is not good. My judgement is better than Yours. Your authority does not apply to me. I am above and beyond Your jurisdiction. I have the right to do what I want to do, not what You command me to do. ~ R.C. Sproul

Without the protection of surliness and levity, all children would be crushed by the past - the past of others, loaded onto their shoulders. Selfishness is their saving grace. ~ Margaret Atwood

Gratitude is a burden, and every burden is made to be shaken off. ~ Denis Diderot

All through my boyhood I had a profound conviction that I was no good, that I was wasting my time, wrecking my talents, behaving with monstrous folly and wickedness and ingratitude-and all this, it seemed, was inescapable, because I lived among laws which were absolute, like the law of gravity, but which it was not possible for me to keep. ~ George Orwell

The fundamental defect of the female character is a lack of a sense of justice. This originates first and foremost in their want of rationality and capacity for reflexion but it is strengthened by the fact that, as the weaker sex, they are driven to rely not on force but on cunning: hence their instinctive subtlety and their ineradicable tendency to tell lies: for, as nature has equipped the lion with claws and teeth, the elephant with tusks, the wild boar with fangs, the bull with horns and the cuttlefish with ink, so it has equipped woman with the power of dissimulation as her means of attack and defence, and has transformed into this gift all the strength it has bestowed on man in the form of physical strength and the power of reasoning. Dissimulation is thus inborn in her and consequently to be found in the stupid woman almost as often as in the clever one. To make use of it at every opportunity is as natural to her as it is for an animal to employ its means of defence whenever it is attacked, and when she does so she feels that to some extent she is only exercising her rights. A completely truthful woman who does not practice dissimulation is perhaps an impossibility, which is why women see through the dissimulation of others so easily it is inadvisable to attempt it with them. – But this fundamental defect which I have said they possess, together with all that is associated with it, gives rise to falsity, unfaithfulness, treachery, ingratitude, etc. Women are guilty of ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

Ingratitude is the necessary consequence of receiving favors of which we are ashamed. ~ Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Leonard Woolf: If I didn't know you better I'd call this ingratitude.

Virginia Woolf: I am ungrateful? You call ME ungrateful? My life has been stolen from me. I'm living in a town I have no wish to live in... I'm living a life I have no wish to live... How did this happen? ~ Virginia Woolf

Forgetfulness in people might wound, their ingratitude corrode, but this voice, pouring endlessly, year in year out, would take whatever it might be; this vow; this van; this life; this procession, would wrap them all about and carry them on, as in the rough stream of a glacier the ice holds a splinter of bone, a blue petal, some oak trees, and rolls them on. ~ Virginia Woolf

If our devotion is to the cause of humanity, we will be quickly defeated and broken-hearted, since we will often be confronted with a great deal of ingratitude from other people. But if we are motivated by our love for God, no amount of ingratitude will be able to hinder us from serving one another. ~ Oswald Chambers

We are given this beautiful life, this beautiful world, and we destroy it with ingratitude and hate. ~ Marty Rubin

I am conquered less by fortune than by the egotism and ingratitude of my companions in arms. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

A happy life is impossible, the highest thing that man can aspire to is a heroic life; such as a man lives, who is always fighting against unequal odds for the good of others; and wins in the end without any thanks. After the battle is over, he stands like the Prince in the re corvo of Gozzi, with dignity and nobility in his eyes, but turned to stone. His memory remains, and will be reverenced as a hero's; his will, that has been mortified all his life by toiling and struggling, by evil payment and ingratitude, is absorbed into Nirvana. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

Nevertheless, our constant efforts to lower our estimate of the present world should not lead us to hate life or to be ungrateful toward God. For this life, though it is full of countless miseries, deserves to be reckoned among the divine blessings which should not be despised. Therefore, if we discover nothing of God's goodness in it, we are already guilty of no small ingratitude toward him. ~ John Calvin

God help us to be grateful for our blessings, never to be guilty of the sin of ingratitude, and to instill this same gratitude into the lives of our children. ~ Ezra Taft Benson

those who see the nightly splendor of the moon are possessed by perverse ingratitude if they do not recognize the goodness of God. ~ John Calvin

7If you are ungrateful, remember God has no need of you, yet He is not pleased by ingratitude in His servants; if you are grateful, He is pleased [to see] it in you. No soul will bear another's burden. You will return to your Lord in the end and He will inform you of what you have done: He knows well what is in the depths of [your] hearts. ~ Anonymous

Expressed gratitude encourages further giving; ingratitude drains vitality out of the spirit of generosity. ~ Michael Josephson

Even this artistic life, which we know is not real life, appears to me to be so alive and so vital that it would be a form ingratitude not to be content with it. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

Your heart desire will come, but when it comes, you desire for another, and when it comes again, you still aspire for another, that shows your level of ingratitude. ~ Michael Bassey Johnson

Ingratitude is innate to humans. ~ Kristian Goldmund Aumann

I know how ingratitude burns, how falsehood tortures, for I have been deceived in friendship and in love; I have learned to lose and to resign myself. ~ Franz Grillparzer

In all things preserve integrity; and the consciousness of your own uprightness will alleviate the toil of business, soften the hardness of ill-success and disappointments, and give you a humble confidence before God, when the ingratitude of people, or the iniquity of the times may rob you of other rewards. ~ Babe Paley

It has been said that the sin of ingratitude is more serious than the sin of revenge. With revenge, we return evil for evil, but with ingratitude, we return evil for good. ~ W. Eugene Hansen

Some sins have no season. We are as likely to be angry in November as to lose our rag in March ... There is, though, something autumnal about greed, apple-cheeked and wheat-crowned, purpled knee-high in grapes; something summery in sloth, as the hammock creaks in the fly-drowsy heat; and more than a tickle of spring in lust, as birds pair and the sap rises. Among these, ingratitude is winter, the worst of seasons. ~ Ann Wroe

What may appear to be proud ungrateful and headstrong fron the outside may from the inside express an unshakable integrity of character. Pride, if it doesn't step over the line into arrogance, is simply an unprejudiced self-esteem. Ingratitude is the appropriate response to a kindness that has hooks on it. Headstrong is another word for trusting your own heart. ~ Stephen Mitchell

The federal government does not trample in jackboots those with whom it does business. It wraps them in cotton batting and, when they express ingratitude, apologizes profusely. ~ Timothy Noah

What you have made me see,' answered the Lady, 'is as plain as the sky, but I never saw it before. Yet is has happened every day. One goes into the forest to pick food and already the thought of one fruit rather than another has grown up in one's mind. Then, may it be, one finds a different fruit and not the fruit one thought of. One joy was expected and another is given. But this I had never noticed before–that the very moment of the finding there is in the mind a kind of thrusting back, or setting aside. The picture of the fruit you have not found is still, for a moment, before you. And if you wished–if it were possible to wish–you could keep it there. You could send your soul after the good you had expected, instead of turning it to the good you had got. You could refuse the real good; you could make the real fruit taste insipid by thinking of the other. ~ C.S. Lewis

We call bad one who rejects the fruit he is given for the fruit he is expecting or the fruit he was given last time. ~ C.S. Lewis

It.
Such is the perversity of human nature that what we have in abundance-our work, our possessions, and the beauty of our surroundings-we take for granted and learn to ignore, so that we are often paralyzed by boredom, indifference, and ingratitude. ~ Gene Edward Veith Jr.

Thus, to serve one another through love, that is to instruct him that goeth astray, to comfort the afflicted, to raise up the weak, to help thy neighbour, to bear his infirmities, to endure troubles, labours, ingratitude in the Church, and in civil life to obey the magistrates, to give honour to parents, to be patient at home with a froward wife, and an unruly family; these and such like, are works which reason judgeth to be on no value. But, indeed, they are such works, that the whole world is not able to comprehend the excellency and worthiness thererof, for it doth not measure things by the word of God, yea, it knoweth not the value of any of the least good works, which are good works indeed. ~ Martin Luther

Ingratitude is surely the chief of the intellectual sins of man. He takes his political benefits for granted, just as he takes the skies and the seasons for granted. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

I would not give much for a man's Christianity if he is saved himself and is not willing to try and save others. It seems to me the basest ingratitude if we do not reach out the hand to others who are down in the same pit from which we were delivered. Who ~ D.L. Moody

Count your blessings and be grateful not a great fool. ~ Habeeb Akande

How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child! ~ William Shakespeare

To live a distant, withdrawn, and secluded life is diametrically opposed to spirituality as Jesus Christ taught it. The true test of our spirituality occurs when we come up against injustice, degradation, ingratitude, and turmoil, all of which have the tendency to make us spiritually lazy. While being tested, we want to use prayer and Bible reading for the purpose of finding a quiet retreat. We use God only for the sake of getting peace and joy. We seek only our enjoyment of Jesus Christ, not a true realization of Him. This is the first step in the wrong direction. All these things we are seeking are simply effects, and yet we try to make them causes. ~ Oswald Chambers

That man may last, but never lives, Who much receives, but nothing gives; Whom none can love, whom none can thank,- Creation's blot, creation's blank. ~ Thomas Gibbons

The healthy attitude, the only reasonable one towards a fault made or a sin committed is surely a vigorous shake of one's moral shoulders, vigorous enough to shake it off and out of remembrance. The sin itself was a sad waste of time and happiness, and absolutely no more should be wasted in lugubriously reflecting on it. Shall we, poor human beings at such a disadvantage from the first in the fight with Fate through the many weaknesses and ailments of our bodies, load our souls as well with an ever-growing burden of regret and penitence? Shall we let a weight of vivid memories break our hearts? How are we to get on with our living if we are continually dropping into sloughs of bitter and often unjust self-reproach? Every morning comes the light, and a fresh chance of doing better. Is it not the sheerest folly and ingratitude to let yesterday spoil the God-given to-day? There ~ Elizabeth Von Arnim

HE TEN LEPERS: Handling ingratitude with disapproval-
And Jesus Answer, were there not 10 cleansed but where are 9? ~ Ikechukwu Joseph

It is better to expose ourselves to ingratitude than to neglect our duty to the distressed. ~ Jean De La Bruyere

For we never have naked and empty symbols, except when our ingratitude and wickedness hinder the working of divine beneficence. ~ John Calvin

Of bones the city is made,
Plastered with flesh and blood,
Where decay and death are deposited,
And pride, and ingratitude. ~ Gautama Buddha

Power takes as ingratitude the writhing of its victims ~ Rabindranath Tagore

In the light of the Divine Goodness, it seems to me, though others may think differently, that ingratitude is the most abominable of sins and that it should be detested in the sight of our Creator and Lord by all of His creatures who are capable of enjoying His divine and everlasting glory. ~ Saint Ignatius

The greatest kindness will not bind the ungrateful. ~ Aesop

For man never reasons so much and becomes so introspective as when he suffers ; since he is anxious to get at the cause of his sufferings, to learn who has produced them, and whether it is just or unjust that he should have to bear them. On the other hand, when he is happy, he takes his happiness as it comes and doesn't analyse it, just as if happiness were his right. ~ Luigi Pirandello

Do not say, 'But it is hypocritical to thank God with my tongue when I don't feel thankful in my heart.' There is such a thing as hypocritical thanksgiving. Its aim is to conceal ingratitude and get the praise of men. That is not your aim. Your aim in loosing your tongue with words of gratitude is that God would be merciful and fill your words with the emotion of true gratitude. You are not seeking the praise of men; you are seeing the mercy of God. You are not hiding the hardness of ingratitude, but hoping for the in-breaking of the Spirit.

Thanksgiving with the Mouth Stirs Up Thankfulness in the Heart

Moreover, we should probably ask the despairing saint, 'Do you know your heart so well that you are sure the words of thanks have no trace of gratitude in them?' I, for one, distrust my own assessment of my motives. I doubt that I know my good ones well enough to see all the traces of contamination. And I doubt that I know my bad ones well enough to see the traces of grace. Therefore, it is not folly for a Christian to assume that there is a residue of gratitude in his heart when he speaks and sings of God's goodness even though he feels little or nothing. To this should be added that experience shows that doing the right thing, in the way I have described, is often the way toward being in the right frame. Hence Baxter gives this wise counsel to the oppressed Christian:

'Resolve to spend most of your time in thanksgiving and praising God. If y ~ John Piper

Moreover that which is called, far too harshly in certain cases, the ingratitude of children, is not always a thing so deserving of reproach as it is supposed. It is the ingratitude of nature. Nature, as we have elsewhere said, "looks before her." Nature divides living beings into those who are arriving and those who are departing. Those who are departing are turned towards the shadows, those who are arriving towards the light. Hence a gulf which is fatal on the part of the old, and involuntary on the part of the young. This breach, at first insensible, increases slowly, like all separations of branches. The boughs, without becoming detached from the trunk, grow away from it. It is no fault of theirs. Youth goes where there is joy, festivals, vivid lights, love. Old age goes towards the end. They do not lose sight of each other, but there is no longer a close connection. Young people feel the cooling off of life; old people, that of the tomb. Let us not blame these poor children. ~ Victor Hugo

The true sin against the Holy Ghost is ingratitude. ~ Elizabeth I