hey guys. looking for some about taking things for granted....thanks.

Koko,

Just to ensure we provide the most appropriate responses possible, can you please clarify a little bit?

Is it:

(i) About unthankfulness? (e.g "Blow, blow thou winter wind, thou are not as cold as man's ingratitude." - Shakespeare)

(ii) About obliviousness? (e.g "Stop and smell the roses? - Anon)

(iii) About personal gratitude? ("If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, "thank you," that would suffice." - Meister Eckhart)

(iv) About universal gratitude? ("Reflect on your present blessings, of which every man has many..." - Dickens)

Let us know, and we shall be sure to find a few for you.

Jeremiah

When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.
~ Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.
~ Aldous Huxley

One very important aspect of motivation is the willingness to stop and to look at things that no one else has bothered to look at. This simple process of focusing on things that are normally taken for granted is a powerful source of creativity...
~ Edward de Bono

Being taken for granted can be a compliment. It means that you've become a comfortable, trusted element in another person's life.
~Dr. Joyce Brothers

To educate yourself for the feeling of gratitude means to take nothing for granted, but to always seek out and value the kindness that stands behind the action. Nothing that is done for you is a matter of course. Everything originates in a will for the good, which is directed at you. Train yourself never to put off the word or action for the expression of gratitude.
- Albert Schweitzer

When something does not insist on being noticed, when we aren't grabbed by the collar or struck on the skull by a presence or an event, we take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude
~Cynthia Ozick

In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.
~ Bertrand Russell

***
He wrapped himself in quotations—as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of Emperors.
—Rudyard Kipling

Gamz. I appreciate the response and moreso, your interest in detail. It is about people in our lives, and how sometimes we just assume they will always be there or they assume we will always be there. We tend to often get close to people and automatically assume the relationship will continue to grow, and that always isnt the case. Sometimes we take "people" in our lives for granted, and relationships, when we know we shouldnt.

I hope that clarifies a bit. Thanks for your help.

Koko,

Just trying to be of adequate service.
I have more that may better suit the purpose, but below are a few for the interim.

Best Regards!
Jeremiah


For when we forget to be thankful to our close ones for what they give us:

"At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person.
Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us."
- Albert Schweitzer


For when we "shove aside" those close to us to make room for new friends that likely won't stick with us as long:

"THOUGH you are in your shining days,
Voices among the crowd
And new friends busy with your praise,
Be not unkind or proud,
But think about old friends the most:
Time’s bitter flood will rise,
Your beauty perish and be lost
For all eyes but these eyes. "
- Yeats


For when we need to remember that we are mortal and should be thankful at all times:

"Thou hast given so much to me,
Give one thing more, - a grateful heart;
Not thankful when it pleaseth me,
As if Thy blessings had spare days,
But such a heart whose pulse may be Thy praise."
- George Herbert

"Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.”
- William Arthur Ward


A look at the extreme effects of taking things for granted (and of procrastination in affection). Wordsworth wrote a series of poems all on the same subject, which are now known as the "Lucy" poems.

"She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A Maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love:
A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye!
- Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.
She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, oh,
The difference to me!"

- William Wordsworth

Lament who will in fruitless tears,
the speed with which our moments fly.
I cry not over vanished years,
but watch the years that hasten by.
-William Cullen Bryant

**************************
"It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet."
-Maya Angelou

------8---@