Gratitude celebrates our connections with other beings and our capacity to offer mutual support. It is a form of openness and generosity that strengthens relationships and heals tension, resentment and anger. Gratitude calls us to strip away unnecessary complexities, and to be simple and natural with each other. It brings peace and harmony.

To receive gratitude from others is to strengthen our confidence that we have a positive role to play in the world. It makes us feel recognized, encouraged and inspired. When we are able to offer gratitude sincerely to someone else, notice how it brings a pleasant taste in the mouth, a warm feeling in the heart and a surge of energy. Appreciation feels good.

Gratitude is grounded in the wisdom which accepts that we are neither independent nor self-sufficient, but part of an extraordinary continuum of events and beings on this planet. It encourages us to welcome reality, rather than to fight it – both what seems good, and what seems bad. Learning to appreciate every single thing that happens as a potential source of insight and growth is one of the key ingredients for a happy life.

"Thankfulness is the tune of angels."

• Edmund Spenser

"To speak gratitude is courteous and pleasant, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live gratitude is to touch Heaven."

• Johannes Gaertner

"If you think you are so enlightened, go and spend a week with your parents!"

• Ram Dass

"Friendships begin with liking or gratitude-roots that can be pulled up."

• George Eliot

"Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom."

• Marcel Proust