With Thanksgiving just two days off, I thought it might be timely to compile a list of quotes on the subject by famous authors. I'm not a famous author, but I'm still going to get this ball rolling with one of my own:

"I am thankful for the internet. I can remember when a project like this one would have taken two days of digging through a card catalog and climbing endless shelves in the library rather than just a few keystrokes."
-Liz

That said, here are a few things some more notable people than myself had to say about Thanksgiving and about Giving Thanks:

"It is literally true, as the thankless say, that they have nothing to be thankful for. He who sits by the fire, thankless for the fire, is just as if he had no fire. Nothing is possessed save in appreciation, of which thankfulness is the indispensable ingredient. But a thankful heart hath a continual feast."
- W. J. Cameron

"Gratitude is the sign of noble souls."
- Aesop

"I do not think of all the misery, but of the glory that remains. Go outside into the fields, nature and the sun, go out and seek happiness in yourself and in God. Think of the beauty that again and again discharges itself within and without you and be happy."
– Anne Frank

"We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures."
-Thornton Wilder

"Ah! On Thanksgiving Day. When the care-wearied man seeks his mother once more, And the worn matron smiles where the girl smiled before. What moistens the lips and what brightens the eye? What calls back the past, like the rich pumpkin pie?"
– John Greenleaf Whittier

"Thanksgiving is an emotional holiday. People travel thousands of miles to be with people they only see once a year. And then discover once a year is way too often."
-Johnny Carson

"Thanksgiving comes to us out of the prehistoric dimness, universal to all ages and all faiths. At whatever straws we must grasp, there is always a time for gratitude and new beginnings."
-J. Robert Moskin

"The heart will find the pathway home."
-Wilbur D. Nesbit

"I have strong doubts that the first Thanksgiving even remotely resembled the 'history' I was told in second grade. But considering that (when it comes to holidays) mainstream America's traditions tend to be over-eating, shopping, or getting drunk, I suppose it's a miracle that the concept of giving thanks even surfaces at all."
-Ellen Orleans

"The thing I'm most thankful for right now is elastic waistbands."
-Author Unknown

"How wonderful it would be if we could help our children and grandchildren to learn thanksgiving at an early age. Thanksgiving opens the doors. It changes a child's personality. A child is resentful, negative—or thankful. Thankful children want to give, they radiate happiness, they draw people."
- Sir John Templeton

"Thanksgiving is a typically American holiday...The lavish meal is a symbol of the fact that abundant consumption is the result and reward of production."
- Ayn Rand

"Thanksgiving, after all, is a word of action."
- W. J. Cameron

"Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence."
- Erma Bombeck

"We will speed the day when all of God's children,
black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles,
Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join
hands and sing ...Free at last, Free at last,
Thank God Almighty, I'm free at last."
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.