Two Kinds of Gratitude – Sunday, November 23, 1980
Someone once said there are two kinds of people: those who divide the world into two kinds of people, and those who don’t. This may or may not be true, but it does seem that there are two kinds of most everything.
Even such an admirable trait as gratitude apparently comes in both real and artificial flavors.
One form of gratitude is that observed by Frenchman Duc De La Rochefoucauld when he wrote, “In most of mankind, gratitude is merely a secret hope for greater favors.”1 This, of course is not grati1ude at all. It is ingratiation—favor seeking, disguised as thanksgiving. It is usually poured on persons of power or influence, and can even work itself into our prayers. It is a glib imitation of gratitude that flows easily from the lips.
True gratitude on the other hand, is as Felix Frankfurter said, “one of the least articulate of the emotions, especially when it is deep.”2
It is most eloquently expressed in deeds not words.
This kind of gratitude is not so concerned with repaying its benefactor as with imitating him in extending blessings to others. It is a “go and do likewise” form of gratitude that creates a chain reaction of goodness as each kindness begets a hundred others.
In the final analysis, this is the most effective form of thanksgiving. We cannot possibly pay back the persons to whom we are indebted; not only our parents who gave us life, but the unknown millions of scientists, statesmen, dreamers and builders who have made our world the place it is.
Certainly we can’t repay the Lord. The very breath we draw to give him thanks is borrowed from His earth.
But we can fill our hearts with gratitude and then go forth to bless the lives of those about us. Perhaps this is what Cicero the Roman statesman meant when he said, “Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.”3
1 The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, Oxford University Press, New York, 1979, p.310. See also Two French Moralists, La Rouchefoucauld and Le Bruyere, Ooene De Mourgues, Cambridge University Press, London, 1978.
2 Instant Quotation Dictionary, Donald O. Bolander, Career Institute, New Jersey, 1972, p. 130.
3 “The Growing Edge,” Vol. 13, No. 3, November 1980, article by Stanly A. Peterson, published by the Church Educational System, The Church of Jesus Christ of Letter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah.
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November 23, 1980
Broadcast Number 2,675