This morning I remembered a thoughtful quote I heard recently during Vermont Recovery Advocacy Day. I made coffee and started searching. I often think of the children’s book, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, by Laura Joffe Numeroff.

One thing leads to another and sometimes you don’t know how you got there. This happens frequently to me.

Today, I thought I would follow the trail. If you give me coffee and some time alone…

OK, the author of the quote, I think his last name was hummmm…Chesterfield. There were some real gems from him. I thought I must have the attribution correct..Lord Chesterfield.

“Never seem wiser, nor more learned, than the people you are with. Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private pocket: and do not merely pull it out and strike it; merely to show that you have one.”

“Advice is seldom welcome, and those who need it the most, like it the least.”

I kept reading and then this one popped up:

“Women especially as to be talked to as below men, and above children.”

Lord Chesterfield, you obviously were not the author I was looking for…and maybe kind of a prick, but hey it was the 17th century when you were writing, so I won’t “cancel” you—context is everything.

The sun is up now, it’s snowing and I’ve had my second coffee…I finally found the correct quote.

“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.”

—G. K. Chesterton

Thanks as the highest form of thought and gratitude doubled by wonder—so beautifully said. What other quotes about gratitude can I find?

I needed to know a bit more about G. K. Chesterton. He was an English author best known for creating the priest-detective, Father Brown.

Then, I next read on his Wikipedia page that his best friend from his St. Paul school days was Edmund Clerihew Bentley, inventor of the clerihew. 

I didn’t know what a clerihew was. Should I have? Do you?

A clerihew (/ˈklɛrɪhjuː/) is a whimsical, four-line biographical poem invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley. The first line is the name of the poem's subject, usually, a famous person put in an absurd light, or revealing something unknown or spurious about them. (Here is a well-known clerihew of his.) Sir Christopher Wren Said, "I am going to dine with some men. If anyone calls Say I am designing St. Paul's."[1]

I wrote my own clerihew after reading Mr. Bentley’s example.

To the courageous people of Ukraine, I humbly offer my thanks, gratitude, and compassion for what you are against-all-odds bravely doing to protect your families and defend democracy around the world.