When you try your hardest and you’re only met with indifference or an ungrateful response then that can knock the wind out of your sails.
And when someone else in your life really steps up and you aren’t appropriately appreciative then that can lead to conflict or to you feeling guilty later on and like you’re a bad friend or partner.
So to help you to deal with both sides of this issue I’ve put together 95 of the best ungrateful quotes.
I hope these timeless thoughts and tips will help you live a happier, kinder and more appreciative life where you count your blessings and let the negativity of others roll off your back.
And if you want even more self-loving and useful inspiration then check out this post with quotes on dealing with haters and also this one filled with badass quotes.
Relatable Ungrateful Quotes
“You’ll never see a happy ungrateful person.”
– Zig Ziglar
“A complaining tongue reveals an ungrateful heart.”
– William Arthur Ward
“I hate ungrateful people. You can try your best to make someone happy and it still ain’t enough.”
– Unknown
“An ungrateful man resembles a hog under a tree eating acorns but never looking up to see where they come from.”
– Timothy Dexter
“The worst person to be around is someone who complains about everything and appreciates nothing.”
– Unknown
“The greatest kindness will not bind the ungrateful.”
– Aesop
“Not everyone will appreciate what you do for them. You have to figure out who’s worth your kindness and who’s just taking advantage.”
– Unknown
“Sometimes our wants or needs have nothing to do with being ungrateful and everything to do with making a mistake.”
– Shannon L. Alder
“The greatest humiliation in life is to work hard on something from which you expect great appreciation, and then fail to get it.”
– E. W. Howe
“All that a husband or wife really wants is to be pitied a little, praised a little, and appreciated a little.”
– Oliver Goldsmith
“The wrong person will make you feel unwanted, unappreciated, unloved and they will make you feel like an option. The right person will have you feeling wanted, appreciated, loved and they will have you feeling like a priority.”
– John Adams
“Ingratitude is always a kind of weakness. I have never known men of ability to be ungrateful.”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Even though they are paid differently, everyone has to feel appreciated.”
– Roger Staubach
“People don’t notice the things we do for them until we stop doing them.”
– Mike Skinner
Helpful Ungrateful Quotes
“To be happy is easy enough if we give ourselves, forgive others, and live with thanksgiving, No self centered person, no ungrateful soul can ever be happy, much less make anyone else happy. Life is giving, not getting.”
– Joseph Fort Newton
“If you help the same person too many times then they’ll start believing that you are obliged to help them. And so they become ungrateful.”
– Unknown
“All happy people are grateful. Ungrateful people cannot be happy. We tend to think that being unhappy leads people to complain, but it’s truer to say that complaining leads to people becoming unhappy.”
– Dennis Prager
“Ungrateful people complain about the one thing you haven’t done for them instead of being thankful for the thousands of things you have done for them. Don’t invest your time into people who think it’s your obligation to cure their ills.”
– Unknown
“You cannot, at the very same time, be grateful and unhappy, or ungrateful and happy.”
– Mokokoma Mokhonoana
“When you have expectations of people, you are setting yourself up for disappointment.”
– Ryan Reynolds
“People don’t remember the million times you’ve helped them, only the one time you don’t.”
– Unknown
“When you meet an ungrateful person, be great. The moment you become great, you will become fulfilled. There is no other secret. Nothing else will give you fulfillment.”
– Harbhajan Singh Yogi
“Friendship is the medicine for all misfortune; but ingratitude dries up the fountain of all goodness.”
– Cardinal Richelieu
“Don’t hang out with people who are: ungrateful, unhelpful, unruly, unkindly, unloving, unambitious, unmotivated, or make you feel… uncomfortable.”
– Germany Kent
“Sometimes you’ll give your all to someone, and they won’t appreciate you. That’s life. Just don’t become bitter because of it.”
– Sonya Parker
“To have many wonderful relationships in your life – both romantically and friendly ones – never take people for granted. Let them know how you love and appreciate them. And do that often.”
– Unknown
“It is impossible to bring more abundance into your life if you are feeling ungrateful about what you already have. Why? Because the thoughts and feelings you emit as you feel ungrateful are negative emotions and they will attract more of those feelings and events into your life.”
– Vishen Lakhiani
“The worst feeling is when someone makes you feel worthless. To avoid that in future, cut people out of your life that make this into a habit and improve your own self-esteem so what others think of you mean less and less.”
– Unknown
“We tend to have an expectation that we will be justly rewarded and praised for all of our hard work and sacrifice. The reality is that a lot of it goes unnoticed–it’s thankless. The pursuit of external affirmation just breeds resentment.”
– Sahil Bloom
“People who project negativity typically have low self-esteem. They feel badly about themselves, and their negativity is simply a reflection of those feelings.”
– Hendrie Weisinger
“When we become negative and ungrateful, it is important to remember… We have met the enemy; and he is us.”
– Walt Kelly
Check out this post for more on ungratefulness in relationships: 68 Not Feeling Like a Priority in a Relationship Quotes to Help You Out
Motivational Ungrateful Quotes
“A grateful person is rich in contentment. An ungrateful person suffers in the poverty of endless discontentment.”
– David A. Bednar
“Sometimes the situation is only a problem because it is looked at in a certain subjective, negative, ungrateful way.”
– Edward de Bono
“Ungrateful people breed negativity. No one gets any pleasure from giving to an ungrateful person. When you show appreciation, the object of your attention blossoms and flourishes.”
– Paul McCabe
“I have too many flaws to be perfect. But I have too many blessings to be ungrateful.”
– Zig Ziglar
“If you’ve got a billion dollars and you’re ungrateful, you’re a poor man. If you have very little but you’re grateful for what you have, you’re truly rich.”
– Tony Robbins
“Life is too short to waste your time on people who don’t respect, appreciate, and value you.”
– Roy T. Bennett
“Unhappiness is a contagious disease caused by a chronic deficiency of gratitude.”
– Mokokoma Mokhonoana
“Don’t waste your energy trying to change opinions… Do your thing, and don’t care if they like it.”
– Tina Fey
“It’s normal for us to become unhappy for a while due to how circumstances in life treat us, but it is ungodly for us to be ungrateful for these circumstances that make us unhappy!”
– Israelmore Ayivor
“Once you embrace your value, talents and strengths, it neutralizes when others think less of you.”
– Rob Liano
“I’ve been very blessed in my personal life and in my career and I have never been ungrateful for what I have.”
– Mandy Patinkin
“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.”
– John F. Kennedy
“Don’t let negative and toxic people rent space in your head. Raise the rent and kick them out.”
– Robert Tew
“If they don’t appreciate your presence, perhaps you should try giving them your absence.”
– Tinku Razoria
“The saddest of all hearts is one without gratitude.”
– Tom Krause
“I am all right when I work. I am not superficial and I am not ungrateful.”
– Brigitte Bardot
“Who do you spend time with? Criticizers or encouragers? Surround yourself with those who believe in you. Your life is too important for anything less.”
– Steve Goodier
“Negative people need drama like oxygen. Stay positive; it will take their breath away. Insecure people put others down to raise themselves up.”
– Habeeb Akande
“You can be anything in this world, just don’t be ungrateful.”
– Unknown
“Joy, feeling one’s own value, being appreciated and loved by others, feeling useful and capable of production are all factors of enormous value for the human soul.”
– Maria Montessori
“Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.”
– Voltaire
“There will be haters, there will be doubters, there will be non-believers, and then there will be you, proving them wrong.”
– Karina Barton
“Protect your peace. Remove yourself from the space of ungrateful people. Sometimes people don’t learn to respect you until you’re no longer around for them to disrespect you.”
– Tony A. Gaskins, Jr.
Insightful Ungrateful Quotes
“One ungrateful person does an injury to all needy people.”
– Publilius Syrus
“Ungrateful people forget what they are not grateful for.”
– Ana Monnar
“People will always notice the change in your attitude towards them. But they will never notice it’s their behavior which made you change.”
– Karen Sahlmanson
“Do not be angry with an ungrateful person; probably they are confused or inexperienced.”
– Chico Xavier
“It is no tragedy to do ungrateful people favors, but it is unbearable to be indebted to a scoundrel.”
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
“He that’s ungrateful has no guilt but one; All other crimes may pass for virtues in him.”
– Edward Young
“If someone asks you to do more and you have a big reaction inside, it may be a sign that you’re already doing too much. Even strong, independent, hard-working people have limits and deserve to rest.
Doing your best is a wonderful thing, but doing all you possibly can for as long as you possibly can will eventually lead to burning out and feeling unappreciated by the people around you.”
– Doe Zantamata
“There is no such thing as gratitude unexpressed. If it is unexpressed, it is plain, old-fashioned ingratitude.”
– Robert Breault
“Flints may be melted— we see it daily— but an ungrateful heart cannot be; not by the strongest and noblest flame.”
– South
“You will end up really disappointed if you think people will do for you as you do for them. Not everyone has the same heart as you.”
– Unknown
“To be ungrateful is to be unnatural. The head may be thus guilty, not the heart.”
– Antoine Rivarol
“Dead people receive more flowers than the living ones because regret is stronger than gratitude.”
– Anne Frank
“Ungratefulness is worse than a cancer; it eats away at your soul; blinding your heart and eyes to the beauty and miracles that are all around us each day in our lives.”
– Geraldine Vermaak
“An ungrateful attitude is something most of us are unaware that we have, but everyone else sees.”
– Dr. Louis Ngomo Okitembo
“Some won’t appreciate you no matter how much you do for them. Release yourself. Go where you’re appreciated and understood.”
– Robert Tew
“We do not quite forgive a giver. The hand that feeds us is in some danger of being bitten.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
“It is another’s fault if he be ungrateful, but it is mine if I do not give. To find one thankful man, I will oblige a great many that are not so.”
– Seneca
“Ungrateful people can push you to your limits. But when you react, you are the mean one!”
– Unknown
“The more I understand the mind and the human experience, the more I begin to suspect there is no such thing as unhappiness; there is only ungratefulness.”
– Steve Maraboli
“In this selfish world, the one that never deserts him, the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous, is his dog.”
– George Graham Vest
“If you don’t start appreciating what’s right in front of you, you might lose it.”
– Unknown
“People who want the most approval get the least and the people who need approval the least get the most.”
Wayne Dyer
You may also find these unappreciated quotes helpful.
Short Ungrateful Quotes
“In every class of society gratitude is the rarest of all human virtues.”
– Wilkie Collins
“Making the ungrateful grateful will bring tears to your eyes, tears of blood bleeding from the heart.”
– Ana Monnar
“Hell is full of the ungrateful.”
– Spanish Proverb
“He that calls a man ungrateful sums up all the veil that a man can be guilty of.”
– Jonathan Swift
“An ungrateful man is a tub full of holes.”
– Latin Proverb
“A man may be ungrateful, but the human race is not so.”
– John Milton
“To do good to the ungrateful is to throw rose-water into the sea.”
– Latin Proverb
“Would it be possible to find a more ungrateful boy, or one with less heart than I have!”
– Carlo Collodi
“Everyone wants to be appreciated, so if you appreciate someone, don’t keep it a secret.”
– Mary Kay Ash
“Sadness is so ungrateful.”
– Han Suyin
“A grateful dog is better than an ungrateful man.”
– Saadi
“The wicked are always ungrateful.”
– Miguel de Cervantes
“To feel valued, to know, even if only once in a while, that you can do a job well is an absolutely marvelous feeling.”
– Barbara Walters
“What you do for an ungrateful man is thrown away.”
– Seneca
“Ingratitude is the essence of vileness.”
– Immanuel Kant
“Earth produces nothing worse than an ungrateful man.”
– Decimius Magnus Ausonius
“It’s simple. Women only nag when they feel unappreciated.”
– Louis de Bernieres
“There is no vice greater than that of ingratitude.”
– Unknown
“How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.”
– Shakespeare
“Never put your time into the hands of the ungrateful.”
– Scottie Waves
“We can’t be afraid to dismiss the unappreciative.”
– Dominic Riccitello
“Most people forget everything except being ungrateful.”
– Arab Proverb
“The belly is an ungrateful wretch, it never remembers past favors, it always wants more tomorrow.”
– Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“Love goes unappreciated a lot of times, but you still gotta keep giving it.”
– Snoop Dogg
“We do not need to lose people or things to appreciate them.”
– Mokokoma Mokhonoana
If you liked these ungrateful quotes then share them with a friend or family via email or social media.
Want even more helpful motivation and inspirational quotes? Check out this post with timeless thoughts on dealing with broken trust and this one on handling selfish parents.