Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
We are vulnerable if we can be taken by a wave of emotion, invaded by an invidious impulse, roughed up by resentment, or engulfed by a surge of selfishness.
God does not begin by asking us about our ability, but only about our availability, and if we then prove our dependability, he will increase our capability.
Thus worshiping, serving, studying, praying, each in its own way squeezes selfishness out of us; pushes aside our preoccupations with the things of the world.
If the Church were not true, our enemies would be bored rather than threatened, and acquiescent rather than anxious. Hell is moved only when things move heavenward.
I testify that He is utterly incomparable in what He is, what He knows, what He has accomplished and what He has experienced. Yet, movingly, He calls us His Friends
Those who do too much for their children will soon find they can do nothing with their children. So many children have been so much done for they are almost done in.
Joshua didn't say choose you next year whom you will serve; he spoke of "this day," while there is still daylight and before the darkness becomes more and more normal.
The issue for us is trusting God enough to trust also His timing. If we can truly believe He has our welfare at heart, may we not let His plans unfold as He thinks best?
Clearly, when we baptize, our eyes should gaze beyond the baptismal font to the holy temple. The great garner into which the sheaves should be gathered is the holy temple.
When in situations of stress we wonder if there is any more in us to give, we can be comforted to know that God, who knows our capacity perfectly, placed us here to succeed
Those of little faith mistake local cloud cover for general darkness. Keeping spiritually intact results in our keeping precious perspective by seeing "things as they really are."
In one degree or another we all struggle with selfishness. Since it is so common, why worry about selfishness anyway? Because selfishness is really self-destruction in slow motion.
So much depends, therefore, upon our maintaining gospel perspective in the midst of ordinariness, the pressures of temptation, tribulation, deprivation, and the cares of the world.
Daily hope is vital, since the ‘Winter Quarters’ of our lives are not immediately adjacent to our promised land either. An arduous trek still awaits, but hope spurs weary disciples on.
The charity of good women is such that their 'love makes no parade'; they are not glad 'when others go wrong'; they are too busy serving to sit statusfully about, waiting to be offended.
The mortal experience . . . is not like a college course which we can passively audit. Instead, we are taking life's course for credit and there are no summers off - not even semester breaks.
Brigham Young observed, "Man's machinery makes things alike" (JD 9:370), while God gives to seemingly like individuals pleasing differences. Secularism is no friend of righteous individuality.
The scriptures offer us so many doctrinal diamonds. And when the light of the Spirit plays upon their several facets, they sparkle with celestial sense and illuminate the path we are to follow.
When great individuals move so marvelously along the straight and narrow path, it is unseemly of us to call attention to the fact that one of their shoelaces is untied as they make the journey.
The submission of one's will is really the only uniquely personal thing we have to place on God's altar. The many other things we 'give' are actually the things He has already given or loaned to us.
So often our sisters comfort others when their own needs are greater than those being comforted. That quality is like the generosity of Jesus on the cross. Empathy during agony is a portion of divinity!
A vague goal is no goal at all. The Ten Commandments wouldn't be very impressive, for instance, if they weren't specific, but simply were couched in a phraseology such as 'thou shalt not be a bad person.
A basic cause of murmuring is that too many of us seem to expect that life will flow ever smoothly, featuring an unbroken chain of green lights with empty parking places just in front of our destinations!.
If the nearly one-and-a-half million babies aborted in America each year could, somehow, vote, chameleon candidates would find fresh reason to be concerned about abortion, whereas now they are unconcerned.
Obviously, family values mirror our personal priorities. Given the gravity of current conditions, would parents be willing to give up just one outside thing, giving that time and talent instead to the family.
There are certain mortal moments and minutes that matter. Certain hingepoints in the history of each human. Some seconds are so decisive they shrink the soul, while others are spent, so as to stretch the soul.
Our goals should stretch us bit by bit. So often when we think we have encountered a ceiling, it is really a psychological or experiential barrier that we have built ourselves. We built it and we can remove it.
Spent time-like a spent bullet-tells us much about its "processor." for we see not only the residual slug, but indicators of how spent time is grooved by a man's soul, a reliable indicator of what a man is like.
One simply cannot come to a cause like the kingdom of God, with its celestial concepts, and not appreciate and identify with what Ammon said: "Behold, I say unto you, I cannot say the smallest part which I feel."
It is only by yielding to God that we can begin to realize His will for us. And if we truly trust God, why not yield to His loving omniscience? After all, He knows us and our possibilities much better than do we.
Those who turn against the Church do so to play to their own private gallery, but when, one day, the applause has died down and the cheering has stopped, they will face a smaller audience, the judgment bar of God.
I know the celestial criteria measure service, not status; the use of our talents, not the relative size of our talent inventories. I know that Church membership is not passive security but continuing opportunity.
When we don't like to face up to hard facts, we use soft words. We do not speak about killing a baby within the womb, but about "termination of potential life." Words are often multiplied to try to cover dark deeds.
We, more than others, should carry jumper and tow cables not only in our cars, but also in our hearts, by which means we can send the needed boost or charge of encouragement or the added momentum to mortal neighbors.
When we are unduly impatient with an omniscient God's timing, we really are suggesting that we know what's best. Strange isn't it-we who wear wrist watches seek to counsel Him who oversees cosmic clocks and calendars.
I thank the Savior personally; for bearing all which I added to His hemorrhaging at every pore for all humanity in Gethsemane. I thank Him for bearing what I added to the decibels of His piercing soul cry atop Calvary.
God, as a loving Father, will stretch our souls at times. The soul is like a violin string: it makes music only when it is stretched. . . . God will tutor us by trying us because He loves us, not because of indifference!
As parenting declines, the need for policing increases. There will always be a shortage of police if there is a shortage of effective parents! Likewise, there will not be enough prisons if there are not enough good homes.
At times God's best pupils experience the most rigorous and continuous courses. Eventually those who prove to be men of Christ will thereby become distinguished alumni of life's school of affliction, graduating with honors.
Patience is...clearly not fatalistic, shoulder-shrugging resignation. It is the acceptance of a divine rhythm to life; it is obedience prolonged. Patience stoutly resists pulling up the daisies to see how the roots are doing.
If we are not serving Jesus, and if he is not in our thoughts and hearts, then the things of the world will draw us instead to them! Moreover, the things of the world need not be sinister in order to be diverting and consuming.
I thank the Father that His Only Begotten Son did not say in defiant protest at Calvary, "My body is my own!" I stand in admiration of women today who resist the "fashion of abortion, by refusing to make the sacred womb a tomb!"
Endurance involves much more than putting up with a situation; Patient Endurance is more than pacing up and down within the cell of circumstance. True Enduring represents not merely the passage of time, . . . but the Passage of Soul.
Therefore, as we strive to become as the Father is and as Jesus is, we are to become more gracious and merciful, more kind and considerate. Even more, we are to do this in a world which does little to encourage such qualities of character.
Most of our suffering comes from sin and stupidity; it is, nevertheless, very real, and growth can occur with real repentance. But the highest source of suffering appears to be reserved for the innocent who undergo divine tutorial training.
Your task is to conquer yourselves, not ships, lands and castles. This battle is the one in which you especially are to 'come off conqueror.' It is fought every day. In fact, it is a continuing process which commenced a long, long time ago.
Without making a fetish of goal setting, and without letting "lists" of tasks we desire to do dominate us, some recording of goals is wise not only for the self-reminder these constitute, but also for the satisfaction of crossing things off.
Ironically, brothers and sisters, the natural man who is so very selfish in so many ordinary ways is strangely unselfish in that he reaches for too few of the things that bring real joy. He settles for a mess of pottage instead of eternal joy.
By seeing life's experiences on through to the end, on our small scale we can finally say, as Jesus did on the cross, "It is finished". We too can then have "finished [our] preparations," having done the particular work God gave each of us to do.
Our afflictions brothers and sisters often will not be extinguished, they will be dwarfed and swallowed up in the joy of Christ. That’s how we overcome, most of the time. It’s not their elimination, but the placing of them in that larger context.