"When the time for decision arrives, the time for preparation is past."  

-Thomas S. Monson
Ensign, Sept 2014 pg 5

"Life - it is like a voyage to some known point . . . I stand at the rudder, I have chosen my path . . . but God rules the storm and the sea.  He may direct it otherwise; and then, happen what may, it will be the best for me."

-Hans Christian Andersen
The True Story of my Life

"If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world."

-C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

"Your body becomes an instrument of your mind and the foundation of your character.  Through life in a mortal body you can learn to control matter, and that will be very important to you through all eternity."

-Boyd K. Packer

"I don't want to drive up to the pearly gates in a shiny sports car, wearing beautifully, tailored clothes, my hair expertly coiffed, and with long, perfectly manicured fingernails.  I want to drive up in a station wagon that has mud on the wheels from taking kids to scout camp.  I want to be there with a smudge of peanut butter on my shirt from making sandwiches for a sick neighbor's children.  I want to be there with a little dirt under my fingernails from helping to weed someone's garden.  I want to be there with children's sticky kisses on my cheeks and the tears of a friend on my shoulder.  I want the Lord to know I was really here and that I really lived."

-Marjorie Pay Hinckley

"When obedience ceases to be an irritant and becomes our quest, in that moment God will endow us with power."

-President Ezra T. Benson

"Desires dictate our priorities, priorities shape our choices, and choices determine our actions.  The desires we act on determine our changing, our achieving, and our becoming."

Dallin H. Oaks
Desire, Ensign May 2011

"I had a father-in-law who came from difficult circumstances as a young man and he told me several times, 'You have two chances for a happy, eternal family.  The first one is the one you're born into; the second one is the one you create.  And it's the second one that counts.  Don't blow your second chance.'"

Julie S. Beck, BYU-Idaho Devotional April 2013

"For as God bestows any ability or gift upon any of us, he binds us to such as have need of us and as we are able to help."

-John Calvin

Courage

"Courage is required to make an initial thrust toward one's coveted goal, but even greater courage is called for when one stumbles and must make a second effort to achieve."

-Thomas S. Monson, Living the Abundant Life

"It isn't as bad as you sometimes think it is.  It all works out.  Don't worry.  I say that to myself every morning.  It will all work out.  If you do your best, it will all work out.  Put your trust in God, and move forward with faith and confidence in the future.  The Lord will not forsake us.  He will not forsake us."

-Gordon B. Hinkley

"What if our only motive were love?  What if everything we did, we did out of love?"

-Russell T. Osguthorpe
BYU Devotional, 8 March 2011

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon.
Where there is doubt, faith.
Where there is despair, hope.
Where there is darkness, light.
Where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

-Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi

"Man, learn what God wants you to be."

-Aulus Persius Flaccus, Satires, III, line 71

"I meet so many people who constantly complain about the burden of their responsibilities.  Of course the pressures are great.  There is much, too much, to do . . .Turn your thinking around.  The gospel is good news.  Man is that he might have joy. Be happy!  Let that happiness shine through your faces and speak through your testimonies. . . 

"I enjoy these words of Jenkins Lloyd Jones . . .

"'Anyone who imagines that bliss is normal is going to waste a lot of time running around shouting that he's been robbed.

"'Most putts don't drop.  Most beef is tough.  Most children grow up to be just people.  Most successful marriages require a high degree of mutual toleration.  Most jobs are more often dull than otherwise.

"'Life is like an old-time rail journey - delays, sidetracks, smoke, dust, cinders, and jolts, interspersed only occasionally by beautiful vistas and thrilling bursts of speed.

"'The trick is to thank the Lord for letting you have the ride.' (Deseret News, June 12, 1973)"

-Gordon B. Hinkley, Four Imperitives for Religious Educators  15 September 1978

"No task will be so sordid and base . . .that it will not shine and be reckoned very precious in God's sight."

-John Calvin

"I know what I want is above my strength - but He who has given me the desire will also give me strength to do the impossible."

-Mother Teresa, Come Be My Light

“There [will] come a time when God will fill what He [has] emptied.”

         

   -Brother Benito, Garlic for Pegasus:  The Life of Brother Benito do Goes of the Society of Jesus, Schoenberg

"Imagine yourself as a living house.  God comes in to rebuild that house.  At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing.  He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised.  But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense.  What on earth is He up to?  The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards.  You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace.  He intends to come and live in it Himself."

-C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

"Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies."

-Mother Theresa
In the Heart of the World:  Thoughts, Stories, and Prayers