"In life, the sandpaper of circumstances often smooths our crustiness and patiently polishes our rough edges. There is nothing pleasant about it, however. And the Lord will go to great lengths in order to teach us a particular lesson and to help us to overcome a particular weakness, especially if there is no other way. In such circumstances, it is quite useless for us mortals to try to do our own sums when it comes to suffering. We can't make it all add up because clearly we do not have all the numbers. Furthermore, none of us knows much about the algebra of affliction."

—Neal A. Maxwell, Notwithstanding My Weakness

"Patience is always involved in the spiritual chemistry of the soul, not only when we try to turn the trials and tribulations—the carbon dioxide, as it were—into joy and growth, but also when we use it to build upon the seemingly ordinary experiences to bring about happy and spiritual outcomes.

"Patience is, therefore, 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."

-Neal A. Maxwell,  Patience, BYU Speeches Nov. 27, 1979

 

 

What you focus on, you feel

What you visualize, you internalize

What you think about comes about

-Woody Woodward, Your Emotional Fingerprint

Why build these cities glorious

If man unbuilded goes?

In vain we build the world, unless

The builder also grows.

-Edwin Markham

 "The Lord works from the inside out.  The world works from the outside in.  The world would take people out of the slums.  Christ takes the slums out of the people, and then they take themselves out of the slums.  The world would mold men by changing their environment.  Christ changes men, who then change their environment.  The world would shape behavior, but Christ can change human nature."

 -Ezra Taft Benson, "Born of God," Ensign, Oct. 1985, 6. 

  “Trying to do the Lord's work in your own strength is the most confusing, exhausting, and tedious of all work. But when you are filled with the Holy Spirit, then the ministry of Jesus just flows out of you.” 

-Corrie ten Boom

 "[God] extends us personal invitations to strengthen and deepen our trust in Him.  Each time we accept and act on an invitation, our trust in God grows.  If we ignore or decline an invitation, our progress stops until we're ready to act on a new invitation."

-Paul B. Pieper, Trust in the Lord, Liahona Nov. 2023

"We consider that God has created man with a mind capable of instruction, and a faculty which may be enlarged in proportion to the heed and diligence given to the light communicated from heaven to the intellect; and that the nearer man approaches perfection, the clearer are his views, and the greater his enjoyments, till he has overcome the evils of his life and lost every desire for sin; and like the ancients, arrives at that point of faith where he is wrapped in the power and glory of his Maker and is caught up to dwell with Him. But we consider that this is a station to which no man ever arrived in a moment: he must have been instructed in the government and laws of that kingdom by proper degrees, until his mind is capable in some measure of comprehending6 the propriety, justice, equality, and consistency of the same."

-Joseph Smith, Jr., Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith

"No words can express how much the world owes to sorrow. Most of the Psalms were born in the wilderness. Most of the Epistles were written in a prison. The greatest thoughts of the greatest thinkers have all passed through fire. The greatest poets have "learned in suffering what they taught in song." In bonds Bunyan lived the allegory that he afterwards wrote, and we may thank Bedford Jail for the Pilgrim's Progress. Take comfort, afflicted Christian! When God is about to make pre-eminent use of a person, He put them in the fire."

-George MacDonald

 "It is our best work that God wants, not the dregs of our exhaustion.  I think He must prefer quality to quantity."

-George MacDonald

 "Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,

As to be hated needs but to be seen;

Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,

We first endure, then pity, then embrace."

-Alexander Pope, Essay on Man, Epistle II, line 35

 “Son,' he said,' ye cannot in your present state understand eternity...That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, "No future bliss can make up for it," not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say "Let me have but this and I'll take the consequences": little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. Both processes begin even before death. The good man's past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven: the bad man's past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is why...the Blessed will say "We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven, : and the Lost, "We were always in Hell." And both will speak truly.”

-C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

"If we ask ourselves what we desire the most in life, the most common answers would be:  love, happiness, peace, and power. What we want to experience is what we need to create in response to every scene. For only when we create it, can we experience it and radiate it into the world."

-BK Shivani, The Power of One Thought

"Our prayers can be - and should be - living discussions with our Heavenly Father."

-Russell M. Nelson, Think Celestial, October LDS General Conference 2023

 “Just as a man does not really desire food until he is hungry, so he does not desire the salvation of Christ until he knows why he needs Christ. No one adequately and properly knows why he needs Christ until he understands and accepts the doctrine of the Fall and its effect upon all mankind. And no other book in the world explains this vital doctrine nearly as well as the Book of Mormon.”

-Ezra T. Benson, 

Ensign, May 1987

 "When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves."

        -Victor Frankl

 "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by misunderstanding."

-Hanlon Razor

 "If you are depressed, you are living in the past.  If you are anxious, you are living in the future.  If you are at peace, you are living in the present."

-Lao Tzu

 "A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

-Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

ALONG THE ROAD

by Robert Browning Hamilton

I walked a mile with Pleasure;

She chattered all the way,

But left me none the wiser

For all she had to say.

I walked a mile with Sorrow

And ne'er a word said she;

But oh, the things I learned from her

When Sorrow walked with me!