Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.  Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.  It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.  We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?  Actually, who are you not to be?  You are a child of God.  Your playing small does not serve the world.  There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.  We are all meant to shine, as children do.  We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.  It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.  And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.  As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

-Marianne Williamson
A Return to Love:  Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles

“I had spent a lot of time figuring out who I was, shaping myself, creating an identity and I thought that identity was something inside of me that I projected outward and when I was suddenly in a world in which nobody knew me and nobody understood me and all those things, I started to realize that who we are is actually reflected back to us by the people around us, by people who love us.

“You are suddenly in a world where nobody understands why you’re there or what you’re doing or who you are - you suddenly start to ask the same questions.

“So I was basically widdled down to nothing.  I felt like I had no self.  The beauty of that – there’s a lesson there, right?  There’s this lesson – that our connections matter, that how we treat others matters, that it affects their identity directly.  And there’s another lesson there as well.  As I lost myself, I actually found myself broken down to a point where I could learn faster than I’ve ever learned in my life."

-Michael Wesch

The End of Wonder in the Age of Whatever

BYU Speeches

"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

"Excellence is not found in just knowing the scriptures, not just loving the scriptures, but in living the scriptures."

Emmett Smith
Excellence in the Common Man, BYU Education Week 2002

I haven't posted lately due to internet malfunction and the flu, so here's a speech that has more than enough wisdom in it.  It was very thought provoking.  It's by Michael Wesch and it's titled, "The End of Wonder in the Age of Whatever."

Speeches

"One of the greatest indicators of righteous character is the capacity to recognize and appropriately respond to other people who are experiencing the very challenge or adversity that is most immediately and forcefully pressing upon us.  Character is revealed, for example, in the power to discern the suffering of other people when we ourselves are suffering; in the ability to detect the hunger of others when we are hungry; and in the power to reach out and extend compassion for the spiritual agony of others when we are in the midst of our own spiritual distress.  Therefore, character is demonstrated by looking, turning, and reaching outward when the instinctive response of the "natural man" (Mosiah 3:19) in each of us is to turn inward and to be selfish and self-absorbed.  And the Savior of the world is the source, the standard, and the ultimate criterion of moral character and the perfect example of charity and consistency."

David A. Bednar
Act in Doctorine