"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

"The trouble with most of our prayers is that we give them as if we were picking up the telephone and ordering groceries—we place our order and hang up. We need to meditate, contemplate, think of what we are praying about and for and then speak to the Lord as one man speaketh to another."

-Gordon B. Hinkley

"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

"Therefore, dearly beloved brethren, let us cheerfully do all things that lie in our power; and then may we stand still, with the utmost assurance, to see the salvation of God, and for his arm to be revealed."

Doctrine & Covenants 123:17

"I believe in Christ as I believe in the sun at noonday.  Not because I can see it, but by it I can see everything else."

C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

The Seven Deadly Sins

"Wealth without Work
Pleasure without Conscience
Knowledge without Character
Commerce without Morality
Science without Humanity
Religion without Sacrifice
Politics without Principle"

Mahatma Gandhi

"Life by the yard is hard; by the inch it's a cinch.  Each of us can be true for just one day -- and then one more and then one more after that -- until we've lived a lifetime guided by the Spirit, a lifetime close to the Lord, a lifetime of good deeds and righteousness."

Thomas S. Monson
Believe, Obey, and Endure, Ensign May 2012

"Act is the blossom of thought, and joy and suffering are its fruits."

James Allen
As a Man Thinketh, p13

"We have not been blessed with moral agency to do whatever we want whenever we will.  Rather, according to the Father's plan, we have received moral agency to choose the right, to do good, and to become whatever God intends for us to become."

David A. Bednar
Act in Doctrine

"Never take counsel from your fears."

-Stonewall Jackson

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