David O. McKay
Let us realize that: the privilege to work is a gift, the power to work is a blessing, the love of work is success!Collection: Power
Do your duty, that is best; leave unto the Lord the rest.Collection: Best
Into the soul of every student I would have instilled the patriotic fervor of Patrick Henry.Collection: Patriotism
As precious as life itself is our heritage of individual freedom, for man's free agency is a God-given gift.Collection: Freedom
Freedom of choice is more to be treasured than any possession earth can give.
The rising sun can dispel the darkness of night, but it cannot banish the blackness of malice, hatred, bigotry, and selfishness from the hearts of humanity.
Happiness and peace will come to earth only as the light of love and human compassion enter the souls of men.
What you think about when you don't have to think, shows what you really are.
Men may yearn for peace, cry for peace, and work for peace, but there will be no peace until they follow the path pointed out by the Living Christ. He is the true light of men's lives.
Only to the extent that men desire peace and brotherhood can the world be made better. No peace even though temporarily obtained, will be permanent, whether to individuals or nations, unless it is built upon the solid foundation of eternal principles.
There is a crying need today to have this truth heralded throughout the land that youth especially may appreciate and hold the freedom of the individual as sacred as did our revolutionary fathers.
No other success can compensate for failure in the home. The poorest shack in which love prevails over a united family is of greater value to God and future humanity that any other riches. In such a home God can work miracles and will work miracles.Collection: Family
Your thoughts are the architects of your destiny.Collection: Inspirational
I'm going to tell you the most important secret of human life. The most critical need of the human soul is to be kind.Collection: Soul
The greatest work we will ever do will be within the walls of our home.Collection: Family
The home is the first and most effective place to learn the lessons of life: truth, honor, virtue, self control, the value of education, honest work, and the purpose and privilege of life. Nothing can take the place of home in rearing and teaching children, and no other success can compensate for failure in the home.Collection: Children
Be thankful that sometimes God lets you struggle for a long time before that answer comes. Your character will grow; your faith will increase. There is a relationship between these two: the greater your faith, the stronger your character, and increased character enhances your ability to exercise even greater faith.Collection: Struggle
When a Father takes the child by the hand, he takes the Mother by the Heart.... The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.Collection: Mother
There should be no yelling in the home unless there is a fire.Collection: Anger
There are seeds of happiness in every soul. Our mental attitude and dispositions constitute the environment in which these seeds germinate. There is as much need for sunshine in our heart as for sunshine in the world. Today, as perhaps never before, mankind needs encouragement and cheer.Collection: Encouragement
The development of our spiritual nature should concern us most. Spirituality is the highest acquisition of the soul, the divine in man; 'the supreme, crowning gift that makes him king of all created things.' It is the consciousness of victory over self and of communion with the infinite. It is spirituality alone which really gives one the best in life.Collection: Spiritual
Seek to share joy with others, or to make somebody else happy, and you will find your own soul radiant with the joy you wished for another.Collection: Joy
Find a purpose in life so big it will challenge every capacity to be at your best.Collection: Inspirational
The noblest calling in the world is motherhood. True motherhood is the most beautiful of all arts, the greatest of all professions. She who can paint a masterpiece, or who can write a book that will influence millions, deserve the plaudits and admiration of mankind; but she who rears successfully a family of healthy, beautiful sons and daughters whose immortal souls will exert influence throughout the ages long after paintings shall have faded, and books and statues shall have decayed or been destroyed, deserves the highest honor that man can give, and the choicest blessings of God.Collection: Beautiful
Thoughts mold your features. Thoughts lift your soul heavenward or drag you toward hell. … As nothing reveals character like the company we like and keep, so nothing foretells futurity like the thoughts over which we brood. … To have the approval of your conscience when you are alone with your thoughts is like being in the company of true and loving friends. To merit your own self-respect gives strength to character. Conscience is the link that binds your soul to the spirit of God.Collection: Character
Pleasure is not the purpose of man's existence. Joy is.Collection: Men
All good things require effort. That which is worth having will cost part of your physical being, your intellectual power, and your soul power—‘Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.’ (Matt. 7:7.) But you have to seek, you have to knock. On the other hand, sin thrusts itself upon you. It walks beside you, it tempts you, it entices, it allures. You do not have to put forth effort. … Evil seeks you, and it requires effort and fortitude to combat it. But truth and wisdom are gained only by seeking, by prayer, and by effort.Collection: Prayer
The true purpose of life is the perfection of humanity through individual effort, under the guidance of God's inspiration. Real life is response to the best within us. To be alive only to appetite, pleasure, pride, money-making, and not to goodness and kindness, purity and love, poetry, music, flowers, stars, God and eternal hopes, is to deprive one's self of the real joy of living.Collection: Religious
No man can sincerely resolve to apply to his daily life the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth without sensing a change in his own nature. The phrase, 'born again', has a deeper significance than many people attach to it. This changed feeling may be indescribable, but it is real.Collection: Jesus
The most powerful thing in the world is an idea.Collection: Powerful
True happiness comes only by making others happy.Collection: True Happiness
Happiness consists not of having, but of being. It is a warm glow of the heart at peace with itself.Collection: Heart
Sincere prayer implies that when we ask for any virtue or blessing, we should work for the blessing and cultivate the virtue.Collection: Prayer
It is written that he who governs well, leads the blind; But that he who teaches, gives them eyes.Collection: Eye
He who harbors hatred and bitterness injures himself far more than the one towards whom he manifests these evil propensities.Collection: Anger
… The most worthy calling in life is that in which man can serve best his fellow man. … The noblest aim in life is to strive to live to make other lives better and happier.Collection: Men
Happiness consists not of having, but of being; not of possessing, but of enjoying. It is a warm glow of the heart at peace with itself. A martyr at the stake may have happiness that a king on his throne might envy. Man is the creator of his own happiness. It is the aroma of life, lived in harmony with high ideals. For what a man has he may be dependent upon others; what he is rests with him alone.Collection: Kings
All good things require effort. That which is worth having will cost part of your physical being, your intellectual power and your soul power. Let us ever keep in mind that life is largely what we make it.Collection: Effort
Friendship is a sacred possession. As air, water and sunshine to flowers, trees and verdure, so smiles, sympathy and love of friends to the daily life of man. To live, laugh, love one's friends, and be loved by them is to bask in the sunshine of life.Collection: Flower
President David O. McKay (1873-1970) observed that too many couples come to "marriage looking upon the marriage ceremony as the end of courtship instead of the beginning of an eternal courtship. ... Love can be starved to death as literally as the body that receives no sustenance. Love feeds upon kindness and courtesy"Collection: Marriage
One time or another we all face adversity's chilling wind. One man flees from it, and like an unresisting kite falls to the ground. Another yields no retreating inch, and the wind that would destroy him lifts him as readily to the heights. We are not measured by the trials we meet, only by those we overcome.Collection: Time
The greatest need in the world today is faith in God and courage to do His will.Collection: Needs
Brothers and sisters, I believe that there are few, even temple workers, who comprehend the full meaning and power of the temple endowment. Seen for what it is, it is the step-by-step ascent into the Eternal Presence. If our young people could but glimpse it, it would be the most powerful spiritual motivation of their lives.Collection: Spiritual
Let husband and wife never speak to one another in loud tones,unless the house is on fire.Collection: Husband
Man is a spiritual being, a soul, and at some period of his life everyone is possessed with an irresistible desire to know his relationship to the Infinite. . . . There is something within him which urges him to rise above himself, to control his environment, to master the body and all things physical and live in a higher and more beautiful world.Collection: Beautiful
The aim of education is to develop resources in the child that will contribute to his well-being as long as life endures; to develop power of self-mastery that he may never be a slave to indulgence or other weaknesses, to develop [strong] manhood, beautiful womanhood that in every child and every youth may be found at least the promise of a friend, a companion, one who later may be fit for husband or wife, an exemplary father or a loving intelligent mother, one who can face life with courage, meet disaster with fortitude, and face death without fear.Collection: Beautiful
The peril of this century is spiritual apathy. As the body requires sunlight, good food, proper exercise and rest, so the spirit of man requires the sunlight of the Holy Spirit; proper exercise of the spiritual functions; the avoiding of evils that affect spiritual health, that are more ravaging in their effects than typhoid fever, pneumonia, or other diseases that attack the body.Collection: Spiritual
A man's reaction to his appetites and impulses when they are roused gives the measure of that man's character. In these reactions are revealed the man's power to govern or his forced servility to yield.Collection: Character
I desire to call attention to the fact that the united, well ordered American home is one of the greatest contributing factors to the preservation of the Constitution of the United States. It has been aptly said that "Out of the homes of America will come the future citizens of America, and only as those homes are what they should be will this nation be what it should be."Collection: Home
Every noble impulse, every unselfish expression of love, every surrender of self to something higher than self, every loyalty to an ideal, every fine courage of the soul – by doing good for good’s sake – that is spirituality. –Collection: Loyalty