Spencer W. Kimball
Develop discipline of self so that you do not have to decide and re-decide what you will do when you are confronted with the same temptation time and time again. You need only decide some things once.Collection: Self
A dozen times a day we come to a fork in the road and must decide which way we will go. It is important to get our ultimate objectives clearly in mind so that we do not become distracted at each fork in the road by the irrelevant questions: Which is the easier or more pleasant way? Or, Which way are others going?Collection: Choices
Only when you lift a burden, God will lift your burden. Divine paradox this! The man who staggers and falls because his burden is too great can lighten that burden by taking on the weight of another's burden. You get by giving, but your part of giving must be given first.Collection: Fall
The best way to resist temptation is to avoid it. Prevention is far, far better than repentance.Collection: Temptation
Preparedness, when properly pursued, is a way of life, not a sudden, spectacular program.Collection: Survival
Perhaps the greatest reason for missionary work is to give the world it's chance to hear and accept the gospel. The scriptures are replete with commands and promises and calls and rewards for teach the gospel. I use the word command deliberately for it seems to be an insistent directive from which we, singly and collectively, cannot escape...I wonder if we are doing all we can. Are we complacent in our approach to teaching all the world? We have been proselyting now 144 years. Are we prepared to lengthen our stride? To enlarge our vision?Collection: Teaching
Strength and struggle travel together.Collection: Struggle
Your own private journal should record the way you face up to challenges that beset you. Do not suppose life changes so much that your experiences will not be interesting to your posterity. Experiences of work, relations with people, and an awareness of the rightness and wrongness of actions will always be relevant.Collection: Life Changing
Oh, brothers and sisters, families can be forever! Do not let the lures [or the irritants] of the moment draw you away from them! Divinity, eternity, and family--they go together, hand in hand, and so must we!Collection: Brother
Of all treasures of knowledge, the most vital is the knowledge of God, his existence, powers, love, and promises.Collection: Promise
Man must live, not only exist; he must do, not merely be; he must grow, not just vegetate.Collection: Men
I have learned that it is by serving that we learn how to serve. When we engaged in the service of our fellowmen, not only do our deeds assist them but we put our own problems in fresher perspective. When we concern ourselves more with others, there is less time to be concerned with ourselvesCollection: Perspective
What could you do better for your children and your children's children than to record the story of your life, your triumphs over adversity, your recovery after a fall, your progress when all seemed black, your rejoicing when you had finally achieved? Some of what you write may be humdrum dates and places, but there will also be rich passages that will be quoted by your posterity.Collection: Children
We must remember that those mortals we meet in parking lots, offices, elevators, and elsewhere are that portion of mankind God has given us to love and to serve. It will do us little good to speak of the general brotherhood of mankind if we cannot regard those who are all around us as our brothers and sisters.Collection: Brother
Suffering can make saints of people as they learn patience, long-suffering and self-mastery.Collection: Adversity
God is good. He is eager to forgive. He wants us to perfect ourselves and maintain control of ourselves. He does not want Satan and others to control our lives. We must learn that keeping our Heavenly Father's commandments represents the only path to total control of ourselves, the only way to find joy, truth, and fulfillment in this life and in eternity.Collection: Father
The burning bushes, the smoking mountains, . . . the Cumorahs, and the Kirtlands were realities; but they were the exceptions. . . . Always expecting the spectacular, many will miss entirely the constant flow of revealed communication.Collection: Communication
We are in a position, as musicians, to touch the souls of those who listen.Collection: Music
If you are going to err, err on the side of mercy.Collection: Sides
Time cannot be recycled. When a moment has gone, it is really gone. Wise time management is really wise management of ourselves.Collection: Wise
Modern idols or false gods can take such forms as clothes, homes, businesses, machines, automobiles, pleasure boats, and numerous other material deflectors.Collection: Home
The more we serve our fellowmen in appropriate ways, the more substance there is to our souls. We become more significant individuals as we serve others. We become more substantive as we serve others—indeed, it is easier to “find” ourselves because there is so much more of us to find!Collection: Soul
So much depends upon our willingness to make up our minds, collectively and individually, that present levels of performance are not acceptable, either to ourselves or to the Lord. In saying that, I am not calling for flashy, temporary differences in our performance levels, but a quiet resolve to do a better job, to lengthen our stride.Collection: Jobs
There isn't anything else more important than taking the gospel to the world.Collection: Important
Your life is your own, to develop or to destroy. You can blame others little and yourself almost totally if that life is not a productive, worthy, full, and abundant one.Collection: Littles
If you have not done so yet, decide to decide.Collection: Decision
The time will come when only those who believe deeply and actively in the family will be able to preserve their families in the midst of the gathering evil around us.Collection: Family
Being human, we would expel from our lives physical pain and mental anguish and assure ourselves of continual ease and comfort, but if we were to close the doors upon sorrow and distress, we might be excluding our greatest friends and benefactors. Suffering can make saints of people as they learn patience, long-suffering, and self-mastery.Collection: Pain
We should be involved in quiet acts of selfless service.Collection: Selfless
I beg of you, you who could and should be bearing and rearing a family: Wives, come home from the typewriter, the laundry, the nursing, come home from the factory, the cafe. No career approaches in importance that of wife, homemaker, mother -- cooking meals, washing dishes, making beds for one's precious husband and children. Come home, wives, to your husbands. Make home a heaven for them. Come home, wives, to your children, born and unborn. Wrap the motherly cloak about you and, unembarrassed, help in a major role to create the bodies for the immortal souls who anxiously await.Collection: Mother
[Humility is:] Greatness in plain clothesCollection: Humility
What relief! What comfort! What joy! Those laden with transgressions and sorrows and sin may be forgiven and cleansed and purified if they will return to their Lord, learn of him, and keep his commandmentsCollection: Joy
It would be a fine thing if ... parents would have in every bedroom in their house a picture of the temple so [their children] from the time [they are] infant[s] could look at the picture every day [until] it becomes a part of [their lives]. When [they reach] the age that [they need] to make [the] very important decision [concerning going to the temple], it will have already been made.Collection: Children
Get a notebook, my young folks, a journal that will last through all time, and maybe the angels may quote from it for eternity. Begin today and write in it your goings and comings, your deepest thoughts, your achievements and your failures, your associations and your triumphs, your impressions and your testimonies.Collection: Notebook
Real craftsmanship, regardless of the skill involved, reflects real caring, and real caring reflects our attitude about ourselves, about our fellowmen, and about life.Collection: Attitude
How long has it been since you took your children, whatever their size, in your arms and told them that you love them and are glad that they can be yours forever?Collection: Love
We do believe in setting goals. We live by goals. In athletics we always have a goal. When we go to school, we have the goal of graduation and degrees. Our total existence is goal-oriented. We must have goals to make progress, encouraged by keeping records . . . as the swimmer or the jumper or the runner does . . . Progress is easier when it is timed, checked, and measured. . . .Goals are good. Laboring with a distant aim sets the mind in a higher key and puts us at our best. Goals should always be made to a point that will make us reach and strain.Collection: Believe
The nation is built upon the foundation of its homes and the home upon its families.Collection: Home
We know so little. Our judgment is so limited. We judge the Lord's ways from our own narrow view.Collection: Views
The more we serve our fellowmen in appropriate ways, the more substance there is to our souls.Collection: Soul
Undaunted faith can stop the mouths of lions, make ineffective the fiery flames, make dry corridors through beds of rivers and seas. Unwavering faith can protect against deluge, terminate droughts, heal the sick, and bring heavenly manifestations. Indomitable faith can help us live the commandments and thereby bring blessings unnumbered with peace, perfection, and exaltation in the kingdom of God.Collection: Blessing
If we live in such a way that the considerations of eternity press upon us, we will make better decisions. Perhaps this is why President Brigham Young once said that if he could do but one thing to bless the Saints, he believed it would be to give them eyes with which to see things as they are.Collection: Eye
It is not so much what we know that is important, as what we are and what we do.Collection: Important
One of the most fallacious doctrines originated by Satan and propounded by man is that man is saved alone by the grace of God; that belief in Jesus Christ alone is all that is needed for salvationCollection: Jesus
By one means or another, the swiftest method of rejection of the holy prophets has been to find a pretext, however false or absurd, to dismiss the man so that his message could also be dismissed.Collection: Mean
Leadership is the ability to encourage the best efforts of others in working toward a desirable goal.Collection: Best Effort
The only way we can keep our freedom is to work at it. Not some of us. All of us. Not some of the time, but all of the time. So if you value your citizenship and you want to keep it for yourself and your children and their children, give it your faith, your belief, and give it your active support in civic affairs.Collection: Children
We must lengthen our stride and must do it now because we over ate and feel fat.Collection: Thanksgiving
Waste is unjustified, and especially the waste of time limited as that commodity is in our days of probation. One must live, not only exist; he must do, not merely be; he must grow, not just vegetate.Collection: Waste