Lds Quotes

“And whenever I look over at him and he meets my eyes, I try to say, See? It could be like this. It could be like this every day.

But then I see his own words pushed back to me, high and tight in his thoughts: It could. But I'd lose everything I know and everyone I have.”
― Christina Lauren, Autoboyography

“Grace doesn't grease the wheels of the law. Grace isn't God's way of jury rigging a broken law. It's the other way around. The law is just one small cog in a world animated entirely--from top to bottom, from beginning to end--by grace.”
― Adam S. Miller, Grace Is Not God's Backup Plan: An Urgent Paraphrase of Paul's Letter to the Romans

“Speaking to God feels like instinct, like it's wired into me. I can't imagine what I'd do if I left. It's like standing in an open field and trying to point to the four walls. There's just no framework to my life without the church.”
― Christina Lauren, Autoboyography

“I won't deny that it is possible for our restless hearts to find rest in God, but I do want to deny that this rest results from the satisfaction of our desires. God does not save us from our hungers by satisfying them. God saves us from the tyranny of our desires by saving us from the impossible work of satisfying them.
[from the essay "The God Who Weeps: Notes, Amens, and Disagreements)”
― Adam S. Miller, Future Mormon: Essays in Mormon Theology

“The most important doctrine I can declare, and the most powerful testimony I can bear, is of the atoning sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. His atonement is the most transcendent event that ever has or ever will occur from Creation’s dawn through all the ages of a never-ending eternity.”
― Bruce R. McConkie

“All men have their FEARS. But those who face their fears with FAITH have COURAGE as well.”
― Thomas S. Monson

“Set aside time each day to thank the Lord for that day. Never allow yourself to forget, even if it's a quick "thank you for getting me through another day.”
― Elder M. Russell Ballard

“If we are serious about climbing to higher ground, we will be found in church every Sunday—attending all of our meetings, partaking of the sacrament, participating in Sunday School, and contributing to the spirit found in Relief Society, Primary, and priesthood meetings.”
― Robert L. Millet

“The Lord needs us. He needs us to be knowledgeable, dependable, and competent disciples. We need to know not only that the gospel is true but we need to know the gospel, better than we do right now. We need to be in the right place at the right time. We will thereby become the right person.”
― Robert L. Millet, Coming to Know Christ

“Not only must we move forward in a monumental manner more copies of the Book of Mormon, but we must move boldly forward into our own lives and throughout the earth more of its marvelous messages.”
― Ezra Taft Benson

“The only way to get through life is to laugh your way through it. You either have to laugh or cry. I prefer to laugh. Crying gives my a headache.”
― Majorie Pay Hinckley

“There were men in those dark ages who could commune with God, and who, by the power of faith, could draw aside the curtain of eternity and gaze upon the face of God, have the ministering of angels, and unfold the future destinies of the world. If those were dark ages, I pray God to give me a little darkness.”
― John Taylor

“To those who in their turn selectively handle Mormon history and discourage our probing it in a number of areas, one needs to say (or at least to ask): Haven’t we been, if anything, overly cautious, overly mistrustful, overly condescending to a membership and a public who are far more perceptive and discerning than we often give them credit for? Haven’t we, in our care not to offend a soul or cause anyone the least misunderstanding, too much deprived such individuals of needful occasions for personal growth and more in-depth life-probing experience? In our neurotic cautiousness, our fear of venturing, haven’t we often settled for an all-too-shallow and confining common denominator that insults the very Intelligence we presume to glorify and is also dishonest because, deep down, we all know better (to the extent that we do)? Isn’t our intervention often too arbitrary, reflecting the hasty, uninformed reaction of only one or a couple of influential objectors? Don’t we in the process too severely and needlessly test the loyalty and respect of and lose credibility with many more than we imagine? Isn’t there a tendency among us, bred by the fear of displeasing, to avoid healthy self-disclosure—public or private—and to pretend about ourselves to ourselves and others? Doesn’t this in turn breed loneliness and make us, more than it should, strangers to each other? And when we are too calculating, too self-conscious, too mistrustful, too prescriptive, and too regimental about our roots and about one another’s aesthetic, intellectual, and spiritual life, aren’t we self-defeating?”
― Thomas F. Rogers, Let Your Hearts and Minds Expand: Reflections on Faith, Reason, Charity, and Beauty

“We can think a healed thought and speak a healed word, speak of and to the two who are One, our MotherGoddessFatherGod. The hopeful but misty thought that "I've a Mother there" will give way to the experience that "I've a Mother here." We will know Him, Her, Them, Us, the Divine Family unbroken, bringing part to whole and whole to part, singing the indispensable She who had been forgotten but it now found, singing the wholeness, singing the holiness.”
― Carol Lynn Pearson, The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy: Haunting the Hearts and Heaven of Mormon Women and Men

“Repentance is not a foreboding word. It is, after faith, the most encouraging word in the Christian vocabulary. Repentance is simply the scriptural invitation for growth and improvement and progress and renewal. You can change! You can be anything you want to be in righteousness.”
― Jeffrey R. Holland, However Long & Hard the Road

“I would like to have a dollar for every person in a courtship who knew he or she had felt the guidance of the Lord in that relationship, had prayed about the experience enough to know it was the will of the Lord, knew they loved each other and enjoyed each other’s company, and saw a lifetime of wonderful compatibility ahead—only to panic, to get a brain cramp, to have total catatonic fear sweep over them. They ‘draw back,’ as Paul said, if not into perdition at least into marital paralysis. I am not saying you shouldn’t be very careful about something as significant and serious as marriage…Yes, there are cautions and considerations to make, but once there has been genuine illumination, beware the temptation to retreat from a good thing. If it was right when you prayed about it and trusted it and lived for it, it is right now. Don’t give up when the pressure mounts.”
― Jeffrey R. Holland

“As a General Authority, it is my responsibility to preach general principles. When I do, I don't try to define all the exceptions... I only teach the general rules. Whether an exception applies to you is your responsibility. You must work out individually between you and the Lord.”
― Dallin H. Oaks

“In recent years we might be compared to a team of doctors issuing prescriptions to cure or to immunize our members against spiritual diseases. Each time some moral or spiritual ailment was diagnosed, we have rushed to the pharmacy to concoct another remedy, encapsulate it as a program and send it out with pages of directions for use... Over medication, over-programming is a critically serious problem.”
― Boyd K. Packer

“Sin acts as if God's original plan was for us to bootstrap ourselves into holiness by way of the law and then, when this didn't quite pan out, God offered his grace--but only the bare minimum--to make good the difference. This is exactly backwards. God's boundless grace comes first and sin is what follows.”
― Adam S. Miller, Grace Is Not God's Backup Plan: An Urgent Paraphrase of Paul's Letter to the Romans

“Joseph Smith was not concerned about how divination and money digging would impact his social, political, and religious reputation. His teenage years were not formed in an environment where magic was the primary influence upon him or others...but at the same time, it was not uncommon for people to take interest in the supernatural. Other religious leaders who were at one time interested in the folklore of magic generally did not have to justify their curiosity....

...[R]esearch has shown that between 1810 and 1840 there was an apparent increase in the use of both seer stones and divining rods to find buried treasure in the American northwest frontier.

Searching for buried treasure was usually done with a divining rod, in a similar fashion similar to searching for subterranean water but in this case involving the use of seer stones. ... The supernatural element was important to money digging, and modern historians studying the use of seer stones in the Book of Mormon translation process often look at Joseph's money-digging days for answers or clues to understand the translation process better.

The decision to make this comparison, though, is structured around a division: the idea that money digging was a nonreligious endeavor, while the translation of the Book of Mormon was decidedly religious in nature. However, these are labels imposed by the modern perspective, and they ignore that both treasure seeking and translating were likely perceived by Joseph's early converts as supernatural events. Early believers did not necessarily struggle with the fusion of Joseph the treasure seeker and Joseph the translator, even if future Church members would.”
― Michael Hubbard MacKay

“I would not have been able to articulate it at that time, but I had begun a painful journey toward an impossible goal, a journey that lasted a long time: how to love a God who hurts you.”
― Carol Lynn Pearson, The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy: Haunting the Hearts and Heaven of Mormon Women and Men

“I suggest that the representation of women deserves a much higher consideration in our religious discourse. When words are presented as if they come directly from God, they can have monumental impact on our psyches, our spirits, our hearts, and our relationships. Women are given, in story at least, first place in the lifeboats, but often in more common circumstances we are consigned to the back of the bus.”
― Carol Lynn Pearson, The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy: Haunting the Hearts and Heaven of Mormon Women and Men

“My knowledge is, if you will follow the teachings of Jesus Christ and his Apostles, as recorded in the New Testament, every man and woman will be put in possession of the Holy Ghost; every person will become a Prophet, Seer, and Revelator, and an expounder of truth. They will know things that are, that will be, and that have been. They will understand things in heaven, things on the earth, and things under the earth, things of time, and things of eternity, according to their several callings and capacities.”
― Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, Volume 1

“What if we saw the mediocre talk, the overbearing counselor, the lesson read straight from the manual, as a lay member’s equivalent of the widow’s mite? A humble offering, perhaps, but one to be measured in terms of the capacity of the giver rather than in the value received. … If that sounds too idealistic, if we insist on imposing a higher standard on our co-worshippers, if we insist on measuring our worship service in terms of what we “get out of” the meeting, then perhaps we have erred in the our understanding of worship. … Worship is about what we are prepared to relinquish—what we give up at personal cost.”
― Terryl L. Givens, The Crucible of Doubt: Reflections On the Quest for Faith

“Women in the scriptures were not systematically ignored any more than the majority of men were; they simply wielded their influence in a more intimate, less visible sphere.”
― John W. Welch, Glimpses of Lehi's Jerusalem

“One of the grand fundamental principles of Mormonism is to receive truth, let it come from whence it may.”
― Joseph Smith Jr.

“Clayton reported Heber C. Kimball’s recollection: “Joseph said that for men and women to hold their tongues, was their Salvation.”
― William Clayton, An Intimate Chronicle: The Journals of William Clayton

“Clayton reported Brigham Young saying that “the man must love his God and the woman must love her husband,” adding that “woman will never get back, unless she follows the man back.”
― William Clayton, An Intimate Chronicle: The Journals of William Clayton

“[May 29, 1843. Monday] This A.M. President Joseph told me that he felt as though I was not treating him exactly right and asked if I had used any familiarity with E[mma]. I told him by no means and explained to his satisfaction.

[June 23, 1843. Friday.] This A.M. President Joseph took me and conversed considerable concerning some delicate matters. Said [Emma] wanted to lay a snare for me. He told me last night of this and said he had felt troubled. He said [Emma] had treated him coldly and badly since I came . . . and he knew she was disposed to be revenged on him for some things. She thought that if he would indulge himself she would too.”
― William Clayton, An Intimate Chronicle: The Journals of William Clayton

“Joseph told me to day that [William?] "Walker" had been speaking to him concerning my having taken M[argaret] away from A[aron] and intimated that I had done wrong. I told him to be quiet and say no more about it. He also told me Emma was considerably displeased with it but says he she will soon get over it. In the agony of mind which I have endured on this subject I said I was sorry I had done it, as which Joseph told me not to say so. I finally asked him if I had done wrong in what I had done. He answered no you have a right to get all you can.”
― William Clayton, An Intimate Chronicle: The Journals of William Clayton