“In the end, the number of prayers we say may contribute to our happiness, but the number of prayers we answer may be of even greater importance.”

Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Topics: Home Teaching, Prayer, Service, Work

“One of my favorite newspaper columnists is Jenkin Lloyd Jones. In a recent article published in the News, he commented: ‘There seems to be a superstition among many thousands of our young who hold hands and smooch in the drive-ins that marriage is a cottage surrounded by perpetual hollyhocks, to which a perpetually young and handsome husband comes home to a perpetually young and ravishing wife. When the hollyhocks wither and boredom and bills appear, the divorce courts are jammed. Anyone who imagines that bliss is normal is going to waste a lot of time running around shouting that he’s been robbed. The fact is that most putts don’t drop. Most beef is tough. Most children grow up to be just ordinary 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.’”

Gordon B. Hinckley | God Shall Give unto You Knowledge by His Holy Spirit

Topics: Dating & Courtship, Divorce, Marriage, Work

“The best antidote I know for worry is work. The best cure for weariness is the challenge of helping someone who is even more tired. One of the great ironies of life is this: He or she who serves almost always benefits more than he or she who is served.”

Gordon B. Hinckley | Standing for Something: 10 Neglected Virtues That Will Heal Our Hearts and Homes

Topics: Missionary Work & Preparation, Service, Work

“Wanting love is good and wanting to excel is good. The trouble comes from trying to tie them together. Pursue love and pursue excellence – pursue them with abandon. But you will spoil the joy native to each if you spend your life wanting to be loved because you are loved. Love is for its own sake. It works only as a gift, never a reward. It can’t be earned or bartered or not given at all.”

Adam S. Miller | Letters to a Young Mormon

Topics: Blessings, Love, Work

“Education is the power to think clearly, the power to act well in the world’s work, and the power to appreciate life.”

Brigham Young

Topics: Education, Service, Wisdom, Work

The Saints should not imagine that because they know the truth and the Work of God at the present time, that they will always know these things and therefore be able to stand. If they lose the Holy Spirit through their transgressions, from that moment their knowledge respecting the Work of God ceases to increase and becomes dead; a short time only elapses before such persons deny the faith. They may not deny that the Work was ever true, or that the Elders were ever the servants of God, but they will place a limit and say, ‘Up to such a time the work was true and the Elders were all right, but, after that, they went astray,’ – that very period being the time at which they themselves had committed some act or acts to forfeit the Spirit of God and kill the growth of that knowledge which they had had bestowed upon them. This has been the case in numerous instances in the past. . . . It is plain that it is they who have transgressed, and thereby driven the Spirit of the Lord from them; and at the very time they say the Church of God strayed, they themselves were guilty of transgression.

George Q. Cannon | “Knowledge, without the Aid of the Spirit of the Lord, Not Sufficient to Save,” Millennial Star, 8 Aug. 1863, pp. 505–6.

Topics: Conversion, Faith, Missionary Work & Preparation, Testimony, Truth, Work

“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”

Maya Angelou

Topics: Agency, Inspirational Quotes, Motivational Quotes, Work

“Setting goals is a worthy endeavor. We know that our Heavenly Father has goals because He has told us that His work and glory is ‘to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man’ (Moses 1:39). “Our personal goals can bring out the best in us. However, one of the things that derail our efforts in making and keeping resolutions is procrastination. We sometimes delay starting, waiting for the right moment to begin—the first day of a new year, the beginning of summer, when we’re called as bishop or Relief Society president, after the kids get into school, after we retire.”

Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf | The Best Time to Plant a Tree

Topics: Diligence, Goals, Procrastination, Work

“For members of the Church, education is not merely a good idea—it’s a commandment.”

Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Topics: Education, Intelligence, Work

“The poor use of time is a close cousin of idleness. As we follow the command to “cease to be idle” (D&C 88:124), we must be sure that being busy also equates to being productive. For example, it is wonderful to have the means of instant communication quite literally at our fingertips, but let us be sure that we do not become compulsive fingertip communicators. I sense that some are trapped in a new time-consuming addiction—one that enslaves us to be constantly checking and sending social messages and thus giving the false impression of being busy and productive…There is much that is good with our easy access to communication and information. I have found it helpful to access research articles, conference talks, and ancestral records, and to receive e-mails, Facebook reminders, tweets, and texts. As good as these things are, we cannot allow them to push to one side those things of greatest importance. How sad it would be if the phone and computer, with all their sophistication, drowned out the simplicity of sincere prayer to a loving Father in Heaven. Let us be as quick to kneel as we are to text….Electronic games and cyber acquaintances are no lasting substitute for real friends who can give an encouraging hug, who can pray for us and seek after our best interest. How grateful I have been to see quorum, class, and Relief Society members rally to the support of one another. On such occasions I have better understood what the Apostle Paul meant when he said, “Ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints” (Ephesians 2:19).”

Ian S. Ardern | A Time to Prepare

Topics: Addiction, Social Media, Work

“My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.”

Abraham Lincoln

Topics: Diligence, Goals, Work

You can’t merely snap your fingers and get great faith in God, any more than you can snap your fingers and get great musical ability. Faith takes hold of us only when we take hold of it. The great psychologist, William James, said, “That which holds our attention determines our action,” and one of the unfortunate things in life is that we sometimes focus our attention on the wrong things.

Sterling Sill | Conference Report, April 1955, p. 117

Topics: Faith, Work

“Christ’s arrangement with us is similar to a mom providing music lessons for her child. Mom pays the piano teacher. How many know what I am talking about? Because Mom pays the debt in full, she can turn to her child and ask for something. What is it? Practice! Does the child’s practice pay the piano teacher? No. Does the child’s practice repay Mom for paying the piano teacher? No. Practicing is how the child shows appreciation for Mom’s incredible gift. It is how he takes advantage of the amazing opportunity Mom is giving him to live his life at a higher level. Mom’s joy is found not in getting repaid but in seeing her gift used—seeing her child improve. And so she continues to call for practice, practice, practice.”

Brad Wilcox | His Grace is Sufficient

Topics: Grace, Jesus Christ, Work

“Jesus doesn’t make up the difference. Jesus makes all the difference. Grace is not about filling gaps. It is about filling us.”

Brad Wilcox | His Grace is Sufficient

Topics: Grace, Jesus Christ, Work

“[Your chosen field] should be one which will challenge your intellect and which will make maximum utilization of your talents and your capabilities. Finally, it should be a field that will supply sufficient remuneration to provide adequately for your companion and your children. Now that’s a big order. But I bear testimony that these criteria are very important in choosing your life’s work.”

Thomas S. Monson

Topics: Career, Education, Work

“Work is always a spiritual necessity even if, for some, work is not an economic necessity.”

Elder Neal A. Maxwell | “Put Your Shoulder to the Wheel”

Topics: Career, Work

“Continuous effort – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential.”

Winston Churchill

Topics: Diligence, Growth, Inspirational Quotes, Potential, Short Quotes, Work

“We don’t have to work our way into grace; we have to stop working so hard to pretend we aren’t already in it”

Adam S. Miller | Future Mormon

Topics: Grace, Work

“Sunday is not necessarily a day to catch up on our sleep, but to rest from things of the world, although we usually find ourselves working harder on this day than any other. But it’s a different kind of work—it’s the Lord’s work. Thus, the Sabbath is our weekly opportunity to enter into God’s presence, . . . partake of His glory, and ultimately prepare ourselves for that reality.”

Gaye Strathearn

Topics: Sabbath Day, Work

“‘Grace shall be as your day’—what an interesting phrase. We have all sung it hundreds of times, but have we stopped to consider what it means? “Grace shall be as your day”: grace shall be like a day. As dark as night may become, we can always count on the sun coming up. As dark as our trials, sins, and mistakes may appear, we can always have confidence in the grace of Jesus Christ. Do we earn a sunrise? No. Do we have to be worthy of a chance to begin again? No. We just have to accept these blessings and take advantage of them. As sure as each brand-new day, grace—the enabling power of Jesus Christ—is constant. Faithful pioneers knew they were not alone. The task ahead of them was never as great as the power behind them.”

Brad Wilcox | His Grace is Sufficient

Topics: Grace, Jesus Christ, Work

Work, chained to its outcome, is misery. Do what you can, do it better than you’re able, and let things happen as they may. The action, not its fruit, is your business. The outcome is not your concern. If God is going to show himself to you in the work that you shoulder, he will only do so if you’ve stopped craving an approving audience and, instead, work out your own salvation.

Adam S. Miller

Topics: Leadership, Salvation, Work

However much faith to obey God we now have, we will need to strengthen it continually and keep it refreshed constantly. We can do that by deciding now to be more quick to obey and more determined to endure. Learning to start early and to be steady are the keys to spiritual preparation. Procrastination and inconsistency are its mortal enemies.

Elder Henry B. Eyring | “Spiritual Preparedness: Start Early and Be Steady,” Ensign, November 2005, p. 38

Topics: Faith, Procrastination, Work

Nikolai Berdyaev taught the same principle: “A false interpretation of ‘good works’ leads to a complete perversion of Christianity. ‘Good works’ are regarded not as an expression of love for God and man, not as a manifestation of the gracious source that gives life to others, but as a means of salvation and justification for oneself, as a way of realizing the abstract idea of the Good and receiving a reward in the future life. ‘Good works,’ done not for the good of others, but for the good of one’s own soul, are not good at all. Where there is no love, there is no goodness. Love does not require or expect any reward, it is reward in itself, it is a ray of paradise illuminating and transfiguring reality.”

Terryl and Fiona Givens | "The Christ Who Heals"

Topics: Integrity, Service, Work

“It is interesting that the first recorded instruction given to Adam after the Fall, dealt with the eternal principle of work. The Lord said: “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.” (Gen. 3:19.) Our Heavenly Father loves us so completely that he has given us a commandment to work. This is one of the keys to eternal life. He knows that we will learn more, grow more, achieve more, serve more, and benefit more from a life of industry than from a life of ease.”

Howard W. Hunter | Prepare for Honorable Employment

Topics: Career, Work