Neal a. maxwell quotes

Though we live in a failing world, we have not been sent here to fail.

Patience helps us to view imperfections in others more generously to the end that we may learn to be more wise than they have been.

Joshua didn't say choose you next year whom you will serve; he spoke of "this day," while there is still daylight and before the darkness becomes more and more normal.

The hardest work you and I will ever do is to put off our selfishness. It is heavy lifting!

The Lord doesn't ask about your ability, only your availability; and, if you prove your dependability, the Lord will increase your capability.

Our inspired Constitution is wisely designed to protect from excesses of political power, but it can do little to protect us from the excesses of appetite or from individual indifference to great principles or institutions. Any significant unraveling of the moral fiber of the American people, therefore, finally imperils the Constitution.

Life is an 'open-book' exam, but the problem is that most of the students don't have the 'book', or refuse to open it-a fact that ought to spur us on as Church members to share the gospel more widely so that life would be meaningful for more people.

Love, patience, and meekness can be just as contagious as rudeness and crudeness.

God's anger is kindled not because we have harmed him but because we have harmed ourselves.

To be cheerful when others are in despair, to keep the faith when others falter, to be true even when we feel forsaken—all of these are deeply desired outcomes during the deliberate, divine tutorials which God gives to us—because He loves us. These learning experiences must not be misread as divine indifference. Instead, such tutorials are a part of the divine unfolding.

In contrast to the path of selfishness, there is no room for road rage on the straight and narrow way.

Do not let the future be held hostage by the past

The submission of one's will is really the only uniquely personal thing we have to place on God's altar. The many other things we 'give' are actually the things He has already given or loaned to us.

Our God is a God of love. He waits with open arms, and the unfolding of His merciful plan of salvation is not only therefore the mark of divine power but also the mark of God's relentless, redeeming love. It is a point well worth pondering because, among other reasons, it will help us to understand better why God, through the prophets, denounces sin and corruption in such scalding terms. He loves all of us, His spirit sons and daughters, but hates our vices. His denunciation of those vices may, if we are not careful, seem to obscure the enormous and perfect love He has for us.

Pure religion is having the courage to do what is right and let the consequence follow.

Frequently, we busily search for group service projects, which are surely needed and commendable, when quiet, personal service is also urgently needed. Sometimes the completing of an occasional group service project ironically salves our consciences when, in fact, we are constantly surrounded by a multitude of opportunities for individual service. In serving, as in true worship, we need to do some things together and some things personally. Our spiritual symmetry is our own responsibility, and balance is so important.

Men's and nations' finest hour consist of those moments when extraordinary challenge is met by extraordinary response. Hence in those darkest hours, we must light our individual candles rather than vying with others to call attention to the enveloping darkness. Our indignation about injustice should lead to illumination, for if it does not, we are only adding to the despair-and the moment of gravest danger is when there is so little light that darkness seems normal!

God does not begin by asking us about our ability, but only about our availability, and if we then prove our dependability, he will increase our capability.

What we insistently desire, over time, is what we become.

Like Jesus, we can decide, daily or instantly, to give no heed to temptation (see D&C 20:22). We can respond to irritation with a smile instead of scowl, or by giving warm praise instead of icy indifference. By our being understanding instead of abrupt, others, in turn, may decide to hold on a little longer rather than to give way. Love, patience, and meekness can be just as contagious as rudeness and crudeness.

Men and Women of Christ magnify their callings without magnifying themselves.

So it is that real, personal sacrifice never was placing an animal on the altar. Instead, it is a willingness to put the animal in us upon the altar and letting it be consumed! Such is the 'sacrifice unto the Lord... of a broken heart and a contrite spirit,' (D&C 59:8), a prerequisite to taking up the cross, while giving 'away all [our] sins' in order to 'know God' (Alma 22:18) for the denial of self precedes the full acceptance of Him.

If we spent as much time lifting our children as we do criticizing them, how effectively we could help them to see themselves in a more positive light!

Stubborn selfishness leads otherwise good people to fight over herds, patches of sand, and strippings of milk. All this results from what the Lord calls coveting "the drop," while neglecting the "more weighty matters." (D&C 117:8) Myopic selfishness magnifies a mess of pottage and makes thirty pieces of silver look like a treasure trove. In our intense acquisitiveness, we forget Him who once said, "What is property unto me?"

It is better to trust and sometimes be disappointed than to be forever mistrusting and be right occasionally.

If we are serious about our discipleship, Jesus will eventually request each of us to do those very things which are most difficult for us to do.

Power is most safe with those who are not in love with it!

We cannot repent for someone else. But we can forgive someone else, refusing to hold hostage those whom the Lord seeks to set free!

Our goals should stretch us bit by bit. So often when we think we have encountered a ceiling, it is really a psychological or experimental barrier that we have built ourselves. We built it and we can remove it. Just as correct principles, when applied, carry their own witness that they are true, so do correct personal improvement programs. But we must not expect personal improvement without pain or some 'remodeling.' We can't expect to have the thrills of revealed religion without the theology. We cannot expect to have the soul stretching without Christian service.

Trials and tribulations tend to squeeze the artificiality out of us, leaving the essence of what we really are and clarifying what we really yearn for.

Patience is tied very closely to faith in our Heavenly Father. Actually, when we are unduly impatient, we are suggesting that we know what is best—better than does God. Or, at least, we are asserting that our timetable is better than His. We can grow in faith only if we are willing to wait patiently for God's purposes and patterns to unfold in our lives, on His timetable.

Beware not to get caught up in the thick of thin things.

The acceptance of the reality that we are in the Lord's loving hands is only a recognition that we have never really been anywhere else.

Love is never wasted, even if it is not reciprocated.

Anger should never be an overnight guest.

Thus worshiping, serving, studying, praying, each in its own way squeezes selfishness out of us; pushes aside our preoccupations with the things of the world.

Ironically, as some people become harder, they use softer words to describe dark deeds. This, too, is part of being sedated by secularism. Needless abortion, for instance, is a "reproductive health procedure, . . ." "Illegitimacy" gives way to the wholly sanitized words "non-marital birth" or "alternative parenting."

Time is clearly not our natural dimension. Thus it is that we are never really at home in time. Alternately, we find ourselves wishing to hasten the passage of time or to hold back the dawn. We can do neither, of course, but whereas the fish is at home in water, we are clearly not at home in time--because we belong to eternity.

Any assessment of where we stand in relationship to Him tells us that we do not stand at all. We kneel.

Thus it is that our faith and trust in our Heavenly Father, so far as this mortal experience is concerned, consists not simply of faith and gladness that He exists, but is also a faith and trust that, if we are humble, He will tutor us, aiding our acquisition of needed attributes and experiences while we are in mortality. We trust not only the Designer but also His design of life itself, including our portion thereof!

Sometimes the best people... have the worst experiences... because they are ready to learn

The imperfections of others never release us from the need to work on our own shortcomings.

These really are our days, and we can prevail and overcome, even in the midst of trends that are very disturbing. If we are faithful the day will come when those deserving pioneers and ancestors, whom we rightly praise for having overcome the adversities in the wilderness trek, will praise today’s faithful for having made their way successfully through a desert of despair and for having passed through a cultural wilderness, while still keeping the faith.

No love is ever wasted. Its worth does not lie in reciprocity.

For the faithful, our finest hours are sometimes during or just following our darkest hours.

I fear that, as conditions worsen, many will react to the failures of too much government by calling for even more government. Then there will be more and more lifeboats launched because fewer and fewer citizens know how to swim. Unlike some pendulums, political pendulums to not swing back automatically; they must be pushed. History is full of instances when people have waited in vain for pendulums to swing back.

Real hope is much more than wishful musing. It stiffens, not slackens, the spiritual spine.

The cavity which suffering carves into our souls will one day also be the receptacle of joy.

We cannot improve the world if we are conformed to the world.

Good homes are still the best source of good humans.

The soul is like a violin string: it makes music only when it is stretched.

No "natural" resource is more precious and to be used more wisely than time. These mortal moments matter more than we know. There are no idle hours; there are only idle people. In true righteousness there is serenity, but there is an array of reminders that the "sacred present" is packed with possibilities which are slipping by us, which are going away from us each moment.

To one degree or another we all struggle with selfishness. Since it is so common, why worry about selfishness anyway? Because selfishness is really self-destruction in slow motion. No wonder the Prophet Joseph Smith urged, "Let every selfish feeling be not only buried, but annihilated" (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 178). Hence annihilation - not moderation - is the destination! . . . Meekness is the real cure, for it does not merely mask selfishness but dissolves it!

It is extremely important for you to believe in yourselves, not only for what you are now, but for what you have the power to become.

When we are unduly impatient with an omniscient God's timing, we really are suggesting that we know what's best. Strange isn't it-we who wear wrist watches seek to counsel Him who oversees cosmic clocks and calendars.

In racing marathons, one does not see the dropouts make fun of those who continue; failed runners actually cheer on those who continue the race, wishing they were still in it. Not so with the marathon of discipleship in which some dropouts then make fun of the spiritual enterprise of which they were so recently a part!

When our minds really catch hold of the significance of Jesus' atonement, the world's hold on us loosens.

Our afflictions brothers and sisters often will not be extinguished, they will be dwarfed and swallowed up in the joy of Christ. That’s how we overcome, most of the time. It’s not their elimination, but the placing of them in that larger context.

It is one of the great ironies of human history that some mortals with incorrect understanding of God and life's purposes sometimes scold God because of the abundance of human misery and suffering-which, indeed, lies all about us. Such individuals almost dare God to demonstrate His existence by straightening things out-and at once! But He is a much different kind of Father than that. Surely it is requisite to eternal life that we come to know God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent (see John 17:3).

The Savior knows what it's like to die of cancer.

It is not the years but the changes that make us grow.

During our mortal schooling in submissiveness, we will see the visible crosses that some carry, but other crosses will go unseen. A few individuals may appear to have no trials at all, which, if it were so, would be a trial in itself. Indeed, if, as do trees, our souls had rings to measure the years of greatest personal growth, the wide rings would likely reflect the years of greatest moisture-but from tears, not rainfall.

So often our sisters comfort others when their own needs are greater than those being comforted. That quality is like the generosity of Jesus on the cross. Empathy during agony is a portion of divinity!

Many of those engaged in a lemming-like march to the sea are proud of their individualism.

We cannot lead or draw others to Christ unless we stand closer to Him than they do.

When the real history of mankind is fully disclosed, will it feature the echoes of gunfire or the shaping sound of lullabies? The great armistices made by military men or the peacemaking of women in homes and in neighborhoods? Will what happened in cradles and kitchens prove to be more controlling than what happened in congresses? When the surf of the centuries has made the great pyramids so much sand, the everlasting family will still be standing, because it is a celestial institution, formed outside telestial time.

As you submit your wills to God, you are giving Him the only thing you can actually give Him that is really yours to give. Don't wait too long to find the altar or to begin to place the gift of your wills upon it! No need to wait for a receipt; the Lord has His own special ways of acknowledging.

If we entertain temptations, soon they begin entertaining us!

The dues of discipleship are high indeed, and how much we can take so often determines how much we can then give.

Faith in God includes Faith in God's timing.

God, as a loving Father, will stretch our souls at times. The soul is like a violin string: it makes music only when it is stretched. . . . God will tutor us by trying us because He loves us, not because of indifference!

The Lord knows our bearing capacity, both as to coping and to comprehending, and He will not give us more to bear than we can manage at the moment, though to us it may seem otherwise. Just as no temptations will come to us from which we cannot escape or which we cannot bear, we will not be given more trials than we can sustain.

The more seriously we work on our own imperfections, the less we are judgemental of the imperfections of others.

All crosses are easier to carry when we keep moving.

We are often not only to slow to get on our knees, but to quick to rise from them.

We can tell much by what we have already willing discarded along the pathway of discipleship. It is the only pathway where littering is permissible, even encouraged. In the early stages, the debris left behind includes the grosser sins of commission. Later debris differs; things begin to be discarded which have caused the misuse or underuse of our time and talent.

The more quickly we loosen our grip on the things of the world the more firmly we can take hold of the things of eternity.

Satan delights to have us put ourselves down. Self-contempt is of Satan. There is no such thing in heaven.

While most of our suffering is self- inflicted, some is caused by or permitted by God. This sobering reality calls for deep submissiveness, especially when God does not remove the cup from us. In such circumstances, when reminded about the premortal shouting for joy as this life's plan was unfolded (Job 38:7), we can perhaps be pardoned if, in some moments, we wonder what all the shouting was about.

If the kingdom of God is not first, it doesn't matter what's second.

If, in the end, you have not chosen Jesus Christ it will not matter what you have chosen.

As parenting declines, the need for policing increases. There will always be a shortage of police if there is a shortage of effective parents! Likewise, there will not be enough prisons if there are not enough good homes.

We should certainly count our blessings, but we should also make our blessings count.

Just as meekness is in all our virtues, so is pride in all our sins. Whatever its momentary and alluring guise, pride is the enemy, "the first of the sins." One reason to be particularly on guard against pride is that "the devilish strategy of Pride is that it attacks us, not in our weakest points, but in our strongest. It is preeminently the sin of the noble mind." Not only of the noble mind, but also of the semi-righteous.

Although goal setting can clearly be overdone, only a few people are overly involved with goals and goal setting; most people do far too little goal setting, including the reflecting that precedes the setting of such goals. Too many marriages have financial goals but not other explicit goals. Yet the gospel is certainly goal-oriented.

It is one of the ironies of religious history that many mortals err in their understanding of the nature of God and end up rejecting not the real God but their own erroneous and stereotypical image of God. Frequently this is because they have thought of God solely in terms of thunderings at Sinai without pondering substance. . . .

In conclusion, the submission of one's will is really the only uniquely personal thing we have to place on God's altar. The many other things we 'give,' brothers and sisters, are actually the things He has already given or loaned to us. However, when you and I finally submit ourselves, by letting our individual wills be swallowed up in God's will, then we are really giving something to Him! It is the only possession which is truly ours to give!

We should not assume; however, that just because something is unexplainable by us, it is unexplainable.

We can be of so much service to others in many thou-shalt ways. Of course, the problem is that rendering such service takes time, and we are all so busy. Some situations may call for service that somehow seems to be beneath us. Besides, we have other things to do. The thou shalts are so convenient to put off. Who will notice the procrastination anyway? After all, we are not robbing a bank. Or are there forms of withholding that constitute stealing?

It is our job to lift others up, not to size them up.

In one degree or another we all struggle with selfishness. Since it is so common, why worry about selfishness anyway? Because selfishness is really self-destruction in slow motion.

A vague goal is no goal at all. The Ten Commandments wouldn't be very impressive, for instance, if they weren't specific, but simply were couched in a phraseology such as 'thou shalt not be a bad person.

A basic cause of murmuring is that too many of us seem to expect that life will flow ever smoothly, featuring an unbroken chain of green lights with empty parking places just in front of our destinations!.

Never give up what you want most for what you want today.

Perfect love is perfectly patient.

How could there be refining fires without our enduring some heat?

Crowds cannot make right what God has declared to be wrong.

God will facilitate, but He will not force.

How can you and I really expect to glide naively through life, as if to say, 'Lord, give me experience, but not grief, not sorrow, not pain, not opposition, not betrayal, and certainly not to be forsaken. Keep from me, Lord, all those experiences which made Thee what Thou art! Then, let me come and dwell with Thee and fully share Thy joy!'

Listening is one of the forms of love.

The winds of tribulation, which blow out some men's candles of commitment, only fan the fires of faith of others.

The great challenge is to refuse to let the bad things that happen to us do bad things to us. That is the crucial difference between adversity and tragedy.

Your task is to conquer yourselves, not ships, lands and castles. This battle is the one in which you especially are to 'come off conqueror.' It is fought every day. In fact, it is a continuing process which commenced a long, long time ago.

. . . just as God cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance, as we become more like Him, neither can we. The best people have a heightened awareness of what little of the worst is still in them! Indeed, the divine discontent, the justifiable spiritual restlessness that we feel, is a natural follow-on feeling in the disciple who has taken the Lord's counsel to "make you a new heart and a new spirit." (Ezekiel 18:31.)

Each of us is an innkeeper who decides if there is room for Jesus!

You rock a sobbing child without wondering if today's world is passing you by, because you know you hold tomorrow tightly in your arms.

In the economy of Heaven, God does not send thunder if a still, small voice is enough, or a prophet if a priest can do the job.

Just as doubt, despair, and desensitization go together, so do faith, hope, and charity. The latter, however, must be carefully and constantly nurtured, whereas despair, like dandelions, needs so little encouragement to sprout and spread. Despair comes so naturally to the natural man!

It is extremely important for you to believe in yourselves not only for what you are now but for what you have the power to become. Trust in the Lord as He leads you along. He has things for you to do that you won't know about now but that will unfold later. If you stay close to Him, You will have some great adventures. You will live in a time where instead of sometimes being fulfilled, many of them will actually be fulfilled. The Lord will unfold your future bit by bit.

Don't fear, just live right.

I have on my office wall a wise and useful reminder by Anne Morrow Lindbergh concerning one of the realities of life. She wrote, "My life cannot implement in action the demands of all the people to whom my heart responds." That's good counsel for us all, not as an excuse to forgo duty, but as a sage point about pace and the need for quality in relationships.

A society which permits anything will eventually lose everything.

Let us have integrity and not write checks with our tongues which our conduct cannot cash.

If the Church were not true, our enemies would be bored rather than threatened, and acquiescent rather than anxious. Hell is moved only when things move heavenward.

The mortal experience . . . is not like a college course which we can passively audit. Instead, we are taking life's course for credit and there are no summers off - not even semester breaks.

In a very real sense, all we need to know is that God knows all.

Looking for honest ways to lift one another would . . . be more beneficial to our own self-esteem, for we would see more good in ourselves. We would cease to be so critical of our weaknesses and would find ways to allow our weaknesses to become strengths with God's help.

The truth is that not yet usually means never. Trying to run away from the responsibility to decide about Christ is childish. Pilate sought to refuse responsibility for deciding about Christ, but Pilate's hands were never dirtier than just after he had washed them.

When we rejoice in beautiful scenery, great art, and great music, it is but the flexing of instincts acquired in another place and another time.

On the straight and narrow path, there are simply no corners to be cut.

God's extraordinary work is most often done by ordinary people in the seeming obscurity of a home and family.

In Gospel grammar, death is not an exclamation point, merely a comma.

Coming unto the Lord is not a negotiation, but a surrender.

Long ago when a child lay in a manger, a special star appeared. It didn't just show up that evening. It had to have been placed in its orbit centuries before in a trajectory that would make it appear at that special moment of time to announce the birth of a special child. Just as there is divine design in the universe, so each of us has been placed in our own orbits in this life to love, to serve, to help light the world.

A good friend, who knows whereof he speaks, has observed of trials, ‘If it’s fair, it is not a true trial!’ That is, without the added presence of some inexplicableness and some irony and injustice, the experience may not stretch us or lift us sufficiently. The crucifixion of Christ was clearly the greatest injustice in human history, but the Savior bore up under it with majesty and indescribable valor.