Quotes About Life
"Life is Change, Growth is Optional"
"Anyone that 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 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 journey ... delays, side tracks, 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."
"Life is not about finding yourself—it's about creating yourself."
George Bernard Shaw
"Progressing through life is like running a marathon . . . [It] requires a good start and a strong, consistent effort all of the way to the finish."
Joseph B. Wirthlin , "Running Your Marathon", November 1989 Ensign, page 73
"Let us realize that the privilege to work is a gift, that power to work is a blessing, that love of work is success."
David O. McKay
"I love the counsel given in Doctrine and Covenants 10:4: "Do not run faster or labor more than you have strength." Choose carefully each day that which you will do and that which you will not do, and the Lord will bless you to accomplish the important things that have eternal consequences."
Sister Hinckley
"We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give."
"Life is God's greatest gift to man, and what we do with our life is our gift to God."
Franklin D. Richards - General Conference Report, April 1971, page 38
"It isn't as bad as you sometimes think it is. It all works out. Don't worry. I say that to myself every morning. It will all work out. If you do your best, it will all work out. Put your trust in God and move forward with faith and confidence in the future. The Lord will not forsake us. He will not forsake us, . . . if we will put our trust in Him, if we will pray to Him, if we will live worthy of His blessings, He will hear our prayers."
President Gordon B. Hinckley
"Life is a coin. You can spend it any way you wish, but you can spend it only once."
Lillian Dickson, God's Little Devotional for Graduates, p. 188
"One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour. Write it on your heart that every day is the best day of the year. He only is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day who allows it to be invaded with worry, fret and anxiety. Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This day is all that is good and fair. It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on yesterdays."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Mortality is very brief but immeasurably important."
Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin "The Time to Prepare" April 1998 General Conference
"We might compare our eternal journey to a race of three laps around the track. We have completed the first lap successfully and have made wonderful progress. We have started on the second lap. Can you imagine a world-class runner stopping along the track at this point to pick flowers or chase a rabbit that crossed his path? Yet this is what we are doing when we occupy our time with worldly pursuits that do not move us closer to the third lap toward eternal life, the greatest of all the gifts of God."
Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin "The Time to Prepare" April 1998 General Conference
"There is more to life than increasing its speed."
Mahatma Gandhi
"The Lord has placed currents of divine influence in your life that will lead you along the individual plan He would have you fulfill here on earth. Seek through the Spirit to identify it and carefully follow that direction that the Lord has put in your life. Align yourself with it. Choose, willingly, to exercise your agency to follow it.
"Do not be overcome by concentrating solely on today, its challenges, difficulties, and opportunities. Such preoccupations must not totally capture your attention so as to consume your life.
"Oh, how I would encourage you to weave deeply into the fabric of your soul the recognition that your life now is a part of a much bigger plan the Lord has for you. You lived part of it in the premortal existence. You were valiant there and came here because you wanted to grow and enjoy greater happiness. What you decide to do now will affect how well you fulfill that divine, personal plan He has for you."
Richard G. Scott, "He Lives," Ensign, Nov. 1999, 87
"Ask God for guidance and then hang on for the Ride!"
Rose Kennedy
"To succeed. . . you need to find something to hold on to, something to motivate you, something to inspire you."
Tony Dorsett
"People expect us to be busy, overworked. It's become a status symbol in our society—if we're busy, we're important; if we're not busy, we're almost embarrassed to admit it. Busyness is where we get our security; it's validating, popular, and pleasing. It's also a good excuse for not dealing with the first things in our lives."
Stephen R. Covey – First Things First, p. 35
"Adaptability cushions the impact of change or disappointment."
Marvin J. Ashton, "Who's Losing?" Ensign, Nov. 1974, 41
"My wife, a nurse, says that when we are hooked to a heart monitor we don't want to see a straight line. It's the ups and downs that mean we're alive. In the same way, our highs and lows are evidence that we are living, learning, and growing emotionally."
Brad Wilcox - Growing Up, p. 26
"Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for; it is a thing to be achieved."
William Jennings Bryan
"May you have enough happiness to make you sweet, enough trials to make you strong, enough sorrow to keep you human, enough hope to bring you joy."
"Many of our fears are tissue paper thin, and a single courageous step would carry us clear through them. "
Brendan Francis
"Think of the long view of life, not just what's going to happen today or tomorrow. Don't give up what you most want in life for something you think you want now."
Elder Richard G. Scott - Ensign, May 1997, 54
"We are here in mortality, and the only way to go is through; there isn't any around!"
Neal A. Maxwell - LDS Speaker's Sourcebook, page 250
"Life is a competition, not with others, but with ourselves. We should seek each day to live stronger, better, truer lives; each day to master some weakness of yesterday; each day to repair a mistake; each day to surpass ourselves."
David B. Haight - Ensign, May 1981, p. 42
"Create your future from your future not your past."
Werner Erhard
"Without our individual refining, therefore, life would become merely a pass-through, audited course—not a course for credit. Only in the latter arrangement can our experiences and our performances be sanctified for our own everlasting good (see 2 Nephi 32:9). Mortality therefore is not a convenient, suburban, drive-around beltway with a view. Instead it passes slowly through life's inner city. Daily it involves real perspiration, real perplexity, real choosing, real suffering—and real refining!"
Neal A. Maxwell "If Thou Endure It Well," [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1996], p. 8
"I try to take one day at a time, but sometimes several days attack me at once."
Jennifer Unlimited
"Life is a series of experience, each of which makes us bigger even though it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and griefs which we endure help us in our marching onward."
Henry Ford
"Think of the long view of life, not just what's going to happen today or tomorrow. Don't give up what you most want in life for something you think you want now."
Elder Richard G. Scott - Ensign, May 1997, 54
"Take advantage of this great opportunity in your life to live it well, to be good, to have good works, and to influence other people for good."
Elder David B. Haight - Ensign, May 1998,
"Life is not holding a good hand; Life is playing a poor hand well."
Danish Proverb
"How small a portion of our life it is that we really enjoy! In youth we are looking forward to things that are to come; in old age we are looking backward to things that are gone past; in manhood, although we appear indeed to be more occupied in things that are present, yet even that is too often absorbed in vague determinations to be vastly happy on some future day when we have time."
C. C. Colton
"I want to live my life so that I can look back and say, 'I'm glad I did,' rather than 'I wish I would have.'"
Kevin M. Harrison, Priest, Dover Ward - Church News, May 9, 1998, p. 10
"Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has many—not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some."
Charles Dickens
"When I am in tune spiritually, I find that I can balance everything in my life much more easily.
I realize, brothers and sisters, that other suggestions could be added to these. However, I believe that when we focus on a few basic objectives, we are more likely to be able to manage the many demands that life makes on us. Remember, too much of anything in life can throw us off-balance. At the same time, too little of the important things can do the same thing. King Benjamin counseled 'that all these things are done in wisdom and order' (Mosiah 4:27)."
M. Russell Ballard, "Keeping Life's Demands in Balance," Ensign (CR), May 1987, p.13
"Find a retreat of peace and quiet where periodically you can ponder and let the Lord establish the direction of your life."
Richard G. Scott, Ensign, May 2001, 9