Spencer W. Kimball Quotes

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.

No true Latter-Day Saint, while physically or emotionally able will voluntarily shift the burden of his own or his family's well-being to someone else. So long as he can, under the inspiration of the Lord and with his own labors, he will supply himself and his family with the spiritual and temporal necessities of life.

Peace of mind, joy and happiness cannot be purchased with money or worldly goods.

Preparedness, when properly pursued, is a way of life, not a sudden, spectacular program.

I go down the street, I say hello to everybody, a stranger or otherwise. I know that they do not know me, but I like to say hello and I think they appreciate it. I notice their faces light up with a smile and I believe that if all the people in our great city...would do that, the whole world would begin to say it is the "Friendly City." You can do a tremendous thing here. We get so absorbed, we do not always speak to our friends. Speak to them, even strangers, you are not going to give offense.

I ask you, what good is a big picture window and the lavish appointments and a priceless decor in a home if there is no mother there?

Of all treasures of knowledge, the most vital is the knowledge of God, his existence, powers, love, and promises.

There are great challenges ahead of us, giant opportunities to be met. I welcome that exciting prospect and feel to say to the Lord, humbly, 'Give me this MOUNTAIN,' give me these challenges.

Too often we take blessings for granted, like the sun, the air, health, and opportunity. Or we accept favors, honors, and privileges day after day as did the lepers their newfound health, without a word of thanks. We would thank the person who gives us a seat in the bus, the person who offers a ride, the friend who picks up the check after dinner, the person who does the baby-sitting, or the boy who cuts our lawn, but do we express gratitude to Him who gives us all?

We know so little. Our judgment is so limited. We judge the Lord's ways from our own narrow view.

I find that when I get casual in my relationships with divinity and when it seems that no divine ear is listening and no divine voice is speaking, that I am far, far away. If I immerse myself in the scriptures the distance narrows and the spirituality returns. I find myself loving more intensely those whom I must love with all my heart and mind and strength, and loving them more, I find it easier to abide their counsel.

Always keep good company. Never waste an hour with anyone who doesn't lift you up and encourage you.

True repentance does not permit repetition.

When one becomes conscious of his great humility, he has already lost it. When one begins boasting of his humility, it has already become pride-the antithesis of humility.

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.

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.

What are we to fear when the Lord is with us? Can we not take the Lord at his word and exercise a particle of faith in him?

Man can be literally transformed by his own repentance and by God's gift of forgiveness.

There are many upright and faithful who live all the commandments and whose lives and prayers keep the world from destruction.

I am comforted by the assurance that there will be beautiful music in heaven, and for that I am most grateful.

Please follow the counsel you have been given in the past and maintain your personal journals. Those who keep a book of remembrance are more likely to keep the Lord in remembrance in their daily lives. Journals are a way of counting our blessings and of leaving an inventory of these blessings for our posterity.

[Humility is:] Greatness in plain clothes

We ought to encourage our children to know their relatives. We need to talk of them, make effort to correspond with them, visit them, join family organizations, etc.

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.

Each of us has more opportunities to do good and to be good than we ever use.

Destroy the seed and the plant will never grow. Man alone, of all creatures of earth, can change his thought pattern and become the architect of his destiny.

We have a commitment to serve our Lord. We have an assurance that the cause is just and worthy. But, above all, we have a knowledge that God lives and is in His Heavens and that His Son Jesus Christ has laid out a plan for us which will bring us and our loved ones eternal life if we are faithful. That life will be a busy, purposeful life with accomplishments and joys and development.

It is an act of extreme selfishness for a married couple to refuse to have children when they are able to do so.

Leadership is the ability to encourage the best efforts of others in working toward a desirable goal.

Marriage is perhaps the most vital of all the decisions and has the most far-reaching effects...It affects not only the two people involved, but also their families and particularly their children and their children's children down through the many generations

I promise that if you will keep your journals and records, they will indeed be a source of great inspiration to your families, to your children, your grandchildren, and others, on through the generations. Each of us is important to those who are near and dear to us and as our posterity reads of our life's experiences, they, too, will come to know and love us. And in that glorious day when our families are together in the eternities, we will already be acquainted.

I say to everyone within the sound of my voice, 'Do not fail the Lord'. We must accept the truth that the gospel principles are not on trial but that we are.

Your faith will perform miracles, especially when you get your hands and feet involved.

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.

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.

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.

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 salvation

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!

Above all, I declare that Jesus Christ is the center of our faith; I testify to you that he lives. He leads his Church today; he hears our prayers when we humbly, earnestly, unceasingly seek to know his will, making this, too, a day of miracles and of revelation.

As we give, we find that sacrifice brings forth the blessings of heaven, and in the end, we learn that it was no sacrifice at all.

Let us hold fast to the iron rod. The Savior urged us to put our hand to the plow without looking back. In that spirit we are being asked to have humility and a deep and abiding faith in the Lord and to move forward-trusting in him, refusing to be diverted from our course, either by the ways of the world or the praise of the world.

Now is the moment in the timetable of the Lord to carry the gospel farther than it has ever been carried before.... Many a person in this world is crying, knowingly and unknowingly, 'Come over ... and help us.' He might be your neighbor. She might be your friend. He might be a relative. She might be someone you met only yesterday. But we have what they need. Let us take new courage from our studies and pray, as did Peter, 'And now, Lord, ... grant unto thy servants, that with all boldness they may speak thy word'

I believe in goals, but I believe that the individual should set his own. Goal setting should cause us to stretch as we make our way.

Every divorce is the result of selfishness on the part of one or the other or both parties to a marriage contract. Someone is thinking of self comforts, conveniences, freedoms, luxuries, or ease. Sometimes the ceaseless pin pricking of an unhappy, discontented, and selfish spouse can finally add up to serious physical violence. Sometimes people are goaded to the point where they erringly feel justified in doing the things that are so wrong. Nothing of course justifies sin.

Just think of the possibilities, the potential. Every little boy that has just been born becomes an heir to this glorious, glorious program. When he is grown, he meets a lovely woman; they are married in the holy temple. They live all the commandments of the Lord. They keep themselves clean. And then they become sons of God, and they go forward with their great program-they go beyond the angels, beyond the angels and the gods that are waiting there. They go to their exaltation.

Every Latter-day Saint should sustain, honor, and obey the constitutional law of the land in which he lives.

Love people, not things; use things, not people.

The day obedience becomes a quest and not an irritation is the day you gain power.