[Observing the] Sabbath is therefore a declaration of our freedom. It means you are not a slave – not to your culture’s expectations, your family’s hopes, your medical school’s demands, not even to your own insecurities. To practice Sabbath is a disciplined and faithful way to remember that you are not the one who keeps the world running, who provides for your family, not even the one who keeps your work projects moving forward. How easy it is to fall prey to the temptation to believe that [we] alone are holding up our corner of creation.

If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.

He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.

I have worked for all sorts of people since then, geniuses and morons, quick-witted and dull, bighearted and narrow. I’ve had many kinds of jobs, but since that conversation with my father I have never considered the level of labor to be the measure of myself, and I have never placed the security of a job above the value of home.

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

I had always hoped that this land might become a safe and agreeable asylum to the virtuous and persecuted part of mankind, to whatever nation they might belong.

In America it doesn’t matter where you came from, it matters where you are going.

We have not the reverent feeling for the rainbow that the savage has, because we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we gained by prying into that matter.

With gratitude, optimism becomes sustainable.

I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affection and the truth of imagination.

Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.

Heaven will be no heaven to me if I do not meet my wife there,

Cynicism is not realistic and tough. It’s unrealistic and kind of cowardly because it means you don’t have to try.

It is certainly desirable to be well descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors.

My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.

So let us begin anew—remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is subject to proof.

To one with faith, no explanation is needed; to one without, no explanation is possible.

Two things fill the mind with awe and wonder: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.

The government is not your salvation. The government is not your road to prosperity. Hard work, education will take you far beyond what any government program can ever promise.

The joy we feel has little to do with the circumstances of our lives and everything to do with the focus of our lives.

Angels speak by the power of the Holy Ghost; wherefore, they speak the words of Christ. Wherefore, I said unto you, feast upon the words of Christ; for behold, the words of Christ will tell you all things what ye should do.

Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.

Those who have passed on are as deeply interested in our welfare today, if not with greater capacity, with far more interest behind the veil, than they were in the flesh… They see us, they are solicitous for our welfare, they loves us now more than ever.

Too many go about their lives thinking they are of little worth when, in reality, they are elegant and eternal creatures of infinite value with potential beyond imagination.

​But ​​​sanctify​ the Lord God in your hearts: and ​be​ ready always to ​give​ ​​​an answer​ to every man that asketh you a reason of the ​​​hope​ that is in you with ​​​meekness​ and ​​​fear

The power is in the balance: we are our injuries, as much as we are our successes.

Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth- in a word, to know himself- so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.

Don’t worry about the world coming to an end today. It’s already tomorrow in Australia.

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.

He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.