Neal A. Maxwell

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

Sir Thomas More was a victim of injustice and irony. Generously and meekly, just as he was about to be martyred, he said: Paul . . . was present, and consented to the death of St. Stephen, and kept their clothes that stoned him to death, and yet be they [Stephen and Paul] now both twain Holy Saints in heaven, and shall continue there friends for ever, so I verily trust and . . . pray, that though your lordships have now here in earth been judges to my condemnation, we may yet hereafter in heaven merrily all meet together, to our everlasting salvation.

There are certain mortal moments and minutes that matter. Certain hingepoints in the history of each human. Some seconds are so decisive they shrink the soul, while others are spent, so as to stretch the soul.

I testify that He is utterly incomparable in what He is, what He knows, what He has accomplished and what He has experienced. Yet, movingly, He calls us His Friends

Be careful, fathers, when you inordinately desire things to be better for your children than they were for you. Do not, however unintentionally, make things worse by removing the requirement for reasonable work as part of their experience, thereby insulating your children from the very things that helped make you what you are.

Discouragement is not the absence of adequacy but the absence of courage.

The laughter of the world is merely loneliness pathetically trying to reassure itself.

Elder Maxwell on Wintry DoctrinesElder Maxwell said that __f 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.__his was what he came to call the wintry doctrine at the funeral of a young father in 1996 he put it this way __here are in the gospel warm and cuddly doctrines and then there are some that are just outright wintry doctrines_ one of them frankly is that we cannot approach real consecration without passing through appropriate clinical experiences because we don__ achieve consecration in the abstract. _ sometimes therefore the best people have the worst experiences_ because they are the most ready to learn._ (Bruce C. Hafen, The Story of A Disciple__ Life: Preparing the Biography of Neal A. Maxwell, p. 14)

Perfect love is perfectly patient.

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

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

Within what is allotted to us, we can have spiritual contentment.

God does not begin by asking our ability, only our availability, and if we prove our dependability, He will increase our capability.

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.

Even the early droplets of selfish decisions suggest a direction. Then the little inflecting rivulets come, merging into small brooks and soon into larger streams; finally one is swept along by a vast river which flows into the __ulf of misery and endless wo_ (Hel. 5:12).

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.

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__etter 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.

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