Wilford Woodruff

What a responsibility it is to hold this heavenly, this eternal, this everlasting Priesthood!  And we shall have to give an account of it.  Apostles, Seventies, High Priests, Elders, and all men who bear any portion of this Priesthood that has been given unto us will be held responsible for it.

Wilford Woodruff, Deseret Weekly, March 2, 1889, 294

W. C. Brann

The place to take the true measure of a man is not in the darkest place or in the amen corner, nor the cornfield, but by his own fireside.  There he lays aside his mask and you may learn whether he is an imp or an angel, cur or king, hero or humbug.  I care not what the world says of him: whether it crowns him boss or pelts him with bad eggs. I care not a copper what his reputation or religion may be: if his babies dread his homecoming and his better half swallows her tongue every time she has to ask for a five-dollar bill, he is a fraud of the first water, even though he prays night and morning until he is black in the face... But if his children rush to meet him and love's sunshine illuminates the face of his wife every time she hears his footfall, you can take it for granted that he is pure, for his home is a heaven. ... I can forgive much in that fellow mortal who would rather make men swear than women weep; who would rather have the hate of the whole world than the contempt of his wife; who would rather call anger to the eyes of a king than fear to the face of a child.

W.C. Brann

Thomas S. Monson

The tenor of our times is permissiveness. All around us we see the idols of the movie screen, the heroes of the athletic field—those whom many young people long to emulate—as disregarding the laws of God and rationalizing away sinful practices, seemingly with no ill effect. Don't you believe it! There is a time of reckoning—even a balancing of the ledger. Every Cinderella has her midnight—it's called Judgment Day, even the Big Exam of Life. Are you prepared? Are you pleased with your own performance?

Thomas S. Monson, “Be Thou an Example,” Ensign, May 2005, 112

Thomas S. Monson

Make every decision you contemplate pass this test: What does it do to me? What does it do for me? And let your code of conduct emphasize not, “What will others think?” but rather, “What will I think of myself?” Be influenced by that still, small voice. Remember that one with authority placed his hands on your head at the time of your confirmation and said, “Receive the Holy Ghost.” Open your hearts, even your very souls, to the sound of that special voice which testifies of truth. As the prophet Isaiah promised, “Thine ears shall hear a word … saying, This is the way, walk ye in it.” 6

Thomas S. Monson, “Be Thou an Example,” Ensign, May 2005, 112

C.S. Lewis

When I come to my evening prayers and try to reckon up the sins of the day, nine times out of ten the most obvious one is some sin against charity; I have sulked or snapped or sneered or snubbed or stormed.  And the excuse that immediately springs to my mind is that the provocation was so sudden and unexpected: I was caught off my guard, I had not time to collect myself.  Now that may be an extenuating circumstance as regards those particular acts: they would obviously be worse if they had been deliberate and premeditated.  On the other hand, surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of man he is?  Surely what pops out before the man has time to put on a disguise is the truth?  If there are rats in a cellar you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly.  But the suddenness does not create the rats: it only prevents them from hiding.  In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make me an ill-tempered man: it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am.

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, (1952)