Adversity

Never forget that all things work together for good to them who love God. - Romans 8:28

Brain

Duke University behavioral economist Dan Ariely won an Ig Nobel (2008) for his study that found more expensive fake medicines work better than cheaper fake medicines.

"When you expect something to happen, your brain makes it happen," Ariely said.

Ariely spent three years in a hospital after suffering third-degree burns over 70 percent of his body.

He noticed some burn patients who woke in the night in extreme pain often went right back to sleep after being given a shot. A nurse confided to him the injections were often just saline solution.

He says his work has implications for the way drugs are marketed. People often think generic medicine is inferior. But gussy it up a bit, change the name, make it appear more expensive, and maybe it will work better, he said.

Creation

God left the world unfinished; the pictures unpainted,
the songs unsung, and the problems unsolved,
that man might know the joys of creation.

--Thomas S. Monson

Change and Growth

When we stop changing, we stop growing. - Marvin J. Ashton

Critics

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena. - Theodore Roosevelt

Death, Immortality

For immortality is but ubiquity in time. - Herman Melville

Let us endeavour so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
- Mark Twain

We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream....it may be so at the moment of death. - Nathaniel Hawthorne

Developing Talents

To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life. - Robert Louis Stevenson

Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiae fuit.

There has not been any great talent without an element of madness. - Seneca

That which we persist in doing becomes easier for us to do; not that the nature of the thing itself has changed, but that our power to do it is increased. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Family

No other success can compensate for failure in the home. - David O. McKay

Gratitude

But we are rich only as we are grateful to the Lord; and too often measure our own blessings as compared with what other possess. - Benjamin F. Johnson

Robert W. Woodruff, a prominent business leader of a former time …said that the two most important words in the English language are these: Thank you. Gracias, danke, merci whatever language is spoken, thank you frequently expressed will cheer your spirit, broaden your friendships, and lift your lives to a higher pathway as you journey toward perfection. There is a simplicity even a sincerity when thank you is spoken. -- Thomas S. Monson

Happiness

True happiness only comes by making others happy. – Thomas S. Monson, 2007 Christmas Devotional

Honesty  

Truth suppressed is its own kind of lie.  - Juanita Brooks

Intelligence

Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices, but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.  - A. Einstein

Kindness

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.”  - Plato

Knowledge, Learning, Truth

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. - Sir Isaac Newton

"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of you veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then - to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn. You can learn astronomy in a life time, natural history in three, literature in six. And then, after you have exhausted a million lifetimes in biology and medicine and theo-criticism and geography and history and economics, why, you can start to make a cartwheel out of the appropriate wood, or spend fifty years learning to begin to beat your adversary at fencing. After that you can start again on mathematics until it is time to learn to plow."

- Theodore White, The Once and Future King

The test and use of man's educations is that he finds pleasure in the exercise of his mind.
- Jacques Barzun

We are born to die tomorrow, and yet through books we are able to know events of thousands of years. - Yamaga Soko

Law vs. Moral Values

Life's Journey

We shall not cease from our exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started. And know the place for the first time. - T.S. Eliot

Meditation

Thinking is the talking of the soul with itself. - Plato

I think; therefore I am. - Rene Descartes

Music

Music is the space between the notes. - Claude Debussy

Power

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.

— Francois Duc de la Rochefoucauld

Progress

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

— George Bernard Shaw

Service

God does notice us, and he watches over us. But it is usually through another person that he meets our needs. Therefore it is vital that we serve each other in the kingdom.... So often, our acts of service consist of simple encouragement or of giving mundane help with mundane tasks, but what glorious consequences can flow from mundane acts and small but deliberate deeds! - Spencer W. Kimball

Teaching

Spiritual witnesses come at a young age to those who are exposed to spiritual experiences. As parents, teachers, and leaders, we are good at making certain you understand the rules and commandments. We could improve on helping you gain a testimony of the principles and doctrine. Perhaps we could pause more often and help you learn to recognize the Spirit.

Uniqueness

Some are lost because they are different. They feel as though they don't belong. Perhaps because they are different, they find themselves slipping away from the flock. They may look, act, think, and speak differently than those around them and that sometimes causes them to assume they don't fit in. They conclude that they are not needed.

Tied to this misconception is the erroneous belief that all members of the Church should look, talk, and be alike. The Lord did not people the earth with a vibrant orchestra of personalities only to value the piccolos of the world. Every instrument is precious and adds to the complex beauty of the symphony. All of Heavenly Father's children are different in some degree, yet each has his own beautiful sound that adds depth and richness to the whole.

This variety of creation itself is a testament of how the Lord values all His children. He does not esteem one flesh above another, but He "inviteth them all to come unto him and partake of his goodness; and he denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female; . . . all are alike unto God.

Elder Wirthlin, April 2008 Conference

 Work

It is said that Thomas A. Edison's wife used to complain that Thomas worked too hard and needed a rest. "You must forget about work and go on a vacation," she declared.

"But where would I go?" he asked.

She replied very simply, "Just decide where you'd rather be more than anywhere else on earth, and then go there."

"Very well," promised Edison. "I will go there tomorrow." The next morning he went back to work in his laboratory.

Other Topics

Sometimes miracles are hidden in the language of what some choose to call coincidence. Those who are more spiritually sensitive, however, realize that coincidences can be nothing more than God's way of choosing to remain anonymous. - Rabbi Benjamin Blech

Err on the side of initiative. - Tom Irvine

Great minds have purposes, others have wishes. - Swift

Be it the edge of time or space, there is nothing so awe-inspiring as a border
- Yukio Mishima

Stubborness does have its helpful features. You always know what you are going to be thinking tomorrow. - Anonymous

It contributes greatly towards a man's moral and intellectual health, to be brought into habits fo companionship with individuals unlike himself, who care little for his pursuits, and whose sphere and abilities he must go out of himself to appreciate.
- Nathaniel Hawthorne

Saepe ne utile quidem est scire quid futurum sit.

Often it is not even advantageous to know what will be. - Cicero

Saru mo ki kara ochiru.

Even monkeys fall from trees. - Japanese proverb.

Ichi nichi, ichi zen.

Every day do at least one good thing. - Japanese proverb.

And when we die, and you are sent to heaven for doing your conscience, and I am sent to hell for not doing mine, will you come with me for fellowship?
- Sir Thomas More, A Man for All Seasons

It is a thesis of irresolution, confronting such imponderables as a matchup between the '29 Yankees and the A's of '72.
- Sam Lowe describing his visit to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

I simply want to tell you that there are some men in this world who were born to do our unpleasant jobs for us. Your father's one of them.
- Miss Maudie to Jem and Scout in "To Kill a Mockingbird"

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
- Edmund Burke

God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December
- James Barrie

Hanson, though, maintained that the human race has not changed significantly in the past several thousand years. Human nature is set, he said -- it was primordial, reptilian, adding that man is always governed by pride and fear and envy. He cited Thucydides, who wrote that his works would remain valid through the ages precisely because human nature is unchanging. We have not reached the end of history.

- The Dartmouth Review account of a Victor Davis Hanson speech

The Western tradition of civilian-controlled militaries erred on the side of openness, with the assurance that when war came the advantages of free speech, expression, and informality would more than outweigh those of discipline, rote, and authoritarianism that their dictatorial enemies embrace.

- Victor Davis Hanson