Cherish your visions; cherish your ideals; cherish the music that
stirs in your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind, the
loveliness that drapes your purest thoughts, for out of them will
grow all delightful conditions, all, heavenly environment; of these,
if you but remain true to them, your world will at last be built.

To desire is to obtain; to aspire is to, achieve. Shall man's basest
desires receive the fullest measure of gratification, and his purest
aspirations starve for lack of sustenance? Such is not the Law: such
a condition of things can never obtain: "ask and receive."

We speak of literacy and education in terms of being prepared for a better occupation, but we cannot underestimate the present pleasure of our reading in the scriptures, Church magazines, and good books of every kind. We teach of emotional strength in terms of family prayer, kind words, and full communication, but we quickly learn how pleasant life can be when it is lived in a courteous and reinforcing atmosphere.

In like manner we could refer to all the components of personal and family preparedness, not in relation to holocaust or disaster, but in cultivating a life-style that is on a day-to-day basis its own reward.

The artist appeals to that part of our being which is not dependent on wisdom; to that in us which is a gift and not an acquisition--and therefore, more permanently enduring. He speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity, and beauty and pain.

The ways of the world receive constant reinforcement—should not the ways of heaven?

When we send a spacecraft to the moon and back, it burns more fuel in the first few seconds than during the entire remainder of its half-million-mile journey. Why? To reach outer space, it has to overcome both the gravity of the earth and the atmosphere that surrounds the earth. And in a sense, we must overcome the same two forces—the gravity of habits in our private lives and the social pressures we counter in the atmosphere of our public lives—before we can fulfill our divine potential.