One’s life … cannot be both faith-filled and stress-free. …

Therefore, how can you and I really expect to glide naively through life, as if to say, ‘Lord, give me experience, but not grief, not sorrow, not pain, not opposition, not betrayal, and certainly not to be forsaken. Keep from me, Lord, all those experiences which made Thee what Thou art! Then let me come and dwell with Thee and fully share Thy joy!’ …

Real faith … is required to endure this necessary but painful developmental process.

A book reads the better which is our own, and has been so long known to us, that we know the topography of its blots, and dog's ears, and can trace the dirt in it to having read it at tea with buttered muffins.

Getting through the hazards of life requires understanding, skill, experience, and self-assurance like that required to sink a difficult basket under pressure. In the game of life, that is called righteous character. Such character is not developed in moments of great challenge or temptation. That is when it is used. Character is woven quietly from the threads of hundreds of correct decisions (like practice sessions). When strengthened by obedience and worthy acts, correct decisions form a fabric of character that brings victory in time of great need.

Righteous character provides the foundation of spiritual strength that enables you to make difficult, extremely important decisions correctly when they seem overpowering.

Righteous character is what you are. It is more important than what you own, what you have learned, or what you have accomplished. It allows you to be trusted. It opens the door to help from the Lord in moments of great challenge or temptation.

There are three parts to the plan. You are in the second or the middle part, the one in which you will be tested by temptation, by trials, perhaps by tragedy....

Remember this! The line ‘And they all lived happily ever after’ is never written into the second act [of a play]. That line belongs in the third act, when the mysteries are solved and everything is put right. …

Until you have a broad perspective of the eternal nature of [the plan], you won’t make much sense out of the inequities in life. Some are born with so little and others with so much. Some are born in poverty, with handicaps, with pain, with suffering. Some experience premature death, even innocent children. There are the brutal, unforgiving forces of nature and the brutality of man to man. We have seen a lot of that recently.

Do not suppose that God willfully causes that which, for His own purposes, he permits. When you know the plan and the purpose of it all, even these things will manifest a loving Father in Heaven.

You can't be brave if you've only had wonderful things happen to you.

In rejecting the Cinderella complex, I am not suggesting that you marry just anyone. But I am suggesting that some of us may have raised the bar a little too high. There are very few perfect people in the world, and if you do get lucky and find one, he or she probably won't want to marry you anyway. But don't despair. The traits and characteristics we are looking for in a spouse will emerge out of the years of experience together. My advice is to look for the potential in a spouse and then help each other achieve your desires. In other words, good marriages are earned by experience, not found with glass slipper.

Most people who have actually experienced leaving their bodies and existing outside their bodies no longer identify their bodies as themselves.

On one occasion my wife expected to be away for the weekend and asked one of the sisters in our ward to teach her Relief Society lesson. The week following the session, that sister came to our home and returned the instruction manual. She also brought to my wife a freshly baked loaf of bread and a handwritten note that read, “I love you. You are a special person. Thank you for thinking of me.” She was grateful to have been asked to serve. She was full of the love of Christ.

After holding the highest and most influential positions in the land, which enabled him to bring pressure to bear on decisive issues-commander of the armies, chief judge, head of the church-he laid aside al his high offices and did 'go forth among his people ... that he might preach the word of God unto them, to stir them up in remembrance of their duty, and that he might pull down, by the word of God, all the pride and craftiness and all the contentions which were among his people, seeing no way,' after all his experience 'that he might reclaim them save it were in bearing down in pure testimony' (Alma 4:19).

With all his vast experience, Alma was convinced that he could do more good and actually have more influence as a simple missionary than as head of the state, head of the army, of head of the church! And so he takes his leave, disappearing all alone over the horizon into the midst of hostile and unbelieving people.