“No nobler work in this world can be performed by any mother than to rear and love the children with whom God has blessed her. That is her duty.”
“This ability and willingness properly to rear children, the gift to love, and eagerness, yes, longing to express it in soul development, make motherhood the noblest office or calling in the world. . .”
| Gospel Ideals, Salt Lake City: Improvement Era, 1953, pp. 453-54
“The Father of all mankind expects parents, as his representatives, to assist him in shaping and guiding human lives and immortal souls. That is the highest assignment which the Lord can bestow upon man.”
“No parent can consistently teach faith in Christ who profanes the name of Deity. Profanity is never heard in the well-ordered home. Swearing is a vice that bespeaks a low standard of breeding. Blasphemous exclamations drive out all spirit of reverence.”
| Gospel Ideals, Salt Lake City: Improvement Era, 1953, p. 420.
“Christ’s ideal pertaining to marriage is the unbroken home, and conditions that cause divorce are violations of his divine teachings. Except in cases of infidelity or other extreme conditions, the Church frowns upon divorce”
| (IE 72 [June 1969]:2-5)
“Man is a spiritual being, a soul, and at some point of his life everyone is possessed with an irresistible desire to know his relationship to the infinite. There is something within him which urges him to rise above himself, to control his environment, to master the body and all things physical and live in a higher, more beautiful world.”
“The Savior himself declared that he came to fulfill the law, not to do away with it, but with the law he brought the principle of mercy to temper its enforcement, and to bring hope and encouragement to [the] offenders for forgiveness through [mercy and] repentance.”
| Conference Report, 3 Apr. 1954, p. 11.
“Let us be more determined to make [righteous] homes, to be kinder husbands, more thoughtful wives, more exemplary to our children, determined that in our homes we are going to have just a little taste of heaven here on this earth.”
“The kind of life you live, your disposition, your very nature, will be determined by your thoughts, of which your acts are but the outward expression. Thought is the seed of action.”
| Teachings of Presidents of the Church: David O. McKay, 23: Developing a Christlike Character
“Motherhood is the one thing in all the world which most truly exemplifies the God-given virtues of creating and sacrificing. The mother who, in compliance with eternal law, brings into the world an immortal spirit occupies first rank in the realm of creation.”
| "Respect for Mothers and Their Divine Role"