LDS Quotes About Eternal Life
“No doctrine is more basic, no doctrine embraces a greater incentive to personal righteousness . . . as does the wondrous concept that man can be as his Maker.”
| The Promised Messiah: The First Coming of Christ
“How are [the Saints] to become Saviors on Mount Zion? By building their temples, erecting their baptismal fonts, and going forth and receiving all the ordinances, baptisms, confirmations, washings, anointing, ordinations and sealing powers upon their heads, in behalf of all their progenitors who are dead, and redeem them that they may come forth in the first resurrection and be exalted to thrones of glory with them; and herein is the chain that binds the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the children to the fathers, which fulfills the mission of Elijah.”
| History of the Church, 6:184
“The submission of one’s will is really the only uniquely personal thing we have to place on God’s altar. The many other things we ‘give’… are actually the things He has already given or loaned to us.”
| “Swallowed Up in the Will of the Father,” Ensign, Nov. 1995, 24.
“Death is a kind of graduation day for life. It is our only means of entrance to our eternal lives.”
That Jesus attained eternal perfection following his resurrection is confirmed in the Book of Mormon. It records the visit of the resurrected Lord to the people of ancient America. There he repeated the important injunction previously cited [to be perfect even as your Father in Heaven is perfect], but with one very significant addition. He said, “I would that ye should be perfect even as I, or your Father who is in heaven is perfect.” This time he listed himself along with his Father as a perfected personage. Previously, he had not. Resurrection is requisite for eternal perfection. . . . Eternal perfection is reserved for those who overcome all things and inherit the fulness of the Father in his heavenly mansions. Perfection consists in gaining eternal life – the kind of life that God lives.
| Ensign, November 1994, p. 87
I think it has been taught by some . . . that if a wife does not love her husband in this state she cannot love him in the next. This is not so. Those who attain to the blessing of the first resurrection will be pure and holy, and perfect in body. Every man and woman that reaches to this unspeakable attainment will be as beautiful as the angels that surround the throne of God. If you can, by faithfulness in this life, obtain the right to come up in the morning of the resurrection, you need entertain no fears that the wife will be dissatisfied with her husband, or the husband with the wife; for those of the first resurrection will be free from sin and from the consequences and power of sin.
| (1862). Future state of existence. In Journal of Discourses, 10, 24.
“What a glorious thing it is that we believe and receive the fulness of the gospel as it is preached now and can be baptized for all of our dead friends. . . . Oh, mother, if we are so happy as to have a part in the first resurrection, we shall have our children just as we laid them down in their graves.”
| Sally Carlisle Randall to Betty Carlisle, Nauvoo, April 21, 1844, Church Archives.
“What have we to console us in relation to the dead? We have reason to have the greatest hope and consolation for our dead of any people on the earth.”
“When you … see our Father, you will see a being with whom you have long been acquainted, and He will receive you into His arms, and you will be ready to fall into His embrace and kiss Him. … You will be so glad and joyful. … When you are qualified and purified, … you can endure the glory of eternity.”
“Time is clearly not our natural dimension. This it is that we are never really at home in time because we belong to eternity. Time, as much as any one thing, whispers that we are strangers here.”
As we consider our mortal existence on this earth and the purpose of life expressed by Alma that ”this life is the time for men to prepare to meet God” (Alma 34:32), what is the Lord’s way to help us achieve this very purpose? It is simply, by using this metaphor, to help us build a bridge of faith in our life for crossing and overcoming the walls of unbelief, indifference, fear, or sin. Our mortal life is the time for men to meet God by building a bridge of faith, opening the door into immortality and eternal life.
| Ensign, November 2001
“Though each of us will pass through the doors of death, the timing of that departure is less important than is the preparation for eternal life.”
“Death is a mere comma, not an exclamation point!”
“Men are not born equal. They enter this life with the talents and capacities developed in preexistence…The talent of greatest worth was that of spirituality, for it enables us to hearken to the Holy Spirit and accept that gospel which prepares us for eternal life.”
| A New Witness for the Articles of Faith (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1985), 34
“That Jesus attained eternal perfection following his resurrection is confirmed in the Book of Mormon. It records the visit of the resurrected Lord to the people of ancient America. There he repeated the important injunction previously cited [to be perfect even as your Father in Heaven is perfect], but with one very significant addition. He said, “I would that ye should be perfect even as I, or your Father who is in heaven is perfect.” This time he listed himself along with his Father as a perfected personage. Previously, he had not. Resurrection is requisite for eternal perfection. . . . Eternal perfection is reserved for those who overcome all things and inherit the fulness of the Father in his heavenly mansions. Perfection consists in gaining eternal life – the kind of life that God lives.”
| Ensign, November 1994, p. 87
“The thirst for the infinite proves infinity.”
| “Victor Hugo on Immortality,” Fifty Years, 324–25
“That divinity within us needs food from the Fountain from which it emanated….Principles of eternal life, of God and godliness, will alone feed the immortal capacity of man and give true satisfaction.”
| Discourses of Brigham Young, comp. John A. Widtsoe (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1954), 165.
“Everyone should learn something new everyday. You all have inquiring minds and are seeking truth in many fields. I sincerely hope your greatest search is in the realm of spiritual things, because it is there that we are able to gain salvation and make the progress that leads to eternal life in our Father’s kingdom. The most important knowledge in the world is gospel knowledge. It is knowledge of God and his law, of those things that men must do to work out their salvation with fear and trembling before the Lord.”
| Ensign, May 1971, pp. 2-3
Now understand, to choose life is to choose principles that will lead you to an eternal increase, and nothing short of them will produce life in the resurrection for the faithful. Those that choose death, make choice of the path which leads to the end of their organization. The one leads to endless increase and progression, the other to the destruction.
| Journal of Discourses, 1:352
“We are looked upon by God as though we were in eternity. God dwells in eternity, and does not view things as we do.”
| Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 356.
“Our goal is to achieve eternal life. That is the greatest goal in the world. We are not opposed to goals. We do not want stake and full-time mission presidents to establish quotas for the missionaries. Rather, we expect them to inspire missionaries to set their own goals, and make them high enough to challenge their very best efforts, and work to achieve them. … We look to you to teach these principles and follow up.”
| President Kimball’s Vision of Missionary Work
“The kind of marriage required for exaltation—eternal in duration and godlike in quality—does not contemplate divorce”
| (2007, May). Divorce. Ensign, 37(5), 70–73.
“Those who understand the eternal blessings which come from the temple know that no sacrifice is too great, no price too heavy, no struggle too difficult in order to receive those blessings.”
| “The Holy Temple—a Beacon to the World,” Liahona and Ensign, May 2011, 91–92.
“An old proverb says, ‘The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second-best time is now.’
“There is something wonderful and hopeful about the word now. There is something empowering about the fact that if we choose to decide now, we can move forward at this very moment.
“Now is the best time to start becoming the person we eventually want to be—not only 20 years from now but also for all eternity.”
| The Best Time to Plant a Tree
Each holy temple stands as a symbol of our membership in the Church, as a sign of our faith in life after death, and as a sacred step toward eternal glory for us and our families.
| Personal Preparation for Temple Blessings
“Because of Christ there is hope smiling brightly before you, and you need not worry too much about sickness, death, poverty, or other afflictions. The Lord will take care of you. Your responsibility is to keep the commandments, feast upon the words of Christ, and stay in the path to your heavenly home.”
| "There Is Hope Smiling Brightly before Us", Ensign, May 2003, 103
“If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is – infinite.”
“If we are striving to overcome our weaknesses, we are in the straight and narrow path.”
Some of us look forward to a time in the future—salvation and exaltation in the world to come—but today is part of eternity.
| Pathways to Happiness, comp. Llewelyn R. McKay (1957), 291–92.
“All that is not eternal [is] too short, [and] all that is not infinite [is] too small.”
| Inscription on the east transept wall of Stanford University Memorial Church
“The nearer I approach the end, the plainer I hear around me the immortal symphonies of the worlds which invite me. . . . For half a century I have been writing my thoughts in prose and verse; history. … I have tried all. But I feel I have not said a thousandth part of what is in me. When I go down to the grave, I can say, like so many others, “I have finished my day’s work,” but I can not say, “I have finished my life.” My day’s work will begin again the next morning. The tomb is not a blind alley; it is a thoroughfare. . . . My work is only beginning.”
| “Victor Hugo on Immortality,” Fifty Years, 324–25