LDS Quotes on Family
“Eternal families are made up of individuals. ‘Do your part to build a happy home’ (For the Strength of Youth, 10). Establish patterns of righteousness in your life. And be an example of the believers. The Lord is depending on you to assist in the exaltation of your eternal family.”
“Under the plan of heaven, the husband and wife walk side by side as companions, neither one ahead of the other, but a daughter of God and a son of God walking side by side. Let your families be families of love and peace and happiness.”
“If you want something to last forever, you treat it differently. you shield it and protect it. You never abuse it. You don’t expose it to the elements. You don’t make it common or ordinary. If it ever becomes tarnished, you lovingly polish it until it gleams like new. It becomes special because you have made it so, and it grows more beautiful and precious as time goes by.”
“Pride adversely affects all our relationships—our relationship with God and His servants, between husband and wife, parent and child, employer and employee, teacher and student, and all mankind. Our degree of pride determines how we treat our God and our brothers and sisters. Christ wants to lift us to where He is. Do we desire to do the same for others?”
| “Beware of Pride,” Ensign, May 1989
“Husbands and wives who love each other will find that love and loyalty are reciprocated. This love will provide a nurturing atmosphere for the emotional growth of children. Family life should be a time of happiness and joy that children can look back on with fond memories and associations.”
| Marriage and Child-Bearing
“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 matter what the reason for divorce, those usually hurt most are the children. Too often the children are robbed of the basic needs to prepare them for life.”
| Marriage Is Intended to Be Forever
“Husbands love your wives well! Your children are noticing how you treat her. You are teaching your sons how they should treat women and you are teaching your daughters what they should expect from men.”
Neither man nor woman is perfect or complete without the other. Thus, no marriage or family, no ward or stake is likely to reach its full potential until husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, men and women work together in unity of purpose, respecting and relying upon each other’s strengths.
| It Is Not Good for Man or Woman to Be Alone
“We should not need a hurricane or other crisis to remind us of what matters most. The gospel and the Lord’s plan of happiness and salvation should remind us. What matters most is what lasts longest, and our families are for eternity.”
“The [current] American story about marriage, as told in the law and in much popular literature, goes something like this: marriage is a relationship that exists primarily for the fulfillment of the individual spouses. If it ceases to perform this function, no one is to blame and either spouse may terminate it at will. … Children hardly appear in the story; at most they are rather shadowy characters in the background.”
| Abortion and Divorce in Western Law: American Failures, European Challenges (1987), 108.
“It is about failing to see the family structure as a divine mode of eternal association that is at the very heart of heaven itself. In sum, the ‘Restoration’ is not about correcting particular doctrines or practices as much as it is about restoring their cosmic context.”
How consoling to the mourners when they are called to part with a husband, wife, father, mother, child, or dear relative, to know that, although the earthly tabernacle is laid down and dissolved, they shall rise again to dwell in everlasting burnings in immortal glory, not to sorrow, suffer, or die any more, but they shall be heirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus Christ.
| (Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith (2007), 52) — “Death and Life, Pioneer Perspectives on the Resurrection,” Ensign, April 2013, p. 50
“The key to strengthening our families is having the Spirit of the Lord come into our homes. The goal of our families is to be on the strait and narrow path.”
“A few years ago, Bishop Stanley Smoot was interviewed by President Spencer W. Kimball. President Kimball asked, “How often do you have family prayer?” Bishop Smoot answered, “We try to have family prayer twice a day, but we average about once.”…President Kimball answered, “In the past, having family prayer once a day may have been all right. But in the future it will not be enough if we are going to save our families.”
| The Greatest Challenge in the World—Good Parenting
“You should express regularly to your wife and children your reverence and respect for her. Indeed, one of the greatest things a father can do for his children is to love their mother.”
“Imagine how our own families, let alone the world, would change if we vowed to keep faith with one another, strengthen one another, look for and accentuate the virtues in one another, and speak graciously concerning one another. Imagine the cumulative effect if we treated each other with respect and acceptance, if we willingly provided support. Such interactions practiced on a small scale would surely have a rippling effect throughout our homes and communities and, eventually, society at large.”
| Standing for Something: Ten Neglected Virtues That Will Heal Our Hearts and Homes
Therefore, whenever anything so basic as the eternal family is imperiled, we have a solemn obligation to speak out, lest there be critical damage to the family institution by those who seem to be deliberately destructive of it.
| 1980–O:4, Spencer W. Kimball, Families Can Be Eternal
“Our second key relationship is with our families. Since “no other success can compensate for failure” here, we must place high priority on our families. We build deep and loving family relationships by doing simple things together, like family dinner and family home evening and by just having fun together. In family relationships love is really spelled t-i-m-e, time.”
| "Of Things That Matter Most"
The assurance that the resurrection will include an opportunity to be with our family members – husband, wife, parents, brothers and sisters, children, and grandchildren – is a powerful encouragement for us to fulfill our family responsibilities in mortality. It helps us live together in love in this life in anticipation of joyful reunions and associations in the next. – and, finally – The assurance of immortality also helps us bear the mortal separations involved in the death of our loved ones. Every one of us has wept at a death, grieved through a funeral, or stood in pain at a graveside. I am surely one who has. We should all praise God for the assured resurrection that makes our mortal separations temporary and gives us the hope and strength to carry on.
| “Resurrection,” General Conference, April 1, 2000
“The question is sometimes asked by younger priesthood holders, ‘Where do I place my greatest priorities—to the Church, to my family, or to my profession?’ I have answered that question by emphasizing that heads of families have four major responsibilities. Certainly the first is to the home and family. There should be no question about this. A man may succeed in business or his Church calling, but if he fails in his home he will face eternity in disappointment. … Home is the place where the Lord intended a father’s greatest influence to be felt.”
| Teachings of Ezra Taft Benson, 509–10
“Being a father or a mother is not only a great challenge, it is a divine calling. It is an effort requiring consecration. President David O. McKay stated that being parents is “the greatest trust that has been given to human beings.”
| The Greatest Challenge in the World—Good Parenting
“When messengers are sent to minister to the inhabitants of this earth, they are not strangers, but from among our kindred, friends, and fellow-beings and fellow-servants. The ancient prophets who died were those who came to visit their fellow creatures upon the earth. They came to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob; … such beings … waited upon the Savior and administered to him on the Mount. … Our fathers and mothers, brothers, sisters and friends who have passed away from this earth, having been faithful, and worthy to enjoy these rights and privileges, may have a mission given them to visit their relatives and friends upon the earth again, bringing from the divine Presence messages of love, of warning, or reproof and instruction, to those whom they had learned to love in the flesh.”
| (Gospel Doctrine, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1970, pages 435–36.)
“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.
“Knowing, then, that marriage and family come first, what should we think about education and careers? Remember—the issue is not marriage or education; the issue is marriage and education. . . It has been said that before becoming somebody’s wife, before becoming somebody’s mother, become somebody.”
| “Celebrating Womanhood”
“No other success can compensate for failure in the home.”
| Conference April 1935
“There exists a righteous unity between the temple and the home. Understanding the eternal nature of the temple will draw you to your family; understanding the eternal nature of the family will draw you to the temple”
| Sacred Homes, Sacred Temples
My promise to you is one that a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles once made to me. I had said to him that because of choices some in our extended family had made, I doubted that we could be together in the world to come. He said, as well as I can remember, “You are worrying about the wrong problem. You just live worthy of the celestial kingdom, and the family arrangements will be more wonderful than you can imagine.”
| A Home Where the Spirit of the Lord Dwells
“Your lives, your friendships, your marriages, your families, your neighbors and coworkers currently constitute the sample of humanity which God has given you. We are each other’s clinical material, and we make a mistake when we disregard that sober fact. . . . These special moments – one-on-one, in small groups, in corridors, hallways, or wherever – do something so subtle that we are scarcely aware that it is happening. Yet these help to further define our relationships with the Lord and with each other. It is often the one-liners that come from these special moments which have such a long shelf life and which help us long after the dispersal of those friends has occurred.”
| “Jesus, the Perfect Mentor,” Ensign, February 2001, p. 8
“Under the plan of heaven, the husband and the wife walk side by side as companions, neither one ahead of the other, but a daughter of God and a son of God walking side by side. Let your families be families of love and peace and happiness.”
| Ensign, Mar. 2001, 64.
“You should express regularly to your wife and children your reverence and respect for her. Indeed, one of the greatest things a father can do for his children is to love their mother.”
| Being a Righteous Husband and Father
“As Latter-day Saints, we know we do not earn heaven; we co-create heaven, and we do so by participating in the celestial relationships that are its essence (and which temple ordinances eternalize).”
“Zion-building is not preparation for heaven. It is heaven, in embryo. The process of sanctifying disciples of Christ, constituting them into a community of love and harmony, does not qualify individuals for heaven; sanctification and celestial relationality are the essence of heaven. Zion, in this conception, is both an ideal and a transitional stage into the salvation toward which all Christians strive.”
“As parents, we should remember that our lives may be the book from the family library which the children most treasure.”
“It is the destiny of men and women to join together to make eternal family units. In the context of lawful marriage, the intimacy of sexual relations is right and divinely approved. There is nothing unholy or degrading about sexuality in itself, for by that means men and women join in a process of creation and in an expression of love”
| President Kimball Speaks Out, 2
“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.”
“There exists a righteous unity between the temple and the home. Understanding the eternal nature of the temple will draw you to your family; understanding the eternal nature of the family will draw you to the temple.”
“The body needs food, but the mind needs people.”
| Two Old Women (Fairbanks, AK: Epicenter Press, 1993), 65.
“…Attend the temple on a regular basis. Make sure in your planning that you include a visit to the temple as often as personal circumstances will allow. I promise you that your personal spirituality, relationship with your husband or wife and family relationships will be blessed and strengthened as you regularly attend the temple.”
| Church News, Sept. 24, 1994)
“A home with a loving and loyal husband and wife is the supreme setting in which children can be reared in love and righteousness and in which the spiritual and physical needs of children can be met.”
| Marriage Is Essential to His Eternal Plan
“The deepest desire of our presidency is to help each woman in the Church prepare to receive the blessings of the temple, to honor the covenants she makes, and to be engaged in the cause of Zion. The Relief Society inspires and teaches women to help them increase their faith and personal righteousness, strengthen families, and seek out and help those in need.”
| Every Woman Needs Relief Society
Reflecting on Joseph Smith, Parley P. Pratt recorded: “He taught me many great and glorious principles concerning God . . . and the heavenly order of eternity. It was at this time that I received from him the first idea of eternal family organizations. . . . It was from him that I learned that the wife of my bosom might be secured to me for time and all eternity. . . . I had loved before, but I knew not why. But now I loved—with a pureness—an intensity of elevated, exalted feelings, which would lift my soul form the transitory things of this grovelling sphere and expand it as the ocean.”
| Autobiography of Parley Parker Pratt
“Happiness does not consist of a glut of luxury, the world’s idea of a “good time” Nor must we search for it in faraway places with strange sounding names. Happiness is found at home.”
| Hallmarks of a Happy Home, Ensign October 2001
“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.”
“A home is much more than a house built of lumber, brick, or stone. A home is made of love, sacrifice, and respect. We are responsible for the homes we build. We must build wisely, for eternity is not a short voyage. There will be calm and wind, sunlight and shadows, joy and sorrow. But if we really try, our home can be a bit of heaven here on earth. The thoughts we think, the deeds we do, the lives we live not only influence the success of our earthly journey, they also mark the way to our eternal goals.”
| "Heavenly Homes, Forever Families", World Wide Leadership Training February 2006
“Some members of the Church believe that wayward children unconditionally receive the blessings of salvation because of and through the faithfulness of parents. However, ‘The tentacles of Divine Providence’ described by Elder Orson F. Whitney may be considered a type of spiritual power, a heavenly pull or tug that entices a wandering child to return to the fold eventually. Such an influence cannot override the moral agency of a child but nonetheless can invite and beckon. Ultimately, a child must exercise his or her moral agency and respond in faith, report with full purpose of heart, and act in accordance with the teachings of Christ.’ A pull, a tug, an enticement, invite, beckon. In there words, we hear an echo of the original promise, ‘I will draw all men unto me.'”
“Brethren, noble fatherhood gives us a glimpse of the divine attributes of our Father in Heaven. A father should be many things. He should magnify his priesthood and be an example of righteousness. In companionship with his wife, he should be the source of stability and strength for the whole family. He should be the protector and the provider and the champion of the members of his family. Much of his love for his children should flow from his example of love, concern, and fidelity for their mother. By his uncompromising example, he should instill character into his children.”
| “Them That Honour Me I Will Honour,” Liahona, July 2001, pp. 53-56
“I say to you Latter-day Saint mothers and fathers, if you will rise to the responsibility of teaching your children in the home—priesthood quorums preparing the fathers, the Relief Society the mothers—the day will soon be dawning when the whole world will come to our doors and will say, ‘Show us your way that we may walk in your path’”
| The Teachings of Harold B. Lee
There is great power in a strong partnership. True partners can achieve more than the sum of each acting alone. With true partners, one plus one is much more than two.
| Disciples of Jesus Christ—Defenders of Marriage