LDS Quotes on Happiness
“Real, lasting happiness is possible, and marriage can be more an exultant ecstasy than the human mind can conceive. This is within the reach of every couple, every person. . . . It is certain that almost any good man and any good woman can have happiness and a successful marriage if both are willing to pay the price.”
| (1976, September 7). Marriage and divorce. BYU Devotional
In a paradoxical way, afflictions and sorrow prepare us to experience joy if we will trust in the Lord and His plan for us. This truth is beautifully expressed by a 13th-century poet: “Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.”
| Consistent and Resilient Trust
“The lessons we learn from patience will cultivate our character, lift our lives, and heighten our happiness.”
| Continue in Patience, April 2010 General Conference
“To make ourselves happy is incorporated in the great design of man’s existence. I have learned not to fret myself about that which I cannot help. If I can do good, I will do it; and if I cannot reach a thing, I will content myself to be without it. This makes me happy all the day long.”
| Journal of Discourses, 2:95
“What principle object have human beings in view? Happiness. Give me glory, give me power, give me wealth, give me a good name, give me influence with my fellow-men, give me all these, and it does not follow that I am thereby made happy; that depends altogether upon what principle those acquisitions were gained.”
| Discourses of Brigham Young, p. 215
God is weaving his tapestry according to his own grand design. All flesh is in his hands. It is not our prerogative to counsel him. It is our responsibility and our opportunity to be at peace in our minds and in our hearts, and to know that he is God, that this is his work, and that he will not permit it to fail.
We have no need to fear. We have no need to worry. We have no need to speculate. Our imperative need is to be found doing our duty individually in the callings which have come to us.
| “He Slumbers Not, nor Sleeps,” Ensign, May 1983
“Don’t be so heavenly minded that you are of no earthly good. Sometimes we work overtime making the gospel of Jesus Christ miserable to live. Let your life be your trumpet.”
| BYU Education Week, August 1992
“I am satisfied that if we would look for the virtues in one another and not the vices, there would be much more of happiness in the homes of our people. There would be far less of divorce, much less of infidelity, much less of anger and rancor and quarreling. There would be more of forgiveness, more of love, more of peace, more of happiness. This is as the Lord would have it.”
| Living Worthy of the Girl You Will Someday Marry
“Oh, there can be transitory euphoria from power, influence, or material wealth, but true, lasting happiness, the kind that is felt in the early hours of the morning when you are truly honest with yourself, can be garnered only by obedience to the teachings of God. You must have honesty, integrity, chastity, virtue, and a willingness to forego something attractive, even apparently desirable for the moment, for greater good in the future. I speak of the willingness when circumstance demands to lay everything on the altar to defend true principles.”
| “Living Right,” April 22, 2004
“The happiness of the Latter-day Saints, the peace of the Latter-day Saints, the progress of the Latter-day Saints, the prosperity of the Latter-day Saints, and the eternal salvation and exaltation of this people lie in walking in obedience to the counsels of the priesthood of God.”
| “If Ye Be Willing and Obedient”