Without the sealings that create eternal families and link generations here and hereafter, we would be left in eternity with neither roots nor branches—that is, neither ancestry nor posterity.
Marriage
LDS Quotes on Marriage
“Marriage provides an ideal setting for overcoming any tendency to be selfish or self-centered.”
| The Eternal Blessings of Marriage
“In the Lord’s plan, it takes two—a man and a woman—to form a whole. Indeed, a husband and wife are not two identical halves, but a wondrous, divinely determined combination of complementary capacities and characteristics.”
| “The Joy of Living the Great Plan of Happiness,” Ensign, November 1996, 73–74
“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.
“We are doing all we know how to do to stamp out this terrible evil. When there is recognition of equality between the husband and the wife, when there is acknowledgment that each child born into the world is a child of God, then there will follow a greater sense of responsibility to nurture, to help, to love with an enduring love those for whom we are responsible.
No man who abuses his wife or children is worthy to hold the priesthood of God. No man who abuses his wife or children is worthy to be a member in good standing in this church. The abuse of one’s spouse and children is a most serious offense before God, and any who indulge in it may expect to be disciplined by the Church.”
| “What Are People Asking about Us?” Ensign, November 1998, p. 72
“Marriage is the preserver of the human race. Without it, the purposes of God would be frustrated; virtue would be destroyed to give place to vice and corruption, and the earth would be void and empty.”
| Gospel Doctrine, 5th ed. [1939], 272.
“Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.”
| Mark Twain's Notebook
“I want my life and my marriage to look less like the world and more like Christ.”
“All of us, young and old, will do well to realize that attitude is more important than the score. Desire is more important than the score. Momentum is more important than the score.”
| "Who's Losing?" General Conference, October 1974
“Marriage is that relation between man and woman in which the independence is equal, the dependence mutual, and the obligation reciprocal.”