“If a man learns nothing more than to eat drink, and sleep, and does not comprehend any of the designs of god, the beast comprehends the same things. It eats, sleeps, and knows nothing more about God; yet it knows as much as we, unless we are able to comprehend by the inspiration of almighty God. If men do not comprehend the character of God, they do not comprehend themselves.”
“If any of us are imperfect, it is our duty to pray for the gift that will make us perfect. . . . No man ought to say, “Oh, I cannot help this; it is my nature.” He is not justified in it, for the reason that God has promised to give strength to correct these things, and to give gifts that will eradicate them. . . . He wants His Saints to be perfected in the truth. For this purpose He gives these gifts, and bestows them upon those who seek after them, in order that they may be a perfect people upon the face of the earth, notwithstanding their many weaknesses, because God has promised to give the gifts that are necessary for their perfection.”
| Millennial Star, April 23, 1894, 260–61
“I pity the man who at one time looked into the eyes of a beautiful young woman and held her hand across the altar in the house of the Lord as they made sacred and everlasting promises one to another, but who, lacking in self-discipline, fails to cultivate his better nature, sinks to coarseness and evil, and destroys the relationship which the Lord has provided for him”
| “Walking in the Light of the Lord,” Ensign, Nov. 1998, 99)
“Twelve years ago President Ezra Taft Benson delivered a powerful conference address declaring that pride is “the universal sin, the great vice.” (“Beware of Pride,” Ensign, May 1989, p. 6) He taught that pride is essentially competitive in nature and made reference to his quote from C. S. Lewis: “Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, cleverer, or better-looking than others. If every one else became equally rich, or clever, or good-looking there would be nothing to be proud about. It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition has gone, pride has gone. (Mere Christianity, 1960, p. 95 [or 109-110])”
| “To Walk Humbly with Thy God,” Ensign, May 2001, p. 10
“Our sexuality has been animalized, stripped of the intricacy of feeling with which human beings have endowed it, leaving us to contemplate only the act, and to fear our impotence in it. It is this animalization from which the sexual manuals cannot escape, even when they try to do so, because they are reflections of it. They might [as well] be textbooks for veterinarians.”
| Seven Deadly Sins
“Pride is essentially competitive in nature. We pit our will against God’s. When we direct our pride toward God, it is in the spirit of ‘my will and not thine be done.’ As Paul said, they ‘seek their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ’s’.”
| “Beware of Pride,” Ensign, May 1989
“So it is that real, personal sacrifice never was placing an animal on the altar. Instead, it is a willingness to put the animal in us upon the altar and letting it be consumed!”
| “Deny Yourselves of All Ungodliness,” Ensign,May 1995, 68.
For the natural man, sacrifice does not come naturally. He has an insatiable appetite for more. . . .Faith isn’t tested so much when the cupboard is full as when it is bare. In these defining moments, the crisis doesn’t create one’s character – it reveals it. The crisis is the test.
| Elder Lynn G. Robbins, General Conference, Ensign, May 2005