Self-mastery

LDS Quotes on Self-Mastery

“Character is the aim of true education; and science, history, and literature are but means used to accomplish the desired end. Character is not the result of chance work but of continuous right thinking and right acting. . . . True education seeks, then to make men and women not only good mathematicians, proficient linguists, profound scientists, or brilliant literary lights, but also honest men, combined with virtue, temperance, and brotherly love — men and women who prize truth, justice, wisdom, benevolence, and self-control as the choicest acquisitions of a successful life. . . It is regrettable, not to say deplorable, that modern education so little emphasizes these fundamental elements of true character. The principal aim of many of our schools and colleges seems to be to give the students purely intellectual attainments and to give but passing regard to the nobler and more necessary development along moral lines.”

David O. McKay  |  Gospel Ideals p. 440-441

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“There is someone I love, even though I don’t approve of what he does. There is someone I accept, though some of his thoughts and actions revolt me. There is someone I forgive, though he hurts the people I love the most. That person is me.”

CS Lewis  |  The Essential C.S. Lewis

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Spencer W. Kimball Portrait

“Destroy the seed and the plant will never grow. Man alone, of all creatures of earth, can change his thought pattern and become the architect of his destiny.”

Spencer W. Kimball  |  The Miracle of Forgiveness

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Spencer W. Kimball Portrait

“Being human, we would expel from our lives sorrow, distress, physical pain, and mental anguish and assure ourselves of continual ease and comfort. But if we closed the doors upon such, we might be evicting our greatest friends and benefactors. Suffering can make saints of people as they learn patience, long-suffering, and self-mastery. The sufferings of our Savior were part of his education.”

Spencer W. Kimball  |  The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, ed. Edward L. Kimball (1982), 168

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Neal A. Maxwell Headshot

“There is also a dimension of patience which links it to a special reverence for life. Patience is a willingness, in a sense, to watch the unfolding purposes of God with a sense of wonder and awe, rather than pacing up and down within the cell of our circumstance. Put another way, too much anxious opening of the oven door and the cake falls instead of rising. So it is with us. If we are always selfishly taking our temperature to see if we are happy, we will not be…When we are impatient, we are neither reverential nor reflective because we are too self-centered. Whereas faith and patience are companions, so are selfishness and impatience. It is so easy to be confrontive without being informative; so easy to be indignant without being intelligent; so easy to be impulsive without being insightful. It is so easy to command others when we are not in control of ourselves.”

Elder Neal A. Maxwell  |  Patience, BYUDA 11/79

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“One of the seven greatest heresies is that you must be perfect before you die.”

Bruce R. McConkie

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“All of man’s miseries come from his incapacity to sit alone in an empty, quiet room.”

Blaise Pascal

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“To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.”

Eleanor Roosevelt

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“In the scriptures there is no such thing as righteous pride. It is always considered as a sin. We are not speaking of a wholesome view of self-worth, which is best established by a close relationship with God. But we are speaking of pride as the universal sin. . . . Essentially, pride is a “my will” rather than “thy will” approach to life. The opposite of pride is humbleness, meekness, submissiveness (see Alma 13:28), or teachableness. . . .Pride is characterized by “What do I want out of life?” rather than by “What would God have me do with my life?” It is self-will as opposed to God’s will. It is the fear of man over the fear of God.”

Ezra Taft Benson  |  in Conference Report, April 1986, pp. 5-6; or “Cleansing the Inner Vessel,” Ensign, May 1986, pp. 6-7

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“If you’re trying to be miserable, it’s important you don’t have any goals. No school goals, personal goals, family goals. Your only objective each day should be to inhale and exhale for sixteen hours before you go to bed again. Don’t read anything informative, don’t listen to anything useful, don’t do anything productive. If you start achieving goals, you might start to feel a sense of excitement, then you might want to set another goal, and then your miserable mornings are through. To maintain your misery, the idea of crossing off your goals should never cross your mind.”

John Bytheway  |  "How to Be Totally Miserable"

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“The greatest of all faults is to be conscious of none.”

Thomas Carlyle

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Spencer W. Kimball Portrait

“The height of a man’s success is gauged by his self-mastery; the depth of his failure by his self-abandonment. There is no other limitation in either direction. And this law is the expression of eternal justice. He who cannot establish a dominion over himself will have no dominion over others, he who masters himself shall be king.”

Spencer W. Kimball  |  Improvement Era, June 1966, p. 525.

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“What we call self-mastery is the necessary price for the things upon which our hearts are set.”

James E. Faust  |  The Power of Self-Mastery

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“You will never have a greater or lesser dominion than that over yourself…the height of a man’s success is gauged by his self-mastery; the depth of his failure by his self-abandonment. …And this law is the expression of eternal justice. He who cannot establish dominion over himself will have no dominion over others.”

Leonardo da Vinci

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“The greatest of faults is to be conscious of none.”

Thomas Carlyle

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Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf

“When it comes to living the gospel, we should not be like the boy who dipped his toe in the water and then claimed he went swimming. As sons and daughters of our Heavenly Father, we are capable of so much more. For that, good intentions are not enough. We must do. Even more important, we must become what Heavenly Father wants us to be.”

Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf  |  "Of Regrets and Resolutions," April 2012

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Spencer W. Kimball Portrait

“Upon practicing the law of the fast, one finds a personal well-spring of power to overcome self-indulgence and selfishness.”

Spencer W. Kimball  |  In Conference Report, Apr. 1978, 121.

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“Let the father be the head of the family, the master of his own household; and let him treat them as an angel would treat them.”

Brigham Young  |  Journal of Discourses, 4:55

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Elder Jeffery R. Holland of the LDS church

God doesn’t care nearly as much about where you have been as He does about where you are and, with His help, where you are willing to go.

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland  |  Created for Greater Things

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Elder Jeffery R. Holland of the LDS church

Your Father in heaven knows your name and knows your circumstance. He hears your prayers. He knows your hopes and dreams, including your fears and frustrations. And He knows what you can become through faith in Him.

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland  |  Created for Greater Things

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Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf

“May I invite you to rise to the great potential within you. But don’t reach beyond your capacity. Don’t set goals beyond your capacity to achieve. Don’t feel guilty or dwell on thoughts of failure. Don’t compare yourself with others. Do the best you can, and the Lord will provide the rest. Have faith and confidence in Him, and you will see miracles happen in your life and the lives of your loved ones.”

Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf  |  September 2009 Liahona

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“When we’re tempted to give up, we must remember God is long-suffering, change is a process, and repentance is a pattern in our lives.”

Brad Wilcox  |  The Continuous Atonement

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“Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance,
I have not winced nor cried aloud:
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed. …

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.”

William Ernest Henley  |  "Invictus"

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Richard G. Scott Portrait

“I am convinced that there is no simple formula or technique that I could give you or that you could give your students that would immediately facilitate mastering the ability to be guided by the Holy Spirit. Nor do I believe that the Lord will ever allow someone to conceive a pattern that would invariably and immediately open the channels of spiritual communication. We grow when we labor to recognize the guidance of the Holy Ghost as we struggle to communicate our needs to our Father in Heaven in moments of dire need or overflowing gratitude.

Richard G. Scott  |  “To Learn and to Teach More Effectively,” BYU Education Week, August 21, 2007

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“The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the master of his passions.”

Lord Tennyson

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“It is for the husband to learn how to gather around his family the comforts of life, how to control his passions and temper, and how to command the respect, not only of his family, but of all his brethren, sisters, and friends.”

Brigham Young  |  Discourses of Brigham Young, 198

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Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf

“I, the Lord, will forgive whom I will forgive,” but then He said, “… of you it is required to forgive all men… May I add a footnote here? When the Lord requires that we forgive all men, that includes forgiving ourselves. Sometimes, of all the people in the world, the one who is the hardest to forgive—as well as perhaps the one who is most in need of our forgiveness—is the person looking back at us in the mirror.”

Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf  |  The Merciful Obtain Mercy

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“One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.”

Leonardo da Vinci

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“Self-denial … is not the negative, forbidding thing that often we shake our heads about. In one sense there is no such thing as self-denial, for what we call such is the necessary price we pay for things on which our hearts are set.”

Harry Emerson Fosdick

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“Every challenge you face, every hard thing you confront, every bad thing that happens to you, every unfairness, every conflict, every sadness, tragedy, every disappointment and heartache, every temptation and every opposition happens for one purpose only: to give you opportunity to respond by applying in your life the teachings of Jesus. As you do so you are changed to become more like Him.”

Lawrence Corbridge  |  "The Fourth Missionary"

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