Neal A. Maxwell famous quotes

We should certainly count our blessings, but we should also make our blessings count.
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Motivational #Thanksgiving #Gratitude

Patience is tied very closely to faith in our Heavenly Father. Actually, when we are unduly impatient, we are suggesting that we know what is best—better than does God. Or, at least, we are asserting that our timetable is better than His. We can grow in faith only if we are willing to wait patiently for God's purposes and patterns to unfold in our lives, on His timetable.
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Father #Lds #Waiting

God does not begin by asking us about our ability, but only about our availability, and if we then prove our dependability, he will increase our capability.
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Availability #Asking #Doe

Occasionally some individuals let the seeming ordinariness of life dampen their spirits. Though actually coping and growning, others lack the quiet, inner-soul satisfaction that can steady them, and are experiencing instead, a lingering sense that there is something more important they should be doing . . .as if what is quietly achieved in righteous individual living or in parenthood are not sufficiently spectacular.
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Soul #Important #Satisfaction

You rock a sobbing child without wondering if today's world is passing you by, because you know you hold tomorrow tightly in your arms.
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Children #Rocks #World

A society which permits anything will eventually lose everything.
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Permit

In contrast to the path of selfishness, there is no room for road rage on the straight and narrow way.
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Selfish #Way #Rooms

All crosses are easier to carry when we keep moving.
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Moving #Easier #Crosses

Joshua didn't say choose you next year whom you will serve; he spoke of "this day," while there is still daylight and before the darkness becomes more and more normal.
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Courage #Years #Darkness

Each of us is an innkeeper who decides if there is room for Jesus!
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Jesus #Rooms

Faith in God includes Faith in God's timing.
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Faith In God #Timing

C. S. Lewis pointed out that some people are angry with God for His not existing, and others for His existing but for failing to do as mortals would have Him do. Instead of such childishness, we are urged to know God and to learn of His attributes.
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#People #Failing #Attributes

When the real history of mankind is fully disclosed, will it feature the echoes of gunfire or the shaping sound of lullabies? The great armistices made by military men or the peacemaking of women in homes and in neighborhoods? Will what happened in cradles and kitchens prove to be more controlling than what happened in congresses? When the surf of the centuries has made the great pyramids so much sand, the everlasting family will still be standing, because it is a celestial institution, formed outside telestial time.
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Military #Real #Home

If the kingdom of God is not first, it doesn't matter what's second.
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Matter #Firsts #Kingdoms

The hardest work you and I will ever do is to put off our selfishness. It is heavy lifting!
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Selfishness #Heavy #Hardest

How can you and I really expect to glide naively through life, as if to say, 'Lord, give me experience, but not grief, not sorrow, not pain, not opposition, not betrayal, and certainly not to be forsaken. Keep from me, Lord, all those experiences which made Thee what Thou art! Then, let me come and dwell with Thee and fully share Thy joy!'
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Art #Pain #Betrayal

I testify that He is utterly incomparable in what He is, what He knows, what He has accomplished and what He has experienced. Yet, movingly, He calls us His Friends
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Accomplished #Incomparable

Meekness, the subtraction of self, reduces the multiplication of words.
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Self #Subtraction #Meekness

No love is ever wasted. Its worth does not lie in reciprocity.
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Lying #Love Is #Doe

The laughter of the world is merely loneliness pathetically trying to reassure itself.
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Laughter #Loneliness #Lds

Never give up what you want most for what you want today.
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Fitness #Giving Up #Want

What we insistently desire, over time, is what we become.
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Desire

A vague goal is no goal at all. The Ten Commandments wouldn't be very impressive, for instance, if they weren't specific, but simply were couched in a phraseology such as 'thou shalt not be a bad person.
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Goal #Impressive #Very Impressive

We, more than others, should carry jumper and tow cables not only in our cars, but also in our hearts, by which means we can send the needed boost or charge of encouragement or the added momentum to mortal neighbors.
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Encouragement #Mean #Heart

Real hope is much more than wishful musing. It stiffens, not slackens, the spiritual spine.
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Spiritual #Real #Spine

Though we live in a failing world, we have not been sent here to fail.
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#World #Failing

The cavity which suffering carves into our souls will one day also be the receptacle of joy.
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Joy #Soul #Suffering

Anger should never be an overnight guest.
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Anger #Guests #Should

Trials and tribulations tend to squeeze the artificiality out of us, leaving the essence of what we really are and clarifying what we really yearn for.
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Essence #Leaving #Trials

Let us have integrity and not write checks with our tongues which our conduct cannot cash.
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Integrity #Writing #Cash

If, in the end, you have not chosen Jesus Christ it will not matter what you have chosen.
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Jesus #Matter #Christ

Coming unto the Lord is not a negotiation, but a surrender.
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Surrender #Lord #Negotiation

The soul is like a violin string: it makes music only when it is stretched.
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Soul #Violin #Strings

The issue for us is trusting God enough to trust also His timing. If we can truly believe He has our welfare at heart, may we not let His plans unfold as He thinks best?
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Believe #Heart #Thinking

It is so easy to be confrontive without being informative; indignant without being intelligent; impulsive without being insightful.
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Intelligent #Insightful #Easy

We cannot improve the world if we are conformed to the world.
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Peer Pressure #World

It is only by yielding to God that we can begin to realize His will for us. And if we truly trust God, why not yield to His loving omniscience? After all, He knows us and our possibilities much better than do we.
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Trust #Yield #Why Not

Good homes are still the best source of good humans.
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Home #Source #Humans

Discouragement is not the absence of adequacy but the absence of courage.
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Courage #Adequacy #Absence

Perfect love is perfectly patient.
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Inspirational #Spiritual #Patience

Man can learn self-discipline without becoming ascetic; he can be wise without waiting to be old; he can be influential without waiting for status. Man can sharpen his ability to distinguish between matters of principle and matters of preference, but only if we have a wise interplay between time and truth, between minutes and morality.
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Wise #Men #Self

Do not let the future be held hostage by the past
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Past #Goal #Hostage

When we are unduly impatient with an omniscient God's timing, we really are suggesting that we know what's best. Strange isn't it-we who wear wrist watches seek to counsel Him who oversees cosmic clocks and calendars.
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Watches #Calendars #Strange

When we rejoice in beautiful scenery, great art, and great music, it is but the flexing of instincts acquired in another place and another time.
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Music #Beautiful #Art

We cannot repent for someone else. But we can forgive someone else, refusing to hold hostage those whom the Lord seeks to set free!
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Forgiving #Lord #Repent

Daily hope is vital, since the ‘Winter Quarters’ of our lives are not immediately adjacent to our promised land either. An arduous trek still awaits, but hope spurs weary disciples on.
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Winter #Land #Spurs

To be cheerful when others are in despair, to keep the faith when others falter, to be true even when we feel forsaken—all of these are deeply desired outcomes during the deliberate, divine tutorials which God gives to us—because He loves us. These learning experiences must not be misread as divine indifference. Instead, such tutorials are a part of the divine unfolding.
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Giving #Despair #Cheerful

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! Such is the 'sacrifice unto the Lord... of a broken heart and a contrite spirit,' (D&C 59:8), a prerequisite to taking up the cross, while giving 'away all [our] sins' in order to 'know God' (Alma 22:18) for the denial of self precedes the full acceptance of Him.
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Real #Heart #Acceptance

We should not assume; however, that just because something is unexplainable by us, it is unexplainable.
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Assumption #Assuming #Should

Do not write a check with your tongue that your actions cannot cash.
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Inspirational #Writing #Cash

In conclusion, the submission of one's will is really the only uniquely personal thing we have to place on God's altar. The many other things we 'give,' brothers and sisters, are actually the things He has already given or loaned to us. However, when you and I finally submit ourselves, by letting our individual wills be swallowed up in God's will, then we are really giving something to Him! It is the only possession which is truly ours to give!
-- Neal A. Maxwell

#Brother #Giving #Individual