Dallin H. Oaks Quotes

A good marriage does not require a perfect man or a perfect woman. It only requires a man and a woman committed to strive together toward perfection.

You can never get enough of what you don't need, because what you don't need won't satisfy you.

Adversities are temporary. What is permanent is what we become by the way we react to them.

We should seek after spiritual gifts. They can lead us to God. They can shield us from the power of the adversary. They can compensate for our inadequacies and repair our imperfections.

Our spirits...require nourishment. Just as there is food for the body, there is food for the spirit. The consequences of spiritual malnutrition are just as hurtful to our spiritual lives as physical malnutrition is to our physical bodies.

If we are practicing our faith and seeking the companionship of the Holy Spirit, his presence can be felt in our hearts and in our homes. A family having daily family prayers and seeking to keep the commandments of God and honor his name and speak lovingly to one another will have a spiritual feeling in their home that will be discernible to all who enter it.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is the brightest light and the only hope for this darkened world.

Desires dictate our priorities, priorities shape our choices, and choices determine our actions.

Love is the most powerful force in the world.

Following Christ is not a casual or occasional practice but a continuous commitment and way of life that applies at all times and in all places.

Man's laws cannot make moral what God has declared immoral

If we knew that we would meet the Lord tomorrow - through our premature death or through His unexpected coming - what would we do today? What confessions would we make? What practices would we discontinue? What accounts would we settle? What forgivenesses would we extend? What testimonies would we bear? If we would do those things then, why not now?

The word sharing affirms that we have something extraordinarily valuable and desire to give it to others for their benefit and blessing.

I say, choose faith. Choose faith over doubt, choose faith over fear, choose faith over the unknown and the unseen, and choose faith over pessimism.

All of us should banish hateful communications and practice civility for differences of opinion.

The purpose of the gospel is to transform common creatures into celestial citizens, and that requires change.

Tolerance obviously requires a non-contentious manner of relating toward one another’s differences. But tolerance does not require abandoning one’s standards or one’s opinions on political or public policy choices. Tolerance is a way of reacting to diversity, not a command to insulate it from examination.

When we face seemingly insurmountable obstacles in the fulfillment of righteous responsibilities, we should remember that when we are involved in the work of the Lord, the obstacles before us are never as great as the power behind us. We should reach out and climb. Handholds will only be found by hands that are outstretched. Footholds are only for feet that are on the move.

Our priorities are most visible in how we use our time. Someone has said, “Three things never come back—the spent arrow, the spoken word, and the lost opportunity.” We cannot recycle or save the time allotted to us each day. With time, we have only one opportunity for choice, and then it is gone forever.

Forgiving is divine. Plead for the guidance of the Spirit of the Lord to forgive wrongs, to overcome faults, and to strengthen relationships.

It's amazing how much you can get done if you don't worry about who gets the credit.

We should recognize that the Lord will speak to us through the Spirit in His own time and in His own way.

When we have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, we must have trust in him. We must trust him enough that we are content to accept his will, knowing that he knows what is best for us.

Pornographic or erotic stories and pictures are worse than filthy or polluted food. The body has defenses to rid itself of unwholesome food. With a few fatal exceptions, bad food will only make you sick but do no permanent harm. In contrast, a person who feasts upon filthy stories or pornographic or erotic pictures and literature records them in this marvelous retrieval system we call a brain. The brain won't vomit back filth. Once recorded, it will always remain subject to recall, flashing its perverted images across your mind and drawing you away from the wholesome things in life.

The church doesn't seek apologies and we don't give them.

Faith is developed in a setting where we cannot see ahead.

...When a choice will make a real difference in our lives—obvious or not—and when we are living in tune with the Spirit and seeking his guidance, we can be sure we will receive the guidance we need to attain our goal.

Healing blessings come in many ways, each suited to our individual needs, as known to Him who loves us best. Sometimes a ‘healing’ cures our illness or lifts our burden. But sometimes we are ‘healed’ by being given strength or understanding or patience to bear the burdens placed upon us.

Our lives of service and sacrifice are the most appropriate expressions of our commitment to serve the Master and our fellowmen.

Even as we seek to be meek and to avoid contention, we must not compromise or dilute our commitment to the truths we understand. We must not surrender our positions or our values. The gospel of Jesus Christ and the covenants we have made inevitably cast us as combatants in the eternal contest between truth and error. there is no middle ground in that contest.

Those who enjoy the blessings of liberty under a divinely inspired constitution should promote morality, and they should practice what the Founding Fathers called civic virtue.

If our bodies are sick, we seek to heal them. We do not give up. The same thing should be true of our marriages.

We have to forego some good things in order to choose others that are better or best because they develop faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and strengthen our families.

Young people, if you honor your fathers, you will love them, respect them, confide in them, be considerate of them, express appreciation for them, and demonstrate all of these things by following their counsel in righteousness and by obeying the commandments of God.

When we have a vision of what we can become, our desire and our power to act increase enormously.

We need to remember the purpose of our service to one another. If it were only to accomplish some part of His work, God could dispatch 'legions of angels.' . . . But that would not achieve the purpose of the service He has prescribed. We serve God and our fellowmen in order to become the kind of children who can return to live with our heavenly parents.

Man unquestionably has impressive powers... But after all our obedience and good works, we cannot be saved from the effects of our sins without the grace extended by the atonement of Jesus Christ... Man cannot earn his own salvation.

The gospel of Jesus Christ challenges us to change. “Repent” is its most frequent message, and repenting means giving up all of our practices-perso nal, family, ethnic, and national-that are contrary to the commandments of God. The purpose of the gospel is to transform common creatures into celestial citizens, and that requires change.

Religious insights and values are just as important today as they were 50 or 100 years ago.

When we understand our relationship to God, we also understand our relationship to one another.

If we choose the wrong road, we choose the wrong destination.

It is Christ's atonement that makes it possible for us to be forgiven of our sins and His resurrection that gives us the assurance of immortality and the life to come. It is that life to come that orients our views in mortality and reinforces our determination to live the laws of God so that we can qualify for His blessings in immortality.

There are people who oppose a federal Constitutional amendment because they think that the law of family should be made by the states. I can see a legitimate argument there. I think it's mistaken, however, because the federal government, through the decisions of life-tenured federal judges, has already taken over that area.

Our attitude toward abortion . . . is fixed by our knowledge that according to an eternal plan all of the spirit children of God must come to this earth for a glorious purpose, and that individual identity began long before conception and will continue for all the eternities to come. We rely on the prophets of God who have told us that while there may be 'rare' exceptions, 'the practice of elective abortion is fundamentally contrary to the Lord's injunction, 'Thou shalt not . . . kill, nor do anything like unto it'

The Atonement of Jesus Christ and the healing it offers do much more than provide the opportunity for repentance from sins. The Atonement also gives us the strength to endure "pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind," because our Savior also took upon Him "the pains and the sicknesses of his people" (Alma 7:11). Brothers and sisters, if your faith and prayers and the power of the priesthood do not heal you from an affliction, the power of the Atonement will surely give you the strength to bear the burden.

The ultimate defining fact for all of us is that we are children of Heavenly Parents, born on this earth for a purpose, and born with a divine destiny.

We should recognize the reality that just because something is good is not sufficient reason for doing it. The number of good things we can do far exceeds the time available to accomplish them.

I believe many of us are overnourished on entertainment junk food and undernourished on the bread of life.

In contrast to the institutions of the world, which teach us to KNOW something, the gospel of Jesus Christ challenges us to BECOME something...The gospel of Jesus Christ is the plan by which we can become what children of god are supposed to become...Charity is something one becomes.

Let us give thanks for what we are and for the circumstances God has given us for our personal journey through mortality.