Ezra Taft Benson Life Quotations

Mothers, stay close to your daughters. Earn and deserve their love and respect. Be united with their father in the rearing of your children. Do nothing in your life to cause your daughters to stumble because of your example.

Some of the greatest battles will be fought within the silent chambers of your own soul.

There will always be those little minds who, out of vanity or intellectual display, will attempt to destroy faith in the very foundations of life.

No man is truly educated unless he knows where he came from, why he is here, and where he can expect to go in the next life.

Young people especially sometimes feel that the standards of the Lord are like fences and chains, blocking them from those activities that seem most enjoyable in life.

'What would Jesus do?' or 'What would He have me do?' are the paramount personal questions of this life.

The great task of life is to learn the will of the Lord and then do it.

The great test of life is obedience to God.

Christ removed self as the force in His perfect life. It was, 'Not my will, but thine be done.'

Young people, you need the wisdom of age, just as some of us older ones need your enthusiasm for life.

No other single influence has had so great an impact on this earth as the life of Jesus the Christ.

We are eternal beings. We lived as intelligent spirits before this mortal life. We are now living part of eternity. Our mortal birth was not the beginning; death, which faces all of us, is not the end.

The great commandment of life is to love the Lord.

The greatest test of life is obedience to God.

Acknowledging the Lord's hand in our lives cultivates gratitude. . . .

The high cost of low living.

Men and women who turn their lives over to God will discover that He can make a lot more out of their lives than they can. He can deepen their joys, expand their vision, quicken their minds, strengthen their muscles, lift their spirits, multiply their blessings, increase their opportunities, comfort their soals, and pour out peace.

We can choose to humble ourselves by loving God, adjusting our will to His, and putting Him first in our lives.

Do not be caught up in materialism, one of the real plagues of our generation-that is, acquiring things, fast-paced living, and securing career success.

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, as someone has described it. . . . Essentially, pride is a "my will" rather than "thy will" approach to life. The opposite of pride is humbleness, meekness, submissiveness, or teachableness.

Pride does not look up to God and care about what is right. It looks sideways to man and argues who is right. Pride is manifest in the spirit of contention. Was it not through pride that the devil became the devil? Christ wanted to serve. The devil wanted to rule. Christ wanted to bring men to where He was. The devil wanted to be above men. Christ removed self as the force in His perfect life. It was not my will, but thine be done

Be a light unto the world, a standard to others. You can live in the world and not partake of the sins of the world. You can live life joyously, beautifully, unmarred by the ugliness of sin. This is our confidence in you.