Harold B Lee Quotes

The most important of the Lord's work you will ever do will be the work you do within the walls of your own home.

You cannot lift another soul until you are standing on higher ground than he is. You cannot light a fire in another soul unless it is burning in your own soul.

Life is fragile, handle with prayer.

Happiness does not depend on what happens outside of you, but what happens inside of you.

Be loyal to the royal that is in you, for you are the child of a King.

The most important work you and I will ever do will be within the walls of our own homes.

Just as a flood-lighted temple is more beautiful in a severe storm or in a heavy fog, so the gospel of Jesus Christ is more glorious in times of inward storm and of personal sorrow and tormenting conflict.

Our father in heaven governs the affairs of men by placing specific individuals upon the earth to lead at specific times and inspiring and directing them.

Happiness does not depend on what happens outside of you but on what happens inside of you; it is measured by the spirit with which you meet the problems of life. - 1974

You cannot life another soul until you are standing on higher ground than he is.

You are equipped with strong bodies and educated minds. Add to these an unshakable faith in a divine providence and you have the tools by which you may build a successful life. Make each day your masterpiece and live so nobly that you may witness honestly each day: Whatever came to your hands this day, you did it to the best of your ability

The one who confidently looks forward to an eternal reward for his efforts in mortality is constantly sustained through his deepest trials. When he is disappointed in love, he does not commit suicide. When loved ones die, he doesn’t despair; when he loses a coveted contest, he doesn’t falter; when war and destruction dissipate his future, he doesn’t sink into a depression. He lives above his world and never loses sight of the goal of his salvation.

The trouble with us today, there are too many of us who put question marks instead of periods after what the Lord says. I want you to think about that. We shouldn't be concerned about why He said something, or whether or not it can be made so. Just trust the Lord. We don't try to find the answers or explanations. We shouldn't try to spend time explaining what the Lord didn't see fit to explain. We spend useless time.

The most important of all the commandments of God is that one that you are having the most difficulty keeping today.

As I say, it never ceases to amaze me how gullible some of our Church members are..." Admonitions for the Priesthood of God", Ensign, Jan 1973

What we are hereafter depends on what we're after here.

It is well that we remember that the trials, difficulties, and experiences of life all have purpose. There came to me on the occasion of a year in my life to be remembered when the lovely sisters of our Relief Society wrote this as a prayer in my behalf. It was entitled 'May You Have': "Enough happiness to keep you sweet, Enough trials to keep you strong, Enough sorrow to keep you human, Enough hope to keep you happy, Enough failure to keep you humble, Enough success to keep you eager, Enough wealth to meet your needs, Enough enthusiasm to look forward, Enough friends to give you comfort, Enough faith to banish depression, Enough determination to make each day better than yesterday. "This is my prayer for the faithful Saints in every land and throughout the world as we look forward to the future with courage and with fortitude

Any conduct on the part of an individual that does not advance him toward the goal of eternal life is not only wasted energy but actually becomes the basis of sin.

If it were not for the assurance that I have that the Lord is near to us, guiding, directing, the burden would be almost beyond my strength, but because I know that He is there, and that He can be appealed to, and if we have ears to hear attuned to Him, we will never be left alone

To some it may seem old-fashioned to speak of virtue and chastity, honesty, morality, faith, character, but these are the qualities which have built great men and women and point the way by which one may find happiness in the living of today and eternal joy in the world to come. These are the qualities which are the anchors to our lives, in spite of the trials, the tragedies, the pestilences, and the cruelties of war which bring in their wake appalling destruction, hunger, and bloodshed

The path to [exaltation] is rugged and steep. Many stumble and fall, and through discouragement never pick themselves up to start again. The forces of evil cloud the path with many foggy deterrents, often trying to detour us in misleading trails. But through all this journey there is the calming assurance that if we choose the right, success will be ours, and the achievement of it will have molded and formed and created us into the kind of person qualified to be accepted into the presence of God.

He must make sure that he has found the girl of his choice, they have gone together long enough that they know each other, and that they know each other’s faults and they still love each other. … Brethren, think more seriously about the obligations of marriage for those who bear the holy priesthood at a time when marriage should be the expectation of every man who understands [his] responsibility.

Years ago when I served as a missionary, we had a visit from Dr. James E. Talmage of the Council of the Twelve--a great student, a great teacher, great theologian, and a great prophet.. Here we sat at his feet every idle minute that we could find and plied him with questions and listened to his counsel. On one occasion he said to us, "I want to tell you missionaries something. The day of sacrifice is not past! The time will come, yet, when many Saints and even Apostles will yet lose their lives in defense of the truth!

We can be the best taught people on the face of the earth but the trouble is we don't live as well as we have been taught.

The most important work you and I will ever do will be within the walls of our own homes. —HAROLD B. LEE

It is good to be faithful. It is better to be faithful and competent.

To help our youth abide by the principles involved in temple marriage, we must help them to understand that temple marriage is more than just a place where the ceremony occurs; it is a whole orientation to life and marriage and home. It is a culmination of building attitudes toward the Church, chastity, and about our personal relationship with God--and many other things. "Thus, simply preaching temple marriage is not enough. Our family home evenings, seminaries, institutes, and auxiliaries must build toward this goal, not by exhortation alone but by showing that the beliefs and attitudes involved in temple marriage are those which can bring the kind of life here and in eternity that most humans really want for themselves" (The Teachings of Harold B. Lee, p. 244).

It was to accomplish this lofty purpose basic to all liberty that God “established the Constitution of this land by the hands of wise men whom (he) raised up unto this very purpose” (D&C 101:77–80). Contained within the principles of that great heaven-inspired document is the message of this Church to the world in this fateful hour. Except the spirit of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and principles contained within the Constitution of the United States are inherent in world plans now being formulated, they are but building on sand and the Lord is not in that building.

Unless every member of this church gains for himself an unshakable testimony of the divinity of this church, he will be among those who will be deceived in this day when the "elect according to the covenant" are going to be tried and tested. Only those will survive who have gained for themselves that testimony. . . . It is not alone sufficient for us as Latter-day Saints to follow our leaders and to accept their counsel, but we have the greater obligation to gain for ourselves the unshakable testimony of the divine appointment of these men and the witness that what they have told us is the will of our Heavenly Father.

Our failure to be a "peculiar" people in maintaining our standards, despite the jeers and the criticisms of the crowd, will be our failure to be chosen for that calling to which we are called. The Lord has told us, "Behold, there are many called, but few are chosen" (D&C 121:34), and then in the same revelation points out two reasons why men fail of their blessings. The first reason he gives is that their hearts are set so much upon the things of this world, and the second is that they aspire so much to the honors of men. So then as Church members let us beware lest we set our hearts upon the things of this world and lest we aspire so much to the honors of men that we compromise our standards. If we do so, we will be cut off in the Day of Judgment and will lose our blessings. Our reward for daring to live the gospel despite the oppositions from the outside world will be to have blessings added upon our heads forever and forever.

Marriage is a partnership. Someone has observed that in the Bible account of the creation woman was not formed from a part of man's head, suggesting that she might rule over him, nor from a part of a man's foot that she was to be trampled under his feet. Woman was taken from man's side as though to emphasize the fact that she was always to be by his side as a partner and companion.

I have learned something of what the Spirit has taught, and I know now that the place of safety in this world is not in any given place; it doesn't make so much difference where we live, and I have found that security can come to Israel only when they keep the commandments, when they live so that they can enjoy the companionship, the direction, the comfort, and the guidance of the Holy Spirit of the Lord.

There are promises of protection in the Word of Wisdom. The Lord’s word of wisdom commanding abstinence from a worldly “king’s portion” of tobacco, tea and coffee, and alcoholic beverages that are habit-forming, and which counsels the simple diet of fruits, grains, and vegetables in season, with meats used sparingly, has been given you as a revelation of God’s great law of health. It stands today as a challenge to a world surfeited with things condemned as unclean and unfit for the human body. If you have faith as the youthful Daniel and his brethren and purpose in your hearts that you will not defile yourselves with “king’s meat and wine,” even though you may be two thousand miles east of the Suez Canal, your faith will have the reward of hidden treasures of knowledge, of strong bodies that can “run and not be weary and walk and not faint.” If by faith in this great law, you refrain from the use of food and drink harmful to your bodies, you will not become a ready prey to scourges that shall sweep the land, as in the days of the people of Moses in Egypt, bringing death to every household that has not heeded the commandments of God.

Whether at home or in church, your thoughts and your conduct should be always in harmony with the spirit and purpose of the Sabbath. Places of amusement and recreation, while at proper times may serve a needed end, are not conducive of spiritual growth and such places will not keep you “unspotted from the world” but will rather deny you the “fulness of the earth” promised to those who comply with the law of the Sabbath. [See D&C 59:9, 16.] You who make the violation of the Sabbath a habit, by your failure to “keep it holy,” are losing a soul full of joy in return for a thimble full of pleasure. You are giving too much attention to your physical desires at the expense of your spiritual health. The Sabbath breaker shows early the signs of his weakening in the faith by neglecting his daily family prayers, by fault-finding, by failing to pay his tithes and his offerings; and such a one whose mind begins to be darkened because of spiritual starvation soon begins also to have doubts and fears that make him unfit for spiritual learning or advancement in righteousness. These are the signs of spiritual decay and spiritual sickness that may only be cured by proper spiritual feeding.

There are many who profess to be religious and speak of themselves as Christians, and, according to one such, “as accepting the scriptures only as sources of inspiration and moral truth,” and then ask in their smugness: “Do the revelations of God give us a handrail to the kingdom of God, as the Lord’s messenger told Lehi, or merely a compass?” Unfortunately, some are among us who claim to be Church members but are somewhat like the scoffers in Lehi’s vision—standing aloof and seemingly inclined to hold in derision the faithful who choose to accept Church authorities as God’s special witnesses of the gospel and his agents in directing the affairs of the Church. There are those in the Church who speak of themselves as liberals who, as one of our former presidents has said, “read by the lamp of their own conceit.” (Joseph F. Smith, Gospel Doctrine [Deseret Book Co., 1939], p. 373.) One time I asked one of our Church educational leaders how he would define a liberal in the Church. He answered in one sentence: “A liberal in the Church is merely one who does not have a testimony.” Dr. John A. Widtsoe, former member of the Quorum of the Twelve and an eminent educator, made a statement relative to this word liberal as it applied to those in the Church. This is what he said: “The self-called liberal [in the Church] is usually one who has broken with the fundamental principles or guiding philosophy of the group to which he belongs. . . . He claims membership in an organization but does not believe in its basic concepts; and sets out to reform it by changing its foundations. . . . “It is folly to speak of a liberal religion, if that religion claims that it rests upon unchanging truth.” And then Dr. Widtsoe concludes his statement with this: “It is well to beware of people who go about proclaiming that they are or their churches are liberal. The probabilities are that the structure of their faith is built on sand and will not withstand the storms of truth.” (“Evidences and Reconciliations,” Improvement Era, vol. 44 [1941], p. 609.) Here again, to use the figure of speech in Lehi’s vision, they are those who are blinded by the mists of darkness and as yet have not a firm grasp on the “iron rod.” Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, when there are questions which are unanswered because the Lord hasn’t seen fit to reveal the answers as yet, all such could say, as Abraham Lincoln is alleged to have said, “I accept all I read in the Bible that I can understand, and accept the rest on faith.” . . . Wouldn’t it be a great thing if all who are well schooled in secular learning could hold fast to the “iron rod,” or the word of God, which could lead them, through faith, to an understanding, rather than to have them stray away into strange paths of man-made theories and be plunged into the murky waters of disbelief and apostasy? . . . Cyprian, a defender of the faith in the Apostolic Period, testified, and I quote, “Into my heart, purified of all sin, there entered a light which came from on high, and then suddenly and in a marvelous manner, I saw certainty succeed doubt.” . . . The Lord issued a warning to those who would seek to destroy the faith of an individual or lead him away from the word of God or cause him to lose his grasp on the “iron rod,” wherein was safety by faith in a Divine Redeemer and his purposes concerning this earth and its peoples. The Master warned: “But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better … that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.” (Matt. 18:6.) The Master was impressing the fact that rather than ruin the soul of a true believer, it were better for a person to suffer an earthly death than to incur the penalty of jeopardizing his own eternal destiny.

Happiness does not depend on what happens outside of you, but on what happens inside of you. It is measured by the spirit with which you meet the problems of life.

President Harold B. Lee explained that even Jesus Christ in his extremity had need of ministering angels:

He had been ordained an Apostle two and a half years after Harold B. Lee. Given that President Kimball was four years older than President Lee and, it appeared, in poorer health,

Robb’s Series Order W.E.B. Griffin’s Series Order J.R. Ward’s Series Order Wilbur Smith’s  Series Order James Patterson’s

God grant that each of us may so live that we may enjoy that communion with Deity through the Holy Ghost, and know without doubt that he does live, and be prepared one day to enter into his presence.

False Prophets and Christs, as foretold by the Savior, may come to deceive us not alone in the name of religion, but if we can believe the history of Italy and Germany and Russia (WWII), they may come under the label of politicians or of social planners or so-called economists, deceitful in their offerings of a kind of salvation which may come under such guise

Can a child come to love his neighbor unless he has known love himself? Can a young person who has never been trusted learn to trust? Can a boy who has never known work or responsibility see how those vital traits are needed to hold our whole society together? Can a girl who has not been a part of honest, candid discussions of gospel principles in her home cope with the criticisms of the world and the intellectual assaults on her religion? . . . "We must remember that in some of our young, the offense over adult hypocrisy is not always their desire to 'get something on us,' but a deep sense of disappointment. They truly want us to be what we pretend to be, because when we are, it is a testimony to them that we really believe

When there is to be anything different from that which the Lord has told us already, He will reveal it to His prophet and no one else. Do you suppose that when the Lord has a prophet on the earth, He is going to take some roundabout means of revealing things to His children? This is what He has a prophet for, and when He has something to give to this church, He will give it to the President, and the President will see that the presidents of stakes and missions get it, along with the General Authorities, and they in turn will see that the people are advised of any change.

His further comments in this particular article are significant: All this criticism may be too narrow. There is plenty of evidence that the Latter-day Saints are gullible on many subjects, not just this one. President Harold B.Lee expressed impatience with the rumor-mongering which is endemic among Mormons. The too-generous standing ovations at BYU are becoming legendary. Salt Lake City has earned a nationwide reputation as a center for stock fraud, and Douglas Stringfellow beguiled Utahans for years.27

Finally, President Harold B. Lee (1899–1973), who was the eleventh President of the Church, explained, “What we have received here in this earth [life] was given to each of us according to the merits of our conduct before we came here.”[8] In other words, many of the promises made to you in your patriarchal blessing have been made because you earned the right to those promises because of your faithfulness when you dwelt in your Father in Heaven’s presence.

Discuss the story of Lee Sherman—how does he represent “the Great Paradox through a keyhole”? How is it possible for an environmentalist whistle blower to also be a member of the Tea Party? (p. 33) 6.​When telling the story of Harold Areno, Hochschild quotes him as saying, “If you shoot an endangered brown pelican, they’ll put you in jail. But if a company kills the brown pelican by poisoning the fish he eats? They let it go. I think they overregulate the bottom because it’s harder to regulate the top.” Hochschild mentions the brown pelican throughout the book—how does the pelican function as an important motif in the book? (pp. 52, 138, 212) 7.​When spending time with the General, whom Hochschild calls an “empathy wall leaper,” she writes that Louisiana residents prize the freedom to do certain things but resent the freedom from things like gun violence or toxic pollution, even when such restrictions might improve their lives. How does the General deal with what he calls this “psychological program”? (p. 71) 8.​Hochschild provides overwhelming evidence that establishes a correlation between pollution and red states. She also discusses a report from the 1980s that helped identify communities that would not resist “locally undesirable land use.” Do you think she’s right to connect this profile of the “least resistant personality” with the General’s idea of the “psychological program”? (p. 81, Appendix B) 9.​In a moment of feeling stuck on her own side of the empathy wall, Hochschild asks Mike Schaff what the federal government has done that he feels grateful for. What do you make of his answer and the idea that the less you depend on the government, the higher your status? Do you feel one’s status is diminished by receiving government help of any sort? Do others you know feel this way—and why? Do you think people generally feel less gratitude to the government today than in the past? What are you grateful for from the government? (pp. 113–114)

We have to be humble in order to have our prayers answered. Before we can have an answer to our prayers, we have to have a deep feeling of spiritual need; and unless we get to feeling that, we can't just say words and receive an answer. We must pray with real intent, with desire to know, and with faith on the Lord Jesus Christ; then by the power of the Holy Ghost we may know. That is the only way we can have an answer to prayers

The spiritually minded person seeks respect of the high minded who obey the law, who revere womanhood and virtue and encourage purity of thought and action rather than cater to the applause of those who secretly despise the man who thinks and acts below the standards he professes.

Life is fragile; handle with prayer.