Heber J Grant Quotes

May we be strengthened with the understanding that being blessed does not mean that we shall always be spared all the disappointments and difficulties of life.

If there is any one thing that will bring peace and contentment into the human heart, and into the family, it is to live within your means.

Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice.

No obstacles are insurmountable when God commands and we obey.

Let us not forget the obligation which rests upon us to render allegiance and service to the Lord, and that acceptable service to Him cannot be rendered without service to our fellow man.

There is no other labor in all the world that brings to a human heart, judging from my own personal experience, more joy, peace and serenity than proclaiming the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ

If we are faithful in keeping the commandments of God His promises will be fulfilled to the very letter. . . . The trouble is, the adversary of men's souls blinds their minds. He throws dust, so to speak, in their eyes, and they are blinded with the things of this world.

The minute a man stops supplicating God for His Spirit and direction, just so soon he starts out to become a stranger to Him and His works. When men stop praying for God's Spirit, they place confidence in their own unaided reason, and they gradually lose the Spirit of God.

In the quiet hours, in the heat of battle, and through the hazards of the day; in times of temptation, of sorrow, of peace and of blessing, let us pray always, both alone, and with our families gathered around us, with gratitude for the blessings of life, for understanding of its problems, and for strength to endure to the end.

One can never tell what will be the result of faithful service rendered, nor do we know when it will come back to us or to those with whom we are associated. The reward may not come at the time, but in dividends later. I believe we will never lose anything in life by giving service, by making sacrifices, and doing the right thing.

There is but one path of safety to the Latter-day Saints, and that is the path of duty. It is not testimony, it is not marvelous manifestations, it is not knowing that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is true, . . . it is not actually knowing that the Savior is the Redeemer, and that Joseph Smith was His prophet, that will save you and me, but it is the keeping of the commandments of God, the living the life of a Latter-day Saint. [Heber J. Grant, Improvement Era, November 1936, p. 659] Quoted in “Waiting Upon the Lord” By Henry B. Eyring, BYU Speeches, 30 Sept 1990

I would sooner have the approval of my own conscience and know that I had done my duty than to have the praise of all the world and not have the approval of my own conscience. A man's own conscience, when he is living as he should live, is the finest monitor and the best judge in all the world. Men can accuse you of wrong-doing, and it has no effect at all if you know they lie and you have done that which is right

From my childhood days I have understood that we believe absolutely that the Constitution of our country was an inspired instrument, and that God directed those who created it and those who defended the independence of this nation. In other words, that He fought with Washington and others in the Revolutionary War.

Good acts grow upon a person. I have sometimes thought that many men, judging from their utter lack of kindness and of a disposition to aid others, imagined that if they were to say or do a kind thing, it would destroy their capacity to perform a kind act or say a kind word in the future. If you have a granary full of grain, and you give away a sack or two, there remain that many less in your granary, but if you perform a kind act or add words of encouragement to one in distress, who is struggling along in the battle of life, the greater is your capacity to do this in the future. Don’t go through life with your lips sealed against words of kindness and encouragement, nor your hearts sealed against performing labors for another. Make a motto in life: always try and assist someone else to carry his burden.

If we are striving, if we are working, if we are trying, to the best of our ability, to improve day by day, then we are in the line of our duty.

We sing, "We thank thee, O God, for a prophet to guide us in these latter days," but many of us ought to put a postscript on it, "Provided he doesn't guide us to do something that we do not want to do.

We sing and have done so constantly, "We thank Thee, O God, for a Prophet to guide us in these latter days." [Hymns, no. 19.] There are a great many who . . . put a postscript to that and say: "Provided he guides us to suit our own fancies and our own whims." The prophets of God, from Joseph Smith to the present day, have guided us and they have guided us aright, when we have listened to that guidance. The mistakes which have been made have been because of our failure to listen to the prophet whose right it is to guide the people of God. . . . I know that the path of safety for the Latter-day Saints is not only to sing, "We thank Thee, O God, for a Prophet, to guide us in these latter days," but to be ready and willing and anxious to be guided.

I have traveled six solid weeks at a time in different settlements and heard "We Thank Thee, O God, For a Prophet" sung in every one of them. And I have thought time and time again that there were any number of Latter-day Saints who ought to put a postscript on it and say, "We thank thee, O God, for a prophet to guide us in these latter days provided he guides us in the way we want to be guided.

A Personal Atonement At some point the multitudinous sins of countless ages were heaped upon the Savior, but his submissiveness was much more than a cold response to the demands of justice. This was not a nameless, passionless atonement performed by some detached, stoic being. Rather, it was an offering driven by infinite love. This was a personalized, not a mass atonement. Somehow, it may be that the sins of every soul were individually (as well as cumulatively) accounted for, suffered for, and redeemed for, all with a love unknown to man. Christ tasted "death for every man" (Hebrews 2:9; emphasis added), perhaps meaning for each individual person. One reading of Isaiah suggests that Christ may have envisioned each of us as the atoning sacrifice took its toll—"when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed" (Isaiah 53:10; emphasis added; see also Mosiah 15:10–11). Just as the Savior blessed the "little children, one by one" (3 Nephi 17:21); just as the Nephites felt his wounds "one by one" (3 Nephi 11:15); just as he listens to our prayers one by one; so, perhaps, he suffered for us, one by one. President Heber J. Grant spoke of this individual focus: "Not only did Jesus come as a universal gift, He came as an individual offering with a personal message to each one of us. For each one of us He died on Calvary and His blood will conditionally save us. Not as nations, communities or groups, but as individuals."55 Similar feelings were shared by C. S. Lewis: "He [Christ] has infinite attention to spare for each one of us. He does not have to deal with us in the mass. You are as much alone with Him as if you were the only being He had ever created. When Christ died, He died for you individually just as much as if you had been the only man in the world."56 Elder Merrill J. Bateman spoke not only of the Atonement's infinite nature, but also of its intimate reach: "The Savior's atonement in the garden and on the cross is intimate as well as infinite. Infinite in that it spans the eternities. Intimate in that the Savior felt each person's pains, sufferings, and sicknesses."57 Since the Savior, as a God, has the capacity to simultaneously entertain multiple thoughts, perhaps it was not impossible for the mortal Jesus to contemplate each of our names and transgressions in concomitant fashion as the Atonement progressed, without ever sacrificing personal attention for any of us. His suffering need never lose its personal nature. While such suffering had both macro and micro dimensions, the Atonement was ultimately offered for each one of us.

There was some indication . . . that unless this Church grew and 'progressed' with the present age, so to speak, like other churches, it would be doomed to failure. Any Latter-day Saint that thinks for one minute that this Church is going to fail is not a really converted Latter-day Saint. There will be no failure in this Church. It has been established for the last time, never to be given to another people and never to be thrown down

I feel that there is a lack of interest in his own family on the part of the man who does not try to have in his home such literature and such information as will benefit his children and lead them in that straight and narrow path which leads to life eternal.

Though the question of Job’s historicity has never been the subject of specific revelation for Latter-day Saints, it has been the subject of at least one semi-official letter from a First Presidency source, as Thomas Alexander reports in Mormonism in Transition: In October 1922, while Heber J. Grant was in Washington, the First Presidency received a letter from Joseph W. McMurrin asking about the position of the Church with regard to the literality of the Bible. Charles W. Penrose, with Anthony W. Ivins, writing for the First Presidency, answered that the position of the Church was that the Bible is the word of God as far as it was translated correctly. They pointed out that there were, however, some problems with the Old Testament. . . . While they thought Jonah was a real person, they said it was possible that the story as told in the Bible was a parable common at the time. The purpose was to teach a lesson, and it “is of little significance as to whether Jonah was a real individual or one chosen by the writer of the book” to illustrate “what is set forth therein.” They took a similar position on Job.

If there is any one thing that will bring peace and contentment into the human heart, and into the family, it is to live within our means.

President Heber J. Grant,

President Heber J. Grant was famous for repeating a saying thought to be attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson: “That which we persist in doing becomes easier for us to do—not that the nature of the thing is changed, but that our power to do so is increased.