Quotes from Neal A. Maxwell

Enthusiasm needs to be effective enthusiasm. We must distinguish between the contribution and enthusiasm of the cheerleader and the enthusiasm of the player. While cheerleaders serve an important purpose, the real contest involves players on the field or on the court of life. We must not go through life acting only as enthusiastic cheerleaders available for hire; we must be anxiously and personally engaged.

Thus worshiping, serving, studying, praying, each in its own way squeezes selfishness out of us; pushes aside our preoccupations with the things of the world.

True discipleship is for volunteers only. Only volunteers will trust the Guide sufficiently to follow Him in the dangerous ascent which only He can lead.

If we knew how often the obedience of others is affected by our own, and how often our stepping forth soon brings forth a whole platton of helpers, and how often our speaking forth soon creates a chorus - we would be even more ashamed of our slackess and our silence.

We can be walking witnesses and standing sermons to which objective onlookers can say a quiet amen.

Within what is allotted to us, we can have spiritual contentment.

We may never become accustomed to untrue and unjust criticism of us but we ought not to be immobilized by it.

The true Christian is a communicator.

God will facilitate, but He will not force.

God's grace will cover us like a cloak-enough to provide for survival but too thin to keep out all the cold.

Our afflictions brothers and sisters often will not be extinguished, they will be dwarfed and swallowed up in the joy of Christ. That's how we overcome, most of the time. It's not their elimination, but the placing of them in that larger context.

These really are our days, and we can prevail and overcome, even in the midst of trends that are very disturbing. If we are faithful the day will come when those deserving pioneers and ancestors, whom we rightly praise for having overcome the adversities in the wilderness trek, will praise today's faithful for having made their way successfully through a desert of despair and for having passed through a cultural wilderness, while still keeping the faith.

How can we truly understand who we are unless we know who we were and what we have the power to become?

Finally, we can accept this stunning, irrevocable truth: Our Lord can lift us from deep despair and cradle us midst any care. We cannot tell him anything about aloneness or nearness!....He who cannot lie, will atteast to our adequacy with the warm words, "Well Done.

Long ago it took a Copernicus to tell a provincial world that this planet was not the center of the universe. Some selfish moderns need a Copernican reminder that they are not the center of the universe either!

A persistent preoccupation with "freedom of speech" to the neglect of other freedoms can diminish the shelter available for religion and other precious freedoms. The intertwining of all our freedoms is greater than we realize. . . . It may be true . . . that the people of Sodom and Gomorrah had absolute free speech, but did they have anything worth saying?

It is left to each of us to balance contentment regarding what God has allotted to us in life with some divine discontent resulting from what we are in comparison to what we have the power to become.

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

Most of our suffering comes from sin and stupidity; it is, nevertheless, very real, and growth can occur with real repentance. But the highest source of suffering appears to be reserved for the innocent who undergo divine tutorial training.

The Church has done many difficult things, and from these achievements one would not wish to detract. But all the easy things the Church has had to do have been done. From now on it is high adventure!

While we must always begin from where we are, we need not stay where we are.

Walking and overcoming by faith is not easy. For one thing, the dimension of time constantly constrains our perspective. Likewise, the world steadily tempts us. No wonder we are given instructive words from Jesus about the narrowness and the straightness of the only path available to return home: "I am the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6). And then he said, "No man cometh unto the Father, but by me." Jesus laid down strict conditions.

Repentance is a rescuing, not a dour, doctrine.

He knows that in leadership cleverness is not as important as content, that charisma and dash are not as vital as character and doctrine.