Howard W. Hunter: Perhaps no promise in life is more reassuring than t...

This Christmas mend a quarrel. Seek out a forgotten friend. Dismiss suspicion and replace it with trust. Write a letter. Give a soft answer. Encourage youth. Manifest your loyalty in word and deed. Keep a promise. Forgo a grudge. Forgive an enemy. Apologize. Try to understand. Examine your demands on others. Think first of someone else. Be kind. Be gentle. Laugh a little more. Express your gratitude. Welcome a stranger. Gladden the heart of a child. Take pleasure in the beauty and wonder of the earth. Speak your love, and then speak it again.

Howard W. Hunter

gratitude loyalty love

We need to be kinder with one another, more gentle and forgiving. We need to be slower to anger and more prompt to help. We need to extend the hand of friendship and resist the hand of retribution. In short, we need to love one another with the pure love of Christ, with genuine charity and compassion and, if necessary, shared suffering, for that is the way God loves us.

Howard W. Hunter

forgiving compassion hands

Those who are filled with the love of Christ do not seek to force others to do better, they inspire others to do better.

Howard W. Hunter

force inspire christ

Being happily and successfully married is generally not so much a matter of marrying the right person as it is being the right person.

Howard W. Hunter

married persons matter

If our lives and our faith are centered on Jesus Christ and his restored gospel, nothing can ever go permanently wrong. On the other hand, if our lives are not centered on the Savior and his teachings, no other success can ever be permanently right.

Howard W. Hunter

teaching hands jesus

Let us be a temple-attending people. Attend the temple as frequently as personal circumstances allow. Keep a picture of a temple in your home that your children may see it. Teach them about the purposes of the House of the Lord. Have them plan from their earliest years to go there and to remain worthy of that blessing.

Howard W. Hunter

blessing home children

The government will take from the 'haves' and give to the 'have nots.' Both have lost their freedom. Those who 'have', lost their freedom to give voluntarily of their own free will and in the way the desire. Those who 'have not,' lost their freedom because they did not earn what they received. They got 'something for nothing,' and they will neither appreciate the gift nor the giver of the gift.

Howard W. Hunter

appreciate government giving

At the end of your lives you will not be judged by academic successes, the degrees or diplomas earned, the positions held, the material wealth acquired, or power and prestige, but rather on the basis of what you have become as persons and what you are in conduct and character.

Howard W. Hunter

diploma degrees character

True greatness...always requires regular, consistent, small, and sometimes ordinary and mundane steps over a long period of time.

Howard W. Hunter

new-year greatness happy

The world in which we live would benefit greatly if men and women everywhere would exercise the pure love of Christ, which is kind, meek, and lowly. It is without envy or pride. It is selfless because it seeks nothing in return. It does not countenance evil or ill will, nor rejoice in iniquity; it has no place for bigotry, hatred, or violence. It refuses to condone ridicule, vulgarity, abuse, or ostracism. It encourages diverse people to live together in Christian love regardless of religious belief, race, nationality, financial standing, education, or culture.

Howard W. Hunter

pride religious christian

The gospel of Jesus Christ is not limited to a system of beliefs; it is a plan of action.

Howard W. Hunter

belief action jesus

Giving consistent effort in the little things in day-to-day life leads to true greatness. Specifically, it is the thousands of little deeds and tasks of service and sacrifice that constitute the giving or losing of one's life for others and for the Lord. They include gaining a knowledge of our Father in Heaven and of the gospel. They also include bringing others into the faith and fellowship of his kingdom. These things do not usually receive the attention or the adulation of the world.... .

Howard W. Hunter

sacrifice greatness father

We need to remember that though we make our friends, God has made our neighbors – everywhere. Love should have no boundary; we should have no narrow loyalties.

Howard W. Hunter

loyalty should-have love

Let us truly be a temple-attending and a temple-loving people….Let us make the temple, with temple worship and temple covenants and temple marriage, our ultimate earthly goal and the supreme mortal experience.

Howard W. Hunter

temples goal people

The family is the most important unit in time and in eternity and, as such, transcends every other interest in life.

Howard W. Hunter

interest-in-life eternity important

God's chief way of acting is by persuasion and patience and long-suffering, not by coercion and stark confrontation. He acts by gentle solicitation and by sweet enticement. He always acts with unfailing respect for the freedom and independence that we possess.

Howard W. Hunter

independence sweet long

Whatever Jesus lays His hands upon, lives. If He lays is hands upon a marriage, it lives. If He is allowed to lay His hands on the family, it lives.

Howard W. Hunter

lays hands jesus

That which is worth while is seldom easy.

Howard W. Hunter

easy

To dig a straight furrow, the plowman needs to keep his eyes on a fixed point ahead of him. That keeps him on a true course. If, however, he happens to look back to see where he has been, his chances of straying are increased. The results are crooked and irregular furrows...Fix your attention on your...goals and never look back on your earlier problems....If our energies are focused not behind us but ahead of us--on eternal life and the joy of salvation--we assuredly will obtain it.

Howard W. Hunter

generosity eye goal

The ability to stand by one's principles, to live with integrity and faith according to one's belief-that is what matters, that is the difference between a contribution and a commitment. That devotion to true principle in our individual lives, in our homes and families, and in all places that we meet and influence other people-that devotion is what God is ultimately requesting of us.

Howard W. Hunter

home integrity commitment

Perhaps no promise in life is more reassuring than that promise of divine assistance and spiritual guidance in times of need. It is a gift freely given from heaven, a gift that we need from our earliest youth through the very latest days of our lives.