We do not obtain our heavenly reward by punching a time clock. What is essential is that our labors in the workplace of the Lord have caused us to become something." 
-Elder Dallin H. Oaks, "The Challenge to Become"

"We must have the courage to be imperfect while striving for perfection." 

-Patricia Holland

"We can throw stones, complain about them, stumble on them, climb over them, or build with them." 
- William Arthur Ward

"The man with insight enough to admit his limitations comes nearest to perfection." 
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Christ says,  ‘Give me All. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. I don’t want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down. I don’t want to drill the tooth, or crown it, or stop it, but to have it out. Hand over the natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked – the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours.’"
-C.S. Lewis

"Create your future from your future, not from your past." 
- Werner Erhard

"The process of growing up is to be valued for what we gain, not for what we lose."
-C.S.Lewis

“Grow old along with me! 

The best is yet to be, 

the last of life, for which the first was made. 

Our times are in his hand who saith, 

'A whole I planned, youth shows but half; 

Trust God: See all, nor be afraid!'”

-Robert Barret Browning

"We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit."
-e.e. cummings

Thanks for believing in me, honey. I love you :]

(Read about him here.)

Faith is always pointed toward the future.

"I plead with you not to dwell on days now gone, nor to yearn vainly for yesterdays, however good those yesterdays may have been....Faith is always pointed toward the future. Faith always has to do with blessings and truths and events that will yetbe efficacious in our lives. So a more theological way to talk about Lot’s wife is to say that she did not have faith. She doubted the Lord’s ability to give her something better than she already had. Apparently she thought—fatally, as it turned out—that nothing that lay ahead could possibly be as good as those moments she was leaving behind....

Some of you may be having thoughts such as these: Is there any future for me? What does a new year or a new semester or a new major or a new romance hold for me? Will I be safe? Will life be sound? Can I trust in the Lord and in the future? Or would it be better to look back, to go back, to go home?

To all such of every generation, I call out, “Remember Lot’s wife.” Faith is for the future. Faith builds on the past but never longs to stay there. Faith trusts that God has great things in store for each of us and that Christ truly is the “high priest of good things to come.”
- Elder Holland, "Remember Lot's Wife"

"Too often we want to be given answers to questions and problems that, if they were given in the manner we ask for them, would take away our agency and the blessings that come from reaching out to the Lord for answers and direction. Some think it would be nice to have 'spiritual fortune cookies' we could open to find the answers to life's challenges. Wouldn't it be nice to have a labeled jar we could reach into for our answers? But that is not the way it is meant to be." 
-Elder Robert D. Hales

"We can grow in faith only if we are willing to wait patiently for God's purposes to unfold in our lives, on His timetable."
-Neal A. Maxwell

"Face your deficiencies and acknowledge them - but do not let them master you." 
-Hellen Keller

"Having put our hand to the plow we must not look back, because when we are looking back, we are also holding back."

-Neal A. Maxwell

"Your mistake does not define who you are. You are your possibilities."

-Oprah Winfrey

"Around here, however, we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things… and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”
–Walt Disney 

"If God asks that you bend, bend and do not complain. He is making you more flexible, and for this be thankful."
-Terri Guillemets

"Virtue —even attempted virtue— brings light; indulgence brings fog." 
 - C.S. Lewis

Watching with Hope

"Perhaps watching can be painful at times, because I must acknowledge that time is passing - but not because, once passed, it's forever gone. Just like the sand that slips from the top of the globe to the glass floor below, it is not spilled or lost. It is stored.

My dad has always said that his favorite age for his children is the one they are at. I like that thought. To me, that is watching with hope.

Watching the change, and seeing what's not changing.

Watching it pass, and knowing it's not leaving.

Tasting every bite, but believing in God's everlasting covenant that the meal never ends. The food is perishable, yes, but there is more to come. And all of it, ingested, becomes a part of me." 

-Emily Halverson, "The Mother in Me"

"What we are is God's gift to us. What we become is our gift to God." 
-Eleanor Powell