Ezra Taft Benson Quotes

I ... express a wish that you may, in your generation, be fit to compare to a candle; that you may, like it, shine as lights to those about you; that, in all your actions, you may justify the beauty of the taper by making your deeds honourable and effectual in the discharge of your duty to your fellow-men.

Do you think it is a vain hope that one day man will find joy in noble deeds of light and mercy, rather than in the coarse pleasures he indulges in today -- gluttony, fornication, ostentation, boasting, and envious vying with his neighbor? I am certain this is not a vain hope and that the day will come soon.

He is beauty, inside and out. He is the silver lining in a world of darkness. He is my light.

Christ does not dress up a moral picture, and ask you to observe its beauty. He only tells you how to live; and the most beautiful characters the world has ever seen, have been those who received and lived these precepts without once conceiving their beauty.

Serve God with integrity, and if you achieve no success, at least no sin will lie upon your conscience.

Even a little of dharma saves one from many a pitfall.

Pointing to another world will never stop vice among us; shedding light over this world can alone help us.

It is almost impossible for children and youth to find their way through the seas of life without the guiding light of a good example.

We are indeed the light of the world-but only if our switch is turned on.

Henri Nouwen once asked Mother Teresa for spiritual direction. Spend one hour each day in adoration of your Lord, she said, and never do anything you know is wrong. Follow this and you'll be fine.

The world is upheld by the veracity of good men: they make the earth wholesome. They who lived with them found life glad and nutritious. Life is sweet and tolerable only in our belief in such society.

A wise and good man will turn examples of all sorts to his own advantage. The good he will make his patterns, and strive to equal or excel them. The bad he will by all means avoid.

Unless the vessel be pure, everything which is poured into it will turn sour.

Do well and right and let the world sink.

So our lives In acts exemplary, not only win Ourselves good names, but doth to others give Matter for virtuous deeds, by which we live.

The good refrain from sin from the pure love of virtue.

The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death.

If your inner being changes, your whole outer life will be totally different. It will have a different fragrance, a different beauty, a different grace. And when your inner being is changed and becomes a flame of light, you will become a light unto others too. You will become a beckoning light, a great herald of a new dawn. Your very presence will trigger revolutions in other people's lives.

I don't want to put the world to rights... I just don't like people who put the world to wrongs.

If history records good things about good people, the thoughtful hearer is encouraged to imitate what is good; or if it records the evil of wicked people, the godly listener or reader is encouraged to avoid all that is sinful and bad, and to do what he knows to be good and pleasing to God.

A Warrior of the Light does not accept gifts from his enemy.

Remember that if the opportunities for great deeds should never come, the opportunities for good deeds are renewed day by day. The thing for us to long for is the goodness, not the glory.

Life is a ruthless game unless you play it good and right.

He who harms living beings is, for that reason, not an ariya (a Noble One); he who does not harm any living being is called an ariya.

Make sure you stay in touch with beauty instead of letting the ugliness of the world corrupt your soul