Ezra Taft Benson Quotes

My faith makes me willing to do things that may look like there's going to be a lot of physical difficulty. And you just go ahead and do it because you truly believe it's the right thing to do.

For me, 'Lamb' started out as a further exploration of the phenomenon of faith and the responsibility of a messiah that I touched on in 'Coyote Blue' and 'Island of the Sequined Love Nun,' but it ended up being an exploration of the true meaning of sacrifice, loyalty, and friendship.

The mark of one who loves God and saints is sacrifice.

I think I was always subconsciously driven by an attempt to restate that faith and to show where it was properly grounded, how it grew out of what a great many young men on both sides felt and believed and were brave enough to do.

I have been astonished that men could die martyrs for religion - I have shuddered at it. I shudder no more - I could be martyred for my religion - Love is my religion - I could die for that.

A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair.

Love always involves responsibility, and love always involves sacrifice. And we do not really love Christ unless we are prepared to face His task and to take up His Cross.

Love is a big word. I believe in Love. I believe that God is Love.

For those who love, nothing is too difficult, especially when it is done for the love of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Whenever we think of Christ, we should recall the love that led Him to bestow on us so many graces and favors, and also the great love God showed in giving us in Christ a pledge of His love; for love calls for love in return. Let us strive to keep this always before our eyes and to rouse ourselves to love Him.

I love religion.

God comes first - if I don't love him, I can't love anybody, and if I can't love me I can't love nobody.

It is truer to say that martyrs create faith more than faith creates martyrs.

To be like Christ is to be a Christian.

The Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self. God loves us, not because of what we do or accomplish, but because God has created and redeemed us in love.

The Bible tells us that there are some things worth fighting for. In fact, the Bible says there's some things worth dying for.

Obedience to the call of Christ nearly always costs everything to two people- the one who is called, and the one who loves that one.

Trust me, I have not earned your dear rebuke, I love, as you would have me, God the most; Would lose not Him, but you, must one be lost, Nor with Lot's wife cast back a faithless look Unready to forego what I forsook; This say I, having counted up the cost, This, tho' I be the feeblest of God's host, The sorriest sheep Christ shepherds with His crook. Yet while I love my God the most, I deem That I can never love you overmuch; I love Him more, so let me love you too; Yea, as I apprehend it, love is such I cannot love you if I love not Him. I cannot love Him if I love not you.

Our lives are not fully lived if we're not willing to die for those we love, for what we believe.

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.'

Following Christ has nothing to do with success as the world sees success. It has to do with love.

Devotion, as it relates to the title of my memoir, means fidelity - as in fidelity to a person or a practice. I think it's certainly possible to feel devotion without having faith, at least in the religious sense of the word.

My wife and I love children. We have five of our own. I would ask that anyone who looks up to me would instead look up to God. I am nothing without Him. Everything I do in life and in baseball is to glorify Him.

There lies at the back of every creed something terrible and hard for which the worshipper may one day be required to suffer.

A mission is a place where you ask nonbelievers to come and find faith and hope and feel love.