Thomas S. Monson Quotes

They serve best who give most of themselves. Self is forgotten by the one who serves, for such a one rejoices to see success coming to others through his or her efforts.

True liberty does violence to self and, like Christ, who disregarded that he was sovereign becomes a slave to serve others.

The ultimate aim of the quest must be neither release nor ecstasy for oneself, but the wisdom and the power to serve others.

To die for others is the highest purpose a person may achieve.

Every time we deny ourselves in order to serve someone else, we grow in Christ.

The path to enlightenment is really very simple - all we need to do is stop cherishing ourself and learn to cherish others. All other spiritual realisations will naturally follow from this.

No man has ever risen to the stature of spiritual manhood until he has found that it is finer to serve somebody else than it is to serve himself.

I have found that the more I get my ego out of a picture and the more I think about how can I serve other people instead of always thinking about me, the more miracles show up.

Joy can only be real if people look upon their life as a service and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness.

I often long to . . . give up my life to love of my neighbour. This is really a temptation.

It is only to the individual that a soul is given. And the high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule, or to impose himself in any other way.

When I was in grade school and we had to write papers about what we wanted to be when we grew up, I wanted to be a social worker or a missionary or a teacher... Then I got involved with tennis, and everything was just me, me, me. I was totally selfish and thought about myself and nobody else, because if you let up for one minute, someone was going to come along and beat you. I really wouldn't let anyone or any slice of happiness enter... I didn't like the characteristics that it took to become a champion.

Every man is a hero if he strives more for others than for himself alone.

Self-denial is often the sacrifice of one sort of self-love for another.

By helping others come unto Him, you will find that you have come unto Him yourself

Those who have matured spiritually, now put service to others at the center of their quest and of their lives.

In order to be successful in any undertaking, I think the main thing is for one to grow to the point where he completely forgets himself; that is, to lose himself in a great cause. In proportion as one loses himself in this way, in the same degree does he get the highest happiness out of his work.

The needs of others are ever present, and each of us can do something to help someone.... Unless we lose ourselves in service to others, there is little purpose to our own lives.

The more we serve our fellowmen in appropriate ways, the more substance there is to our souls.

No one has learned the meaning of living until he has surrendered his ego to the service of his fellow man. Service to others is akin to duty, the fulfillment of which brings true joy.

The wise man puts himself last and finds himself first.

To live in any true sense of the word is to reject others; to accept them, one must be able to renounce, to do oneself violence, to act against one's own nature, to weaken oneself; we conceive freedom only for ourselves - we extend it to our neighbours only at the cost of exhausting efforts; whence the precariousness of liberalism, a defiance of our instincts, a brief and miraculous success, a state of exception, at the antipodes of our deepest imperatives.

Quit praying about yourself and spend your life for the sake of others as the bondservant of Jesus. That is the true meaning of being broken bread and poured-out wine in real life.

I am better off doing as abnegation taught me: turning away from myself, projecting always outward, and hoping that in whatever is next, I will be better than I am now.

If you’ll dare to take your mind off your troubles, get your mind off your own needs and, instead, seek to be a blessing to other people, God will do more for you than you could even ask or think.