"If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”

- The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

“My ma told me that there isn’t anything in this life worth having that comes easy. She told me that every road I walk down’s gonna have a price. But what she didn’t tell me and what I learned since I’ve been here is that if you don’t choose the road you’re gonna walk, sooner or later someone else’ll do that choosing for you.”

– Victoria Forester The Girl Who Could Fly

Daily Food for Thought

"The sad truth is that people are sure to come and go from our life as we grow older - some die, some move away, and some leave us because they change so much that we hardly know them anymore."

- Lynn Austin Eve's Daughters

Daily Food for Thought

"If you demand behavior with enough pressure, the child will give in to it, but he will not learn what was intended. He may respond when the pressure is on, he may get the 'right' answers, but it will not really get through because he will turn it off as quickly as possible once the pressure lets up. Pressured behavior can help him pass exams, but very little knowledge will be retained or used in life; understanding and application were never the objective. Many readers may share our experience of cramming for exams - could you pass that same exam today?"

Oliver and Rachel DeMille Leadership Education: The Phases of Learning

Daily Food for Thought

“I would always rather be happy than dignified.”

- Charlotte Bronte Jane Eyre

Daily Food for Thought

"I am asking that we stop seeking out the storms and enjoy more fully the sunlight. I am suggesting that as we go through life we 'accentuate the positive.' I am asking that we look a little deeper for the good, that we still voices of insult and sarcasm, that we more generously compliment virtue and effort.

What I am suggesting is that each of us turn from the negativism that so permeates our society and look for the remarkable good among those with whom we associate, that we speak of one another’s virtues more than we speak of one another’s faults, that optimism replace pessimism, that our faith exceed our fears."

- President Gordon B. Hinckley The Spirit of Optimism

Daily Food for Thought

“True happiness comes only by making others happy—the practical application of the Savior’s doctrine of losing one’s life to gain it. In short, the Christmas spirit is the Christ spirit, that makes our hearts glow in brotherly love and friendship and prompts us to kind deeds of service. It is the spirit of the gospel of Jesus Christ, obedience to which will bring ‘peace on earth,’ because it means—good will toward all men.”

- President David O. McKay as quoted by President Thomas S. Monson The Best Christmas Ever

Daily Food for Thought

"The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints provides for people all over the world – not only with goods and goodwill, but with the opportunity to not lose a sense of self when “things” are lost.

I probably sound like an advertisement for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I am not a member of their religion, but I am impressed with their charitable philosophy, because I believe it teaches our children their real value, while motivating and uplifting them at the same time."

-Dr. Laura Blessings in Disguise

Daily Food for Thought

"The Lord works from the inside out. The world works from the outside in. The world would take people out of the slums. Christ takes the slums out of people, and then they take themselves out of the slums. The world would mold men by changing their environment. Christ changes men, who then change their environment. The world would shape human behavior, but Christ can change human nature."

- President Ezra Taft Benson Born of God

Daily Food for Thought

“There are seasons in life. Don’t ever let anyone deny you the blessings and joy of one season because they believe you should be in – or stay in – another season.”

– Jane Clayson Johnson I Am a Mother

Daily Food for Thought

“I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad – as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent as they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth?”

- Charlotte Bronte Jane Eyre

Daily Food for Thought

"Children have a style of learning that fits their condition, and which they use naturally and well until we train them out of it. We like to say that we send children to school to teach them to think. What we do, all too often, is to teach them to think badly, to give up a natural and powerful way of thinking in favor of a method that does not work well for them and that we rarely use ourselves."

- John Holt How Children Learn

Daily Food for Thought

"God’s purpose for the artist is to inspire, to give us visions of ourselves that we might not otherwise see, to make us better than we would have been. The world is better for the arts and righteous artists in it. In the quest to achieve greatness in artistic pursuits—whether in painting, dance, music, drama, film, sculpture, or the written word—we should always seek first to achieve God’s purposes. “All great art is the expression of man’s delight in God’s work, not his own,” said John Ruskin, the great nineteenth-century English art critic."

- M. Russell Ballard Filling the World with Goodness and Truth

Daily Food for Thought

“Both abundance and lack [of abundance] exist simultaneously in our lives, as parallel realities. It is always our conscious choice which secret garden we will tend … when we choose not to focus on what is missing from our lives but are grateful for the abundance that’s present—love, health, family, friends, work, the joys of nature, and personal pursuits that bring us [happiness]—the wasteland of illusion falls away and we experience heaven on earth.”

-Sarah Ban Breathnach as quoted in Finding Joy in the Journey by President Thomas S. Monson, October 2008 General Conference

Daily Food for Thought

"My dear girls, I am ambitious for you, but not to have you make a dash in the world - marry rich men merely because they are rich, or have splendid houses, which are not homes because love is wanting. Money is a needful and precious thing - and, when well used, a noble thing - but I never want you to think it is the first and only prize to strive for. I'd rather see you poor men's wives, if you were happy, beloved, contented, than queens on thrones, without self-respect and peace."

- Louisa May Alcott Little Women

Daily Food for Thought

"She stretched out her arms for the three little selfish children they would never envelop again. Yes, they did, they went round Wendy and John and Michael, who had slipped out of bed and run to her.

" 'George, George!' she cried when she could speak; and Mr. Darling woke to share her bliss, and Nana came rushing in. There could not have been a lovelier sight; but there was none to see it except a little boy who was staring in at the window. He had ecstasies innumerable that other children can never know; but he was looking through the window at the one joy from which he must be forever barred."

- James M. Barrie Peter Pan

Daily Food for Thought

"Greatness isn't the work of a few geniuses, it is the purpose of each of us. It is why we were born. Every person you have ever met is a genius. Every one. Some of us have chosen not to develop it, but it is there. It is in us. All of us. It is in your spouse. It is in each of your children. You live in a world of geniuses. How can we settle for anything less than the best education? How can we tell our children that mediocre education will do, when greatness is available?"

- Oliver DeMille A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the Twenty-First Century

Daily Food for Thought

"Perseverance and spirit have done wonders in all ages."

- General George Washington as quoted in 1776 by David McCullough

Daily Food for Thought

"Up to a point a man's life is shaped by environment, heredity, and movements and changes in the world about him; then there comes a time when it lies within his grasp to shape the clay of his life into the sort of thing he wishes to be. Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune, or the quirks of fate. Everyone has it within his power to say, this I am today, that I shall be tomorrow. The wish, however, must be implemented by deeds."

- Louis L'Amour The Walking Drum

Daily Food for Thought

"Attacks on churches and intimidation of people of faith have no place in civil discourse over controversial issues. People of faith have a democratic right to express their views in the public square without fear of reprisal. Efforts to force citizens out of public discussion should be deplored by people of goodwill everywhere.

We call upon those who have honest disagreements on this issue to urge restraint upon the extreme actions of a few that are further polarizing our communities and urge them to act in a spirit of mutual respect and civility towards each other. "

-News Release from The First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints