Dear Friends and Family:
This is a follow-up note and sermon on Sister Taylor’s latest Manila Message on
the subject of “spiders!” Please refer to attached sermonette!
President
GT
Habits
“The
formation of bad habits has often been likened to the weaving of a spider’s
web. Like a spider’s web, which is
composed of many strands, a habit is formed with many acts, which are small and
harmless by themselves. They, like the
parts of a spider’s web, are often, in the beginning, hidden from view. But how strong is such a web? Scientists have calculated that if a rope of
spider’s silk were made one inch thick, it would hold up to seventy-four
tons. This rope would be approximately
three times as strong as a one inch rope made of iron! How strong is a single act that goes to make
up a habit? How strong is the habit
after it is fully formed?”
--Story Gems,
Albert L. Zobell, Jr. p. 73.
“I am your constant companion. I am your greatest helper or heaviest
burden.
I
will push you onward or drag you down to failure. I am completely at your command.
Half
the things you do you might just as well turn over to me and I will be able to
do them quickly and correctly.
I
am easily managed—you must merely be firm with me. Show me exactly how you want something done
and after a few lessons I will do it automatically.
I
am the servant of all great men: and
alas, of all failures as well.
Those
who are great, I have made great. Those who
are failures, I have made failures.
I
am not a machine, though I work with all the precision of a machine plus the
intelligence of a man.
You
may run me for profit or run me for ruin—it makes no difference to me.
Take
me, train me, be firm with me, and I will place the world at your feet. Be easy with me and I will destroy you.
WHO AM I?
I AM HABIT!” --Author
Unknown
“Cultivate
only the habits that you are willing should master you.” --Elbert Hubbard
“We first
make our habits, and then our habits make us.” --John Dryden
“As a man
spends his hours and his days and his weeks in an air-castle, he finds that the
delicate strands and lines of the phantom structure gradually become less and
less airy; they begin to grow firm and firmer, strengthening with the years,
until at last solid walls hem him in.
Then he is startled by the awful realization that habit and habitancy
have transformed his air-castle into a prison from which escape is difficult.”
--William George
Jordan
“The
hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse that the
Hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioning our
characters in the wrong way. Could the
young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits,
they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state. We are spinning our own fates, good or evil,
and never to be undone. Every smallest
stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar. The drunken Rip Van Winkle, in Jefferson’s play,
excuses himself every fresh dereliction by saying, ‘I won’t count this
time.’ Well! He may not count it, and a
kind Heaven may not count it; but it is being counted nonetheless. Down deep among his nerve cells and fibers
the molecules are counting it, registering and storing it up to be used against
him when the next temptation comes.”
--William
James, The Principles of Psychology
“A
man may receive the priesthood and all its privileges and blessings, but until
he learns to overcome the flesh, his temper, his tongue, his disposition to
indulge in the things God has forbidden, he cannot come into the celestial
kingdom of God—he must overcome either in this life or in the life to
come. But this life is the time in which
men are to repent. Do not let any of us
imagine that we can go down to the grave not having overcome the corruptions of
the flesh and then lose in the grave all our sins and evil tendencies. They will be with us. They will be with the spirit when separated
from the body.
“It
is my judgment that any man or woman can do more to conform to the laws of God
in one year in this life than they could in ten years when they are dead. The spirit only can repent and change, and
then the battle has to go forward with the flesh afterwards. It is much easier to change by overcoming and
serving the Lord when both flesh and spirit are combined as one. This is the time when men are more pliable,
it is much easier to change than when it gets hard and sets.
This
life is the time to repent. That is why
I presume it will take a thousand years after the first resurrection until the
last group will be prepared to come forth.
It will take them a thousand years to do what it would have taken, but
three score years and ten to accomplish in this life.”
--Melvin J.
Ballard, Sermons and Missionary Services of Melvin J. Ballard, by Bryant S.
Hinckley, pp. 240-241.
The old toad
said to the young frog as they began their days’ journey on the mud encrusted
dirt road to the distant swamp: “pick you rut well, ‘cause you’ll be in it for
the next ten miles.”
I need to remember that I am laying
down each second, each minute, hour, day, month and year what I am to
become. The Lord says that I will be
held accountable for every thought and word I fashion for myself in the
flesh. (Mosiah 4:30, Alma 12:14,
Proverbs 18:21, Matthew 12:36, James 3:6) “The day of this life is the day for
[me] to perform [my] labors. –Alma 34:30-35.
--GTT 06-23-12
