When I interviewed this elder, I asked him how he was doing financially. His eyes clouded up, and he said was really trying, but his folks weren’t sending him quite enough. He said, “President, I haven’t been wasting. I haven’t eaten anything for three days, trying to cut back.” Then he said, “Even my little sister is helping. She received a one-dollar bill for her birthday, and she put it in an envelope and sent it to me because she thought I needed it more than she did.” Then he wept openly.

Tonight I speak for all Americans in expressing our gratitude to the Mormon people - for their pioneer spirit, their devotion to culture and learning, their example of industry and self-reliance. But I am particularly in their debt tonight for their successful battle to make religious liberty a living reality…

“She was a pretty woman,” he said, “with six children and another on the way. She was always saying, ‘I’m going to pay you soon, when my husband gets a second job.’ I believed her. What a fool I was! I thought I was doing a good thing, but I’ve learned my lesson. I’ve been had!”

Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a gray cat walking a gray fence in a gray backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present.

He was a little taller than my waist and very dark skinned.  He was also thin as a bone.  I noticed that his little arm was only about as big around as my thumb.  My heart went out to him and I gave him another 10 rupees which he gladly accepted with a smile then caught my eye and motioned for me to look at his feet.  I was shocked...

The daily newspaper screamed the headlines: “Plane Crash Kills 43. No Survivors of Mountain Tragedy,” and thousands of voices joined in a chorus: “Why did the Lord let this terrible thing happen?”

If any of you plan to remember anything that I am going to say to you tonight, I would just like to have you write in your notebook that—and I am sure of this—the one business of life is to succeed. I am absolutely certain in my own mind that God did not go to all the trouble of creating this beautiful earth, with all of its utilities and beauties and opportunities, without something very important in mind for those he expected to live here upon it. And I am even more sure that he did not create us in his own image and endow us with these potentially magnificent brains, miraculous personalities, and fantastic physical bodies and then expect us to waste our lives in failure.

My topic is that of human intimacy, a topic as sacred as any I know and more sacred than anything I have ever addressed from this podium. If I am not careful and you are not supportive, this subject can slide quickly from the sacred into the merely sensational, and I would be devastated if that happened.

The violent grinding of brakes suddenly applied, and the harsh creaking of skid­ding wheels gradually died away as the big car came to a stop. Eddie quickly picked himself up from the dusty pavement where he had been thrown and looked around wildly.

He hesitated, and Paul knew what he was going to wish. He was going to wish he had a brother like that. But what the lad said jarred Paul all the way down to his heels.