November 16, 2010 2 Nephi 4-8 by Nancy Baird

Quotes

“Philosophers are interested in procrastination for another reason. It’s a powerful example of what the Greeks called akrasia –doing something against one’s own better judgment. Piers Steel defines procrastination as willingly deferring something even though you expect the delay to make you worse off.”
Quote in: “Later – What does procrastination tell us about ourselves?” by James Surowiecki, The New Yorker, Oct 11, 2010, p. 110.

“Keep balance in your lives. Beware of obsession. Beware of narrowness. Let your interests range over many good fields while working with growing strength in the field of your own profession.”
President Gordon B. Hinckley, from an address to the Religious Educators in the Church Educational System, in 1978.

“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
Victor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, p.104.

“Here he [Nephi] uttered the great truth that delivers each of us from despair, that answers the secret question of the heart: How much can I depend on the Lord? (2Ne. 4:35).
…God whispered to him that life is simpler than it appears, because God is in charge of the world and of each of us. We are not responsible for everything…we can cast on the Lord what we cannot manage alone.”
Catherine Thomas, “A Great Deliverance,” Studies in Scripture vol. 7, p. 109-110.

“Being home isn’t all that it is cracked up to be. I have a cell phone and I can call anyone I want to, but I don’t. Most of my friends from before still aren’t home. I have a car and could drive anywhere I want to (no limit on miles), but I pretty much just go to school and back. I can watch TV or listen to music or whatever, but I haven’t done much of that either. Now that I have everything that I thought I might be glad to come home to, it doesn’t really seem all that important anymore. I feel sorry for anyone who just can’t wait to get home; they are just setting themselves up for a big disappointment.”
Missionary, in a letter to the Bairds, Puerto Rico, 2002.