by Bradly Baird (bio)
Underlined is a series where contributors share what they underlined while reading books. Today's book is Vaughn J. Featherstone's Commitment
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"By its very nature, commitment is a word that exudes strength. But it is not a declaration only; it has to include action."
"Choose you this day whom you will serve whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the Gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell; but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." (Joshua 24: 14-15)
"So commitment is a path. The first step is to say or write the commitment. May it be a noble one. The second is to prepare, including, perhaps, listing the obstacles that may turn you aside so that you can avoid them or prepare to climb over them. The third step is the action part, the time when you slay the "Goliath," or the dragon."
"'Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.' Do it. Do it with your might. That's commitment."
"I believe that the work ethic is an attitude. It is a discipline. It is something that can become a habit. By that I mean that when you work fast and hard or when you are intense in studying, it becomes a habit; and every time you study with that habit."
"The greatest poverty is the poverty of desire." (Harold B. Lee)
"'The mind will take a terrible revenge if one does not think on constructive things. It will reach out and grasp anything that is nearby. It is being worked all of the time, twenty-four hours a day. Consciously or sub-consciously, it is involved.' So, controlled thinking is the hardest work we do and it is the very essence of life, the meaning of being."
'The glory of God is intelligence, or, in other words, light and truth. Light and truth forsake that evil one." (D&C 93:36-37)
"The Gospel of Jesus Christ teaches us to reach out beyond the center of the universe and therein we will find the great joy of life. We visualize Heavenly Father and his Great son in the center of the universe - a vastly greater one than the one which revolves about us here."
"Then we think about Heavenly Father became what he is. Then we see that service and love are a great part of it. And that begins to shape our goals and attitudes. And we see that life calls for preparation and commitments."
"There is one principle that we must remember as we go along trying to do things right and be successful. You might call it the principle of carry-over. That is, when you overcome one fault, it becomes easier to overcome another. This may explain why chastity is so important to success."
"Make no small plans. They have no magic to stir men's souls." (President Spencer W. Kimball)
"Reading opens doors, thoughts, ideas, fantasies, experiences, and it increases knowledge and understanding."
"Commitment, in a large sense, demands self-control of the highest order. Self-control in any form is nothing less than courage."
