Top 40 Harold B. Lee Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Stay true in the dark, and humble in the spotlight.”

— Harold B. Lee

2. “Happiness does not depend on what happens outside of you, but what happens inside of you.”

— Harold B. Lee

3. “Life is fragile, handle with prayer.”

— Harold B. Lee

4. “You must learn to walk to the edge of the light, and then a few steps into the darkness; then the light will appear and show the way before you.”

— Harold B. Lee

5. “The most important of all the commandments of God is that one that you are having the most difficulty keeping today.”

— Harold B. Lee

6. “Testimony is not something you have today, and you are going to have always. A testimony is fragile. It is as hard to hold as a moonbeam. It is something you have to recapture every day of your life.”

— Harold B. Lee

7. “The most important of the Lord’s work you will ever do will be the work you do within the walls of your own home.”

— Harold B. Lee

8. “You cannot lift another soul until you are standing on higher ground than he is. You cannot light a fire in another soul unless it is burning in your own soul.”

— Harold B. Lee

9. “Be loyal to the royal that is in you, for you are the child of a King.”

— Harold B. Lee

10. “The most important work you and I will ever do will be within the walls of our own homes.”

— Harold B. Lee

11. “Missionary work is but home teaching to those who are not now members of the Church, and home teaching is nothing more or less than missionary work to Church members.”

— Harold B. Lee

12. “The heaviest burden that one has to bear in this life is the burden of sin.”

— Harold B. Lee

13. “The greatest waste in all the world is living below our potential.”

— Harold B. Lee

14. “It’s all right to pull the cow out of the mud on Sunday, provided that you don’t push him in on Saturday night.”

— Harold B. Lee

15. “The Lord is going to keep His people informed if they will listen.”

— Harold B. Lee

16. “It is not the function of religion to answer all the questions about God’s moral government of the universe, but to give us courage through faith to go on in the face of questions to which we find no answer in our present status.”

— Harold B. Lee

17. “You, our youth of today, are among the most illustrious spirits to be born into mortality in any age of the world. Yours is a noble heritage and a wonderful opportunity.”

— Harold B. Lee

18. “For by doing these things the gates of hell shall not prevail against you; yea, and the Lord God will disperse the powers of darkness from before you, and cause the heavens to shake for your good, and his name’s glory.”

— Harold B. Lee

19. “I earnestly urge all our people to unite under the true banner of the Master, to teach the gospel of Jesus Christ so powerfully that no truly converted person could ever be aligned with these controversial concepts and procedures contrary to the Lord’s plan of salvation.”

— Harold B. Lee

20. “How glorious and near to the angels is youth that is clean. This youth has joy unspeakable here and eternal happiness hereafter. Sexual purity is youth’s most precious possession. It is the foundation of all righteousness.”

— Harold B. Lee

21. “Every man stamps his value on himself. The price we challenge for ourselves is given us by others. -Man is made great or little by his own will.”

— Harold B. Lee

22. “The most important message that I can give to you and to all the world is to keep the commandments of God.”

— Harold B. Lee

23. “If it were not for the assurance that I have that the Lord is near to us, guiding, directing, the burden would be almost beyond my strength, but because I know that He is there, and that He can be appealed to, and if we have ears to hear attuned to Him, we will never be left alone.”

— Harold B. Lee

24. “Pure womanhood plus priesthood means exaltation. But womanhood without priesthood, or priesthood without pure womanhood doesn’t spell exaltation.”

— Harold B. Lee

25. “Never permit yourself to indulge in cheap flattery, which often times means to merely satisfy the individuals vanity and sometimes to ingratiate the flatter into the good graces of the flattered.”

— Harold B. Lee

26. “As I say, it never ceases to amaze me how gullible some of our Church members are.”

— Harold B. Lee

27. “Never is the gospel of Jesus Christ more beautiful than in times of intense need, or in times of a severe storm within us as individuals, or in times of confusion and turmoil.”

— Harold B. Lee

28. “I want to say something to you men. You cannot destroy the appointment of a prophet of God, but you can cut the thread that binds you to the prophet of God, and sink yourselves to hell.”

— Harold B. Lee

29. “The heaviest burden that one has to bear in this life is the burden of delaying too long before putting the fruit in the Jell-O so it’s too firm and the chunks just sit on top.”

— Harold B. Lee

30. “My humble prayer is that all men everywhere may understand more fully the significance of the atonement of the Savior of all mankind, who has given us the plan of salvation which will lead us into eternal life, where God and Christ dwell.”

— Harold B. Lee

31. “I have faith in the future of this promised land of America and in its institutions of representative government, but more than that, I have faith in you, the youth of America, to build even more securely on the foundations laid by the faith and devotion of your pioneer fathers.”

— Harold B. Lee

32. “Conversion must mean more than just being a ‘card-carrying’ member of the church with a tithing receipt, a membership card, a temple recommend, etc. It means to overcome the tendencies to criticize and to strive continually to improve inward weaknesses and not merely the outward appearances.”

— Harold B. Lee

33. “The laws of God given to mankind are embodied in the gospel plan, and the Church of Jesus Christ is made responsible for teaching these laws to the world.”

— Harold B. Lee

34. “Don’t try to live too many days at a time.”

— Harold B. Lee

35. “The trouble with us today, there are too many of us who put question marks instead of periods after what the Lord says. I want you to think about that. We shouldn’t be concerned about why He said something, or whether or not it can be made so. Just trust the Lord. We don’t try to find the answers or explanations. We shouldn’t try to spend time explaining what the Lord didn’t see fit to explain. We spend useless time.”

— Harold B. Lee

36. “Just as a flood-lighted temple is more beautiful in a severe storm or in a heavy fog, so the gospel of Jesus Christ is more glorious in times of inward storm and of personal sorrow and tormenting conflict.”

— Harold B. Lee

37. “The recurrence of fundamentals is essential to perpetuity.”

— Harold B. Lee

38. “I only ask to go where the Lord would have me go, and only to receive what the Lord would have me receive, knowing that more important than sight is the witness that one may have by the witness of the Holy Ghost to his soul that things are so and that Jesus is the Christ, a living personage.”

— Harold B. Lee

39. “In order for good to blossom it must be cultivated and exercised by constant practice, and to be truly righteous there is required a daily pruning of the evil growth of our characters by a daily repen- tance from sin.”

— Harold B. Lee

40. “Our father in heaven governs the affairs of men by placing specific individuals upon the earth to lead at specific times and inspiring and directing them.”

— Harold B. Lee

41. “I bear you my witness that the Savior is closer to us than you have any idea. He will be close to you and the powers divine will be at your side when you have nowhere else to turn.”

— Harold B. Lee

42. “Don’t be down on that you’re not up on.”

— Harold B. Lee

43. “Marriage is a partnership. Someone has observed that in the Bible account of the creation woman was not formed from a part of man’s head, suggesting that she might rule over him, nor from a part of a man’s foot that she was to be trampled under his feet. Woman was taken from man’s side as though to emphasize the fact that she was always to be by his side as a partner and companion.”

— Harold B. Lee

44. “The most effective preaching of the gospel is when it is accompanied by beautiful, appropriate music.”

— Harold B. Lee

45. “To some it may seem old-fashioned to speak of virtue and chastity, honesty, morality, faith, character, but these are the qualities which have built great men and women and point the way by which one may find happiness in the living of today and eternal joy in the world to come. These are the qualities which are the anchors to our lives, in spite of the trials, the tragedies, the pestilences, and the cruelties of war which bring in their wake appalling destruction, hunger, and bloodshed.”

— Harold B. Lee

46. “And what he ought to see, hear and understand is truth-eternal truth-and then practice it. That is conversion.”

— Harold B. Lee

47. “We can be the best taught people on the face of the earth but the trouble is we don’t live as well as we have been taught.”

— Harold B. Lee

48. “It isn’t the Lord who withholds himself from us. It is we who withhold ourselves from him because of our failure to keep his commandments.”

— Harold B. Lee

49. “Remember that, brethren. You cannot destroy the appointments of the prophets of God. The Lord knows whom He wants to preside in His Church, and sometimes it takes a lot of practicing, guiding, testing, before He may know whether or not one of us is prepared for the present assignment.”

— Harold B. Lee