BBC Interviewer (Peter France): I think that one overwhelming reason why your work is so popular here in England where very largely we think of ourselves as being a post-Christian society is that um, here's a man who really knows how terrible life is. Are you happy to be looked at in that way? Charles Schulz: Yes. But we must admit that I'm talking only about the minor everyday problems in life. Leo Tolstoy dealt with the major problems of the world. I'm only dealing with, um, why we all have the feeling that people don't like us. This is Charlie Brown's problem.
A cartoonist is a lot like Lucy's psychiatric stand. She said once that she only points out the problems. She doesn't try to solve them. And I think that's what a cartoonist does.
I like to think that I point out some solutions now and then. I suppose one of the solutions is, as Charlie Brown, just to keep on trying. He never gives up. And if anyone should give up, he should.
Adversity is a severe instructor, set over us by one who knows us better than we do ourselves, as he loves us better too. He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper. This conflict with difficulty makes us acquainted with our object, and compels us to consider it in all its relations. It will not suffer us to be superficial.
The thorns - what use are they?
Well, I must endure the presence of two or three caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies. It seems that they are very beautiful.
I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has had to overcome while trying to succeed.
Every time you kick 'Mormonism', you kick it upstairs: you never kick it downstairs. The Lord Almighty so orders it.
Do not misunderstand what Job was saying. God does not cause man’s trouble; he allows it. This was portrayed accurately in Job 1-2 where God allowed Satan to afflict Job. This concept was clearly taught in a First Presidency message given at the beginning of World War I: “God, doubtless, could avert war, prevent crime, destroy poverty, chase away darkness, overcome error, and make all things bright, beautiful and joyful. But this would involve the destruction of a vital and fundamental attribute in man — the right of agency. It is for the benefit of His sons and daughters that they become acquainted with evil as well as good, with darkness as well as light, with error as well as truth, and with the results of the infraction of eternal laws. Therefore he has permitted the evils which have been brought about by the acts of His creatures, but will control their ultimate results for His own glory and the progress and exaltation of His sons and daughters, when they have learned obedience by the things they suffer.
But the afflictions Israel was to experience as a result of a broken covenant were at a national level, not at the individual level. The concept of national punishments was expressed by George Mason, a delegate to the constitutional convention that produced the Constitution of the United States of America. During the convention, the topic of slavery was bitterly debated. On August 22, 1787, in an impassioned speech, Mason gave this chilling warning that reflects the concept of national punishments: “As nations cannot be rewarded or punished in the next world, they must be in this. By an inevitable chain of causes and effects, Providence punishes national sins by national calamities”
“A man traveling through the country came to a large city, very rich and splendid; he looked at it and said to his guide, ‘This must be a very righteous people, for I can only see but one little devil in this great city.’ “The guide replied, ‘You do not understand, sir. This city is so perfectly given up to wickedness that it requires but one devil to keep them all in subjection.’ Traveling on a little farther, he came to a rugged path and saw an old man trying to get up the hill side, surrounded by seven great, big, coarse‑looking devils. “’Why,’ says the traveller, ‘this must be a tremendously wicked old man! See how many devils there are around him!’ “’This,’ replied the guide, “is the only righteous man in the country; and there are seven of the biggest devils trying to turn him out of his path, and they all cannot do it”
“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought ofCthrowing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace”
Courage is not something that you already have that makes you brave when the tough times start. Courage is what you earn when you’ve been through the tough times and you discover they aren’t so tough after all.
“To choose hope is to step firmly forward into the howling wind, bearing one’s chest to the elements, knowing that, in time, the storm will pass.” “Despair turns us inward. Hope sends us into the arms of others.”
If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
“On my way to visit the James’s the other evening, I saw a wheat field that appeared to be greener and taller than the others. Thinking about it for a while, I concluded that occasionally some loving farmer drives over the field with his tractor and pumps manure all over it. I thought, “My, it’s just like life. Here we are minding our own business, growing our little hearts out. We’re really quite green, somewhat productive, and very sincere, when out of the blue, life deals us a dirty one and we’re up to our eyebrows in manure. We, or course, conclude that life as we have known it has just ended and will never be the same again. But one day when the smell and the shock are gone, we find ourselves greener and taller than we have been.”
I saw a wheat field that appeared to be greener and taller than the others. Thinking about it for a while, I concluded that occasionally some loving farmer drives over the field with a tractor and pumps manure all over it. I thought my, it is just like life. Here we are minding our own business, growing our little hearts out and we are really quite green, somewhat productive and very sincere when out of the blue life deals us a dirty one and we are up to our eyebrows in manure. We, of course, conclude that life as we have known it has ended and we will never be the same again. But one day, when the smell and the shock are gone, we find ourselves greener and more productive than we have been. Unfortunately, no matter how often we go through these growing experiences, we are never able to appreciate the sound of the tractor of the smell of the manure.
“Let us remember . . . that each of us is being tested, just as the finest cars and planes are tested before they are put into service. They are tested for weaknesses; they are tested for flaws. Can you stand the test? At the bar the Judge will not look us over for medals, degrees, or diplomas, but for scars”
“No matter how wicked and ferocious and depraved the Lamanites might be (and they were that!), no matter how much they outnumbered the Nephites, darkly closing in on all sides, no matter how insidiously they spied and intrigued and infiltrated and hatched their diabolical plots and breathed their bloody threats and pushed their formidable preparations for all-out war, they were not the Nephite problem. They were merely kept there to remind the Nephites of their real problem, which was to walk uprightly before the Lord”
Life is a storm, my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment...be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes.
There is a lesson in the Prophet Joseph Smith's account of the First Vision that virtually everyone in this audience has had occasion to experience, or one day soon will. It is the plain and very sobering truth that before great moments, certainly before great spiritual moments, there can come adversity, opposition, and darkness. Life has some of those moments for us, and occasionally they come just as we are approaching an important decision or a significant step in our life.
It is the plain and very sobering truth that before great moments, certainly before great spiritual moments, there can come adversity, opposition, and darkness. Life has some of those moments for us, and occasionally they come just as we are approaching an important decision or a significant step in our life.
If a goal is truly visionary, it's going to be confronted by doubters, skeptics, and those threatened by its realization. As a result, there will always be walls put up on the way to achieving the objective. Some of the most capable people I've worked with know how to go over, around, or straight through those walls by virtue of their resourcefulness and sheer force of will.
Always turn your wheel in the direction of the skid.
To be able to turn a curse into a calling, we have to let go of the childish dream that life should be easy, luxurious, and indulgent.
Unfortunately, some in the Church may believe sincerely that their testimony is a raging bonfire when it really is little more than the faint flickering of a candle. Their faithfulness has more to do with habit than holiness, and their pursuit of personal righteousness almost always takes a back seat to their pursuit of personal interests and pleasure. With such a feeble light of testimony for protection, these travelers on life's highways are easy prey for the wolves of the adversary.
If we approach adversities wisely, our hardest times can be times of greatest growth, which in turn can lead toward times of greatest happiness… ...Learning to endure times of disappointment, suffering, and sorrow is part of our on-the-job training. These experiences, while often difficult to bear at the time, are precisely the kinds of experiences that stretch our understanding, build our character, and increase our compassion for others.
Sometimes new opportunity means new opposition. Not everything God asks us to do will be comfortable.
My Primary teacher instilled in me a determination to study the doctrines of the kingdom. She taught me to seek the deep meaning contained in these simple Articles of Faith. She promised me that if I would invest in learning these sacred truths, the knowledge I acquired would change my life for the better, and I testify to you that it has.
We delight in the beauty of butterfly, rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty*
Hard times fall upon everybody. Whatever it is, we're going to get out of it.
If we enlist and take the Savior's yoke upon us we "shall find rest unto [our] souls" (Matthew 11:29). If we are only part-time soldiers, though, partially yoked, we experience quite the opposite: frustration, irritation, and the absence of His full grace and spiritual rest. In that case weaknesses persist and satisfactions are intermittent. . . Actually the partially yoked experience little spiritual satisfaction, because they are burdened by carrying the awful weight of the natural man -- without any of the joys that come from progressing toward becoming "the man of Christ." They have scarcely "[begun] to be enlightened" (Alma 32:34). The meek and fully yoked, on the other hand, find God's reassuring grace and see their weakness yielding to strength (see Ether 12:27). Strange as it seems, a few of the partially yoked, undeservedly wearing the colors of the kingdom, are just close enough to the prescribed path and process to be able to observe in others some of the visible costs of discipleship. Sobered by that observation, they want victory without battle and expect campaign ribbons merely for watching; but there is no witness until after the trial of their faith (see Ether 12:6). These same Church members know just enough about the doctrines to converse superficially on them, but their scant knowledge about the deep doctrines is inadequate for deep discipleship (see 1 Corinthians 2:10). Thus uninformed about the deep doctrines, they make no deep change in their lives. They lack the faith to "give place" (Alma 32:27) consistently for real discipleship. Such members move out a few hundred yards from the entrance to the straight and narrow path and repose on the first little rise, thinking, "Well, this is all there is to it"; and they end up living far below their possibilities. While not as distant as those King Benjamin described "For how knoweth a man the master whom he has not served, and who is a stranger unto him, and is far from the thoughts and intents of his heart?" (Mosiah 5:13) -- these people are not drawing closer either.
Events and circumstances in the last days make it imperative for us as members of the Church to become more grounded, rooted, established, and settled (see Col. 1:23; Col. 2:7; 2 Pet. 1:12). Jesus said to His disciples, "settle this in your hearts, that ye will do the things which I shall teach, and command you" (JST Luke 14:28). If not so settled, the turbulence will be severe. If settled, we will not be "tossed to and fro," whether by rumors, false doctrines, or by the behavioral and intellectual fashions of the world. Nor will we get caught up in the "talk show" mentality, spending our time like ancient Athenians "in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing" (Acts 17:21). Why be concerned with the passing preferences of the world anyway? "For the fashion of this world passeth away" (1 Cor. 7:31). . . . Some Church members, alas, are neither reconciled to the will of God nor are they sufficiently settled as to their covenants. . . . Some give of their time yet withhold themselves, being present without giving of their presence and going through the superficial motions of membership instead of the deep emotions of consecrated discipleship. Some try to get by with knowing only the headlines of the gospel, not really talking much of Christ or rejoicing in Christ and esteeming lightly His books of scripture which contain and explain His covenants (see 2 Ne. 25:26). Some are so proud they never learn of obedience and spiritual submissiveness. They will have very arthritic knees on the day when every knee shall bend. There will be no gallery then to play to; all will be participants! Maintaining Church membership on our own terms, therefore, is not true discipleship. Real disciples absorb the fiery darts of the adversary by holding aloft the quenching shield of faith with one hand, while holding to the iron rod with the other (see Eph. 6:16; 1 Ne. 15:24; D&C 27:17). There should be no mistaking; it will take both hands!
The best way out is always through.
God turns you from one feeling to another and teaches by means of opposites, so that you will have two wings to fly, not one.
This discipline and rough treatment are a furnace to extract the silver from the dross. This testing purifies the gold by boiling the scum away.
If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?
I'm astonished by the man who wants purity And yet trembles when the harshness of polishing begin...
When a man beats a carpet again and again It's not the carpet he's attacking, but the dirt in it.
In the last installment, we observed that many of the Test problems are prepared by the Teacher to bless and exalt and try us. But there are other kinds of problems, myriads of them, which the Teacher does not organize nor inspire, but which He permits. He is only responsible for creating a place where they can occur.
As these dangerous and even life-threatening problems occurred which were not prepared by the Teacher, He acted to ensure that they did not frustrate His plans for the Testing Center and those within. In fact, He transformed them into blessings for Nephi, increasing his faith, expanding his trust, and enlarging his experience. There are no guarantees, of course. The Instructor will not always douse the flames or send an angel or speak with a voice that shakes the Testing Center. The innocents of Ammonihah perished. But they went on to their glory. It is hard to imagine that they complained at the way the problem turned out. Their pain and agony carried them to their exaltation. Clearly, the experience worked for their good.
“Take away the serpents from us,” they pled. But apparently the Lord did not, even when Moses prayed about it, because the serpents were not the problem. The real problem was lack of faith and an attitude that caused the Israelites to complain constantly, and to blame God and Moses for every difficulty. If the Israelites had gone to Moses and said, “Pray unto the Lord, that He might take away our rotten attitudes from us,” this story might have a different ending. But to them, bad attitude was not the problem. Snakes were the problem. The Lord’s response was to have Moses make a brass snake and place it on a pole where people could find it and look at it. With the sculpted serpent came the promise: “Everyone that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live.” (Numbers 21:8.) The number of fiery serpents did not diminish at all. They remained in all their poisonous plenty to remind Israel about the genuine issue. As we would expect, the Lord’s response dealt with the real problem, and attempted to teach trust, faith, and gratitude, in much the same way as His response to the question of the brother of Jared about light in the barges.
Immediately after Jesus fed the five thousand with two tiny fish and five loaves of barley bread and filled twelve baskets with the leftovers, some of the Jews determined to “take him by force, to make him a king” (John 6:15). He would have made a great king! He could feed the starving, heal the sick, raise the dead, pay taxes with money from the mouth of a fish; certainly He could defeat and expel the Romans. He could with a wave of his hand resolve every social problem faced by the Jewish nation. But the problems the Jews needed to solve were neither social nor political. They were spiritual. And until the Jews resolved their spiritual dilemma, they could not expect the Lord to help them solve other problems.
I've come to believe that all my past failure and frustration were actually laying the foundation for the understandings that have created the new level of living I now enjoy.
“Adversity comes from different sources. You may at times face trials as a consequence of your own pride and disobedience. These trials can be avoided through righteous living. Other trials are simply a natural part of life and may come at times when you are living righteously. For example, you may experience trials in times of sickness or uncertainty or at the deaths of loved ones. Adversity may sometimes come because of others’ poor choices and hurtful words and actions. “… Your success and happiness, both now and in the eternities, depend largely on your responses to the difficulties of life”
You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.
All the adversity I've had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me.
Life is composed of lights and shadows, and we would be untruthful, insincere, and saccharine if we tried to pretend there were no shadows.
Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above them.
Success is never so interesting as struggle
When obstacles arise, you change your direction to reach your goal; you do not change your decision to get there.
The secret of achievement is to hold a picture of a successful outcome in mind.
You don't get character because you're successful; you build character because of the hardships you face.
Everyting negative - pressure, challenges - is all an opportunity for me to rise.
Difficulty is a nurse of greatness-a harsh nurse, who rocks her foster children roughly, but rocks them in strength and athletic proportion. The mind, grappling with great aims and wrestling with mighty impediments, grows by a certain necessity to the stature of greatness.
If you're trying to achieve, there will be roadblocks. I've had them; everybody has had them. But obstacles don't have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don't turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.
Without struggle, there is no progress. There has to be struggle in your life. You have to grow in experience to control your ego. Cause, you know, an ego can be crushed, it can be killed, it can be smashed, but it comes back. It never dies. That's the thing about the ego: it never dies.
I refuse to let adversity allow me to be average.
We're all going to have tests in our life... We never know when that test comes, but we know we have to be prepared for it. We're all going to be tested. The dark energy is going to knock on all of our doors.
Man is not meant to be humble, he’s meant to be humbled.
Every problem has in it the seeds of its own solution. If you don't have any problems, you don't get any seeds.
The hardships that I encountered in the past will help me succeed in the future.
Scientists grew trees in a sealed biosphere and couldn't work out why they fell over before they matured. They eventually figured out whilst they provided the perfect growing environment, it was lacking wind which provides the stress to ensure the trees grew strong enough to support themselves.
All problems become smaller if you don't dodge them but confront them.
BBC Interviewer (Peter France): I think that one overwhelming reason why your work is so popular here in England where very largely we think of ourselves as being a post-Christian society is that um, here's a man who really knows how terrible life is. Are you happy to be looked at in that way?
Charles Schulz: Yes. But we must admit that I'm talking only about the minor everyday problems in life. Leo Tolstoy dealt with the major problems of the world. I'm only dealing with, um, why we all have the feeling that people don't like us. This is Charlie Brown's problem. 
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