Sterling Welling Sill was a general authority in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He was an Assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles from 1954 to 1976 and was a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy from 1976 to 1978. In 1978, he received general authority emeritus status.
Born in Layton, Utah, Sill was a Mormon missionary in the southern United States from 1924 to 1926.
Sill studied at the University of Utah and Utah State University. He later served as a member of the University of Utah Board of Regents for many years including several years as the chairman of that board. (via Wikipedia)
Here are a few quotes by Sterling Welling Sill.
On Life:
In baseball we keep an accurate record of the hits, runs, and errors of each individual player. Life is also a great game, and in life the statistics are much more important than they are in a ball game. One of our human weaknesses in life is that when we are losing the game, we dont always like to keep track of the score. Certainly we are not very enthusiastic about putting the errors down on the paper, and most people dont even know what their individual batting average is. This makes our success much more difficult both to figure out and to attain … we cannot separate our success from our statistics. If each day we could see what God writes in his book about our works for that day, it would certainly motivate us to make better scores.
One of the significant facts about the moment of birth is that it is an unconscious moment. No one ever knows when he is being born that the event is actually taking place, and sometimes we dont find out about it until quite a long time afterward. Sometimes, we never do really find out that we have been born. So frequently, we don’t know why we were born we don’t know where we came from we don’t know what the purpose of life is nor do we understand the possibilities of our godly destiny.
We should be familiar with the great histories, the great biographies. We should be familiar with the great success stories, the great love stories, the great philosophies. It would also be a good idea to memorize potent passages from great poetry and other literary works. Our literature also may give us extra, pleasant hours as well as furnish contrasts and comparisons which may help us to evaluate and direct our own lives.
On Death:
It is a serious mistake to judge God within the narrow limits of our own understanding and abilities. God has created the worlds without number and is able to hold them all in perfect control. But even the greatest worlds are not the most prized of God’s creations. The welfare of his children is far more important, and he has said that the greatest of all his gifts is the eternal life that he bestows upon us. We know that death is good. Certainly we would not dare to say that any procedure or design of God was superfluous or whimsical. On the contrary, there is a great deal of evidence, scriptural and otherwise that death is an inescapable necessity in God’s plan for human redemption.
On Success:
On God:
Certainly the greatest values in the world are human values, and the most worthwhile ambitions in people have to do with building human beings. The most important responsibility that God has ever laid upon the shoulders of any human being is that of making.
It is a serious mistake to judge God within the narrow limits of our own understanding and abilities. God has created the worlds without number and is able to hold them all in perfect control. But even the greatest worlds are not the most prized of God’s creations. The welfare of his children is far more important, and he has said that the greatest of all his gifts is the eternal life that he bestows upon us. We know that death is good. Certainly we would not dare to say that any procedure or design of God was superfluous or whimsical. On the contrary, there is a great deal of evidence, scriptural and otherwise that death is an inescapable necessity in God’s plan for human redemption.
Satan has no power over us except as we give it to him. God never forces us to do right, and Satan has no power to force us to do wrong.
The most satisfying kind of peace is Christ’s peace. That is a peace in which the cause of strife has been removed from us. Many people try to make their peace co-exist with their sins; however, it is pretty difficult to get peace by compact or negotiation or because of some dictated decree without having peace in ourselves. When some of the more influential European nations objected to Hitler’s program for enslaving the weaker nations of Europe, he shouted back to them angrily, “Let us alone, we want peace.” That is, he wanted peace while he enslaved the weaker nations without interference from anyone else.
Other Quotes:
Actually, no one is ever given any right to do wrong.
All true peace must be based on righteousness.
Why do you do what you do when you know what you know?