STORIES

“I had hoped to go to the University of Utah. But the year was 1929, ‘the bottom of the Depression.’ On the day I registered for classes, I returned home to find that the company my father had been working for as an accountant had gone bankrupt and closed. He was out of work. The next day I withdrew from the university, went downtown, and miraculously secured a job as a secretary. Since college was not an option, I decided, well, if this is my life, I’d better educate myself. And I worked hard at it. I read and I read and I read.”
—Glimpses into the Life and Heart of Marjorie Pay Hinckley (1999), 96–97

“I found myself one day in the home of one of our wonderful Church leaders in Buenos Aires, Argentina. There were several women there. We were waiting for our husbands, as usual, who were in a meeting at the stake house. These were delightful, beautiful women whose native language, of course, was Spanish. I wanted so much to be part of that group. I was straining to catch any Spanish word I could catch, and failing miserably. Suddenly, like an old-time vision passing across my eyes, was a Spanish class that I had taken at East High School in 1928. I took the class for two years, and I could see it as plain as if I were back there. I could almost smell the chalk dust and hear that scratchy record playing ‘Cielito Lindo.’. . .

“I did the very minimum required to get a respectable grade in that class, and I promptly put every Spanish word out of my mind when I left it. I took the class because I needed the credit. I certainly did not take it to learn Spanish. Who needed to know Spanish, anyway? I didn’t know a single person who spoke Spanish. Even the teacher spoke only a few laborious sentences occasionally. And now, when Brother Hinckley and I travel through the stakes and the missions of the Church, we find that Spanish has become the second language of the Church. And we find ourselves constantly struggling to communicate with these wonderful, Spanish-speaking members whom we love so much.

“I missed out. I missed out on a valuable experience because I did not have a love affair with my Spanish textbook when the opportunity was there and the time and season were right. So, no matter the class, or how irrelevant it may seem, learn, learn, learn. . . . Learn to be a real student, an excellent student.”
—Glimpses into the Life and Heart of Marjorie Pay Hinckley (1999), 229–30

QUOTES

“Education, formal education, is a wonderful thing. No matter the class you may choose to take, learn. Learn as if your life depended on it. Perhaps it will. When you open a new textbook, say to yourself, ‘I want to know what this book has to teach me.’ Learn the thrill of digging for fossils on the mountainside, or working over a test tube until dark, or getting on the trail of something in the library and searching it down feverishly for hours. Be a real student, an intellectually curious student.”
—Small and Simple Things (2003), 73

“Scriptures are needed more and more as the years rush by. They become more and more meaningful because we have more and more experiences that help us to relate to them.”
—Small and Simple Things (2003), 97

“God is what He is because He knows everything. And the beautiful thing—perhaps the thing I love most about the gospel—is that everything we learn we can use and take with us and use it again. No bit of knowledge goes wasted. Everything you are learning now is preparing you for something else. Did you know that? What a concept!”
—Small and Simple Things (2003), 138