"Ought Not to Be"

This talk of Elder Holland's was one of those that I knew was completely meant for me. It was both a chastisement for a seriously terrible fault as well as a consolation to a wounded soul. This particular quote addresses a problem of mine which I always have to be mindful of and must work at annihilating from my life/personality/actions altogether.

"The sin of verbal abuse knows no gender. Wives, what of the unbridled tongue in your mouth, of the power for good or ill in your words? How is it that such a lovely voice which by divine nature is so angelic, so close to the veil, so instinctively gentle and inherently kind could ever in a turn be so shrill, so biting, so acrid and untamed? A woman's words can be more piercing than any dagger ever forged, and they can drive the people they love to retreat beyond a barrier more distant than anyone in the beginning of that exchange could ever have imagined. Sisters, there is no place in that magnificent spirit of yours for acerbic or abrasive expression of any kind, including gossip or backbiting or catty remarks. Let it never be said of our home or our ward or our neighborhood that 'the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity . . . [burning] among our members.' "

Jeffrey R. Holland, "The Tongue of Angels," Ensign, May 2007, 17