Marriage Quote by Richard G. Scott

Scott frames intimacy as both sacred electricity and live wire: potent, beautiful, and dangerous in the wrong hands. The line works rhetorically because it begins with concession, not scolding. He validates desire as "powerful" and "wonderful", locating it inside "harmony" rather than shame. That opening grants listeners moral permission to feel, then immediately narrows the acceptable channel: marriage as the only safe circuit.

The pivot to Satan is doing heavy cultural work. It externalizes temptation, turning private impulses into a cosmic adversary. That move doesn’t just warn; it recruits. If the threat is metaphysical, then restraint becomes heroism, not mere rule-following. The language also shifts from descriptive to directive: "would tempt you" to "Do not". The command is paternal, protective, and deliberately vague. "These emotions" can mean sexual attraction, romantic bonding, even the soft prelude of emotional intimacy. The ambiguity is strategic: it lets the counsel apply broadly, creating a wide safety margin for behavior and thought.

"Do not stir" is especially telling. It’s not only about avoiding acts, but about managing conditions that might lead to them: settings, conversations, media, late-night vulnerability. The subtext is preventative self-governance, a moral hygiene regimen that treats desire like a fire you don’t light unless you’re already in the fireplace of marriage.

In the late-20th-century LDS context where Scott spoke, this fits a larger project of boundary-making in a permissive culture: preserving marital stability, discouraging premarital sex, and defining identity through disciplined choices. The quote isn’t naïve about chemistry; it’s leveraging that realism to justify strict limits.