Daily Inspiration Quote by Thomas S. Monson

Admiration, in Monson's telling, is less a compliment than a corridor: walk it long enough and you start dressing, speaking, and choosing like the person at the end of it. The line works because it reframes a soft emotion as a shaping force. "Tend" keeps it pastoral rather than punitive; he's not claiming a mechanical law, but he is issuing a warning with plausible deniability. You can almost hear the sermon cadence behind it: your heroes are your future.

As a clergyman and long-serving leader in the LDS Church, Monson is speaking from a tradition that treats character as something practiced into being. The subtext is about discipleship and moral formation: you don't just believe; you imitate. The quote quietly borrows the logic of mentorship and apprenticeship and aims it at the soul. Admirations are not private; they are rehearsals. What you praise, you platform inside yourself.

Context matters here because Monson's world was saturated with competing models of the good life: celebrity culture, consumer success, status-as-salvation. The sentence offers a simple diagnostic for modern distraction: check your influences. It also flattens the distance between "role model" and "idol", nudging listeners to swap glamorous figures for exemplary ones. If you want to know where your life is headed, look less at your plans than at your fascinations.

The rhetorical power is its moral judo: it doesn't demand virtue directly. It asks you to curate your admiration, then lets imitation do the converting.