quotations about prayer
My prayer begins when I remember to pray. Or maybe before then. Is there something that stirs inside, that precedes and gives rise to the thought of praying? Is it biochemistry? Is it the soul? Does the soul long to touch and be touched by its source?
RICHARD CHESS
"My Prayer Is Not Prayer", Patheos, May 11, 2016
None of us should get so busy in our lives that we cannot contemplate with prayer. Prayer is the passport to spiritual power.
SPENCER W. KIMBALL
"Fortify Your Homes Against Evil", April 1979
Prayer unaccompanied with a fervent love of God, is like a lamp unlighted; the words of the one without love being as unprofitable as the oil and cotton of the other without flame.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
Suppose your prayers aren't answered. What do you say? "Well, it's God's will." "Thy will be done." Fine, but if it's God's will, and He's going to do what He wants to anyway, why the f*** bother praying in the first place? Seems like a big waste of time to me! Couldn't you just skip the praying part and go right to His will? It's all very confusing.
GEORGE CARLIN
You Are All Diseased
To feel the supreme and moving beauty of the spectacle to which Nature invites her ephemeral guests!... that is what I call prayer.
CLAUDE DEBUSSY
attributed, Claude Debussy: His Life and Works
Bow, stubborn knees; and, heart, with strings of steel,
Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Hamlet
Prayer never brought in no side-meat. Takes a shoat to bring in pork.
JOHN STEINBECK
The Grapes of Wrath
Rapt into still communion that transcends
The imperfect offices of prayer and praise,
His mind was a thanksgiving to the power
That made him; it was blessedness and love!
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
The Excursion
Who rises from prayer a better man, his prayer is answered.
GEORGE MEREDITH
The Ordeal of Richard Feverel
Prayer is a nonlocative, nongeographic space that one enters at one's own peril, for it houses God during those few moments of one's presence there, and what is there will most surely change everything that comes into it. Prayer, its opal walls polished to transparency by the centuries of hands that have touched them, is the Tabernacle realized and the wayside chapel utilized. Ever traveling as we travel, moving as we move, prayer grips like home, until the heart belongs nowhere else and the body can scarcely function apart from them both. Prayer is dangerous and the entrance way to wholeness.
PHYLLIS TICKLE
Prayer Is a Place
He that will learn to pray, let him go to Sea.
GEORGE HERBERT
Jacula Prudentum
Prayer that craves a particular commodity -- any thing less than all good -- is vicious.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
"Self-Reliance"
What returns does prayer show? None, if it is real prayer. For prayer is for growth. We can therefore, never return to what we were thank heaven, for we are growers. So prayer is a call. And it's answered by a call. We call up and we are called on. We're summoned, told to advance, to grow. That's the nerve of prayer, as prayer is the nerve of religion.
GERALD HEARD
Reflections
PRAY, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner, confessedly unworthy.
AMBROSE BIERCE
The Devil's Dictionary
Scientists believe that every occurrence, including the affairs of human beings, is due to the laws of nature. Therefore a scientist cannot be inclined to believe that the course of events can by influenced by prayer, that is, by a supernaturally manifested wish. However, we must concede that our actual knowledge of these forces is imperfect, so that in the end the belief in the existence of a final, ultimate spirit rests on a kind of faith.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
letter to Phyllis (a child), January 24, 1936
Often when you ask for one thing you receive another, this is the mysterious thing about prayer, we address them to heaven with some private intention, but they choose their own path, sometimes they delay, allowing other prayers to overtake them, frequently they overlap and become hybrid prayers of dubious origin, which quarrel and argue among themselves.
JOSÉ SARAMAGO
Baltasar and Blimunda
Prayer is not to get God to change His will. If we really believe that the will of God is perfect, then why would we want Him to change it?
DAVID JEREMIAH
"4 Questions Answered on the Importance of Prayer"
God's answers are wiser than our prayers.
CROFT M. PENTZ
The Complete Book of Zingers
I pray you'll be our eyes, and watch us where we go.
And help us to be wise in times when we don't know
Let this be our prayer, when we lose our way
Lead us to the place, guide us with your grace
To a place where we'll be safe
CELINE DION
"The Prayer"
Any concern too small to be turned into a prayer is too small to be made into a burden.
CORRIE TEN BOOM
attributed, Pleasant Dreams: nighttime meditations for peace of mind