quotations about prayer
Let prayer, the most honorable, the most pleasurable, and the most beneficial of all exercises, be next our theme. In this we converse with the eternal mind, and contract a blessed familiarity with that all-glorious Being, whose favor is better than life, whose frown is worse than death. By this we taste more exquisite delights, than all the pleasures of sin can boast, than all the vanities of the world can bestow. By this every mercy is sanctified, every affliction is alleviated, every holy disposition is invigorated, every corrupt affection is weakened, and every temptation is resisted.
WILLIAM MCEWAN
"On Prayer", Select Essays Doctrinal & Practical on a Variety of the Most Important and Interesting Subjects in Divinity
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
You should never trust a person who prays in public.
STEPHEN KING
Duma Key
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
If a man obeys the gods they're quick to hear his prayers.
HOMER
The Iliad
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
Who rises from prayer a better man, his prayer is answered.
GEORGE MEREDITH
The Ordeal of Richard Feverel
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
Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one's weakness.
MAHATMA GANDHI
Young India, January 23, 1930
Prayer that craves a particular commodity -- any thing less than all good -- is vicious.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
"Self-Reliance"
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
Every person has his own ideas of the act of praying for God's guidance, tolerance, and mercy to fulfill his duties and responsibilities. My own concept of prayer is not as a plea for special favors nor as a quick palliation for wrongs knowingly committed. A prayer, it seems to me, implies a promise as well as a request; at the highest level, prayer not only is a supplication for strength and guidance, but also becomes an affirmation of life and thus a reverent praise of God.
WALT DISNEY
Deeds Rather Than Words
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
Is prayer your steering wheel or your spare tire?
CORRIE TEN BOOM
attributed, The Power of Prayer to Heal and Transform Your Life
Embark on no enterprise which you cannot submit to the test of prayer.
HOSEA BALLOU
Treasury of Thought
A lot of folks would do more prayin' if they could find a soft spot for their knees.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
Prayer is ecstatic communication with your innernavigational computer.
TIMOTHY LEARY
Your Brain Is God
He that will learn to pray, let him go to Sea.
GEORGE HERBERT
Jacula Prudentum
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
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