quotations about prayer
Embark on no enterprise which you cannot submit to the test of prayer.
HOSEA BALLOU
Treasury of Thought
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
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
Is prayer your steering wheel or your spare tire?
CORRIE TEN BOOM
attributed, The Power of Prayer to Heal and Transform Your Life
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
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
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
Who rises from prayer a better man, his prayer is answered.
GEORGE MEREDITH
The Ordeal of Richard Feverel
In memorizing the prayer, it may be helpful to remind yourself that you are not addressing some extraterrestrial being outside you. The kingdom of heaven is within us, and the Lord is enshrined in the depths of our own consciousness. In this prayer we are calling deep into ourselves, appealing to the spark of the divine that is our real nature.
EKNATH EASWARAN
God Makes the Rivers Flow
It doesn't matter how you pray--with your head bowed in silence, or crying out in grief, or dancing. Churches are good for prayer, but so are garages and cars and mountains and showers and dance floors.
ANNE LAMOTT
Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith
If a man obeys the gods they're quick to hear his prayers.
HOMER
The Iliad
Prayer is the weary soul of Herod's dancer,
Dancing before blind kings without applause.
STELLA BENSON
This Is the End
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
Prayer that craves a particular commodity -- any thing less than all good -- is vicious.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
"Self-Reliance"
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"
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
Any heart turned Godward feels more joy
In one short hour of prayer, than e'er was raised
By all the feasts of earth since its foundation.
PHILIP JAMES BAILEY
Festus
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
Let us never forget to pray. God lives. He is near. He is real. He is not only aware of us but cares for us. He is our Father. He is accessible to all who will seek Him.
GORDON B. HINCKLEY
Standing for Something: 10 Neglected Virtues That Will Heal Our Hearts and Homes
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