Prayer quotes
5.5K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside prayer — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"All over India, all over the world, as the sun or the shadow of darkness moves from east to west, the call to prayer moves with it, and people kneel down in a wave to pray to God. Five waves each day - one for each namaaz - ripple across the globe from longitude to longitude. The component elements change direction, like iron filings near a magnet - towards the house of God in Mecca."
"But the blessed Bishop of Geneva taught his nuns another kind of prayer, which even the sick can make: to remain peacefully in the presence of God, manifesting our needs to Him with no other mental effort, like a poor person who uncovers his sores and by this means is more effective in inciting passers-by to do him some good than if he wore himself out trying to convince them of his need."
"Pour forth thy fervors for a healthful mind, Obedient passions, and a will resigned"
"We the Jainists of India say every day in our prayer, I worship all perfected souls, I worship all spiritual masters, I worship all spiritual instructors, I worship all holy men and women in the world."
"The angels can be thought of as our prayer partners."
"The Bible of nature is the best damn Bible in the world. Its laws are perfect and grand, and all the prayers in the world can't change them. There is intelligence and law in this world, and there may be supreme intelligence and law, but so far as the religion of the day is concerned, it is all a damned fake."
"Blessed be God, I not only begin praying when I kneel down, but I do not leave off praying when I rise up."
"God answered the prayers of animals."
"Prayer is and remains always a native and deepest impulse of the soul of man."
"I am never tempted to pray but when a warm feeling for my friends comes athwart my heart."
"In our Richmond there is much fanaticism, but chiefly among the women. They have their night meetings and prayer parties, where, attended by their priests, and sometimes by a hen-pecked husband, they pour forth the effusions of their love to Jesus, in terms as amatory and carnal, as their modesty would permit them to use a mere earthly lover."
"When the course of events shall have removed you to distant scenes of action where laurels not nurtured with the blood of my country may be gathered, I shall urge sincere prayers for your obtaining every honor and preferment which may gladden the heart of a soldier."
"With earnest prayers to all my friends to cherish mutual good will, to promote harmony and conciliation, and above all things to let the love of our country soar above all minor passions, I tender you the assurance of my affectionate esteem and respect."
"Convinced that the republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind, my prayers & efforts shall be cordially distributed to the support of that we have so happily established. It is indeed an animating thought that, while we are securing the rights of ourselves & our posterity, we are pointing out the way to struggling nations who wish, like us, to emerge from their tyrannies also. Heaven help their struggles, and lead them, as it has done us, triumphantly thro' them."
"I myself am part of the weather and part of the climate and part of the place … It is certainly part of my life of prayer."
"It's a risky thing to pray and the danger is that our very prayers get between God and us. The great thing in prayer is not to pray, but to go directly to God. . . . The fact is, though, that if you descend into the depths of your own spirit and arrive somewhere near the center of what you are, you are confronted with the inescapable truth that, at the very root of your existence, you are in constant and immediate contact with the infinite power of God."
"You will never be able to have perfect interior peace and recollection unless you are detached even from the desire of peace and recollection. You will never be able to pray perfectly until you are detached from the pleasures of prayer."
"In meditative prayer, one thinks and speaks not only with the mind and lips, but in a certain sense with one's whole being... All good meditative prayer is a conversation of our entire self to God."
"You wonder if God doesn't have an answering machine to screen out the prayers of the venal and the boring? And in which category has he placed you?"
"I take 10 minutes. I focus on what I'm most grateful for. Then I do a little prayer for three minutes, a blessing within myself through God, and then out to my family and friends and all those I serve. Then my last three minutes are the three things I want to achieve most. At the end of 10 minutes, you are wired. Everything in your life gets filtered through that."
