quotations about prayer
Not in tears should we pray,
But in hope, smiling bright,
When the glory of day
Has forgotten the night!
EDWIN LEIBFREED
"Pray--Not When in Tears"
For is prayer not disobedience?
The questioning of God's order?
CHRIS ABANI
Sanctificum
In our search for the holy, there are times when our restless preparations smother the very truth for which are searching. We decorate our rooms and make elaborate preparations for our prayer, when a single flower and a moment of waiting are all we need to meed the One Who Comes.
MACRINA WIEDERKEHR
Seasons of Your Heart
If you pray for rain long enough, it does eventually fall. If you pray for flood-waters to abate, they eventually do. The same happens in the absence of prayers.
STEVE ALLEN
Reflections
What discord should we bring into the universe if our prayers were all answered! Then we should govern the world, and not God. And do you think we should govern it better?
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Table-Talk
Some men pray only when the world is dark, as owls hoot at night.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
God is anxiously waiting for the chance to answer your prayers and fulfill your dreams, just as he always has. But he can't if you don't pray.
JEFFREY R. HOLLAND
Broken Things to Mend
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
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
God shapes the world by prayer.
EDWARD MCKENDREE BOUNDS
Purpose in 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
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
So I'm going to say my prayers tonight before I go to sleep. I hope you'll do the same. I believe if we do that, we'll all have less to worry about tomorrow.
BEN CARSON
Take the Risk
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 either a sheer illusion or a personal contact between embryonic, incomplete persons (ourselves) and the utterly concrete Person.
C. S. LEWIS
Fern-seeds and Elephants and Other Essays
Prayer is not optional for the Christian; it is required. We might ask, "What if it doesn't do anything?" That is not the issue. Regardless of whether prayer does any good, if God commands us to pray, we must pray. It is reason enough that the Lord God of the universe, the Creator and Sustainer of all things, commands it.
R. C. SPROUL
"If God Is Sovereign, Why Pray?", Ligonier Ministries, September 14, 2016
Embark on no enterprise which you cannot submit to the test of prayer.
HOSEA BALLOU
Treasury of Thought
Bow, stubborn knees; and, heart, with strings of steel,
Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Hamlet
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